Revealed: The Tzipi Hotovely diary

JOHN McEVOY and Alex Morris
Declassified UK
Published on 8/12/2025
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The Israeli ambassador in London, Tzipi Hotovely, has spent almost two years inciting genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

She suggested last year that “every school, every mosque, every second house” in Gaza had access to underground tunnels and was therefore a legitimate target for Israel.

“That’s an argument for destroying the whole of Gaza, every single building there”, said LBC presenter Iain Dale. “Do you have another solution?”, she responded.

Hotovely’s “solution” has left 92 percent of all residential buildings in Gaza – around 436,000 homes – damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations.

She has also claimed that Hamas bases “all [of its] headquarters” in Gaza’s hospitals, a narrative used by Israel to devastate the strip’s healthcare system.

Declassified has now obtained Hotovely’s diary, which offers unprecedented details about who the hard right ambassador has been meeting in private.

The information comes from a Freedom of Information request issued by lawyer Elad Man at Hatzlacha NGO in Israel.

It exposes how an array of pro-Israel lobbyists, Labour donors, businessmen, and Lords have been frequenting Hotovely’s embassy amid the Gaza genocide.

Pro-Israel lobby

Hotovely’s diary indicates a close working relationship between pro-Israel lobby organisations in Britain and the Israeli embassy in London.

While the Conservative and Labour Friends of Israel (CFI and LFI) groups claim not to be funded by Tel Aviv, they certainly liaise regularly with its ambassador in London.

Hotovely met four times with Stuart Polak, a director and honorary president of CFI who once described being made a member of the House of Lords as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to advocate for Israel.

The pair were joined by seasoned Israeli diplomats Yossi Amrani and Meirav Eilon Shahar in July and September 2024, respectively.

Amrani is currently the head of the Israeli foreign ministry’s diplomatic division, and was until recently its ambassador to Greece. Shahar is Israel’s deputy director for strategic affairs in the foreign ministry, formerly working as its ambassador at the UN.

The Israeli ambassador also met with figures associated with LFI on four occasions, including Michael Rubin, Jon Pearce MP, and Lord Jonathan Mendelsohn.

Rubin, the director of LFI, was secretly filmed in a 2017 Al Jazeera documentary saying the lobby group and the Israeli embassy “work really closely together, but a lot of it is behind the scenes”.

He appears twice in Hotovely’s diary, with one of the meetings taking place at the ambassador’s residence in London.

Pearce has been LFI chair since September 2024, while Mendelsohn is a former chair and funder of the group.

An LFI spokesperson told Declassified that Pearce and Rubin met with the ambassador “to reiterate our longstanding support for a ceasefire, increased humanitarian aid to Gaza and the release of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas since the 7 October atrocities”.

Also included in Hotovely’s diary is Luke Akehurst, the MP for Durham North and former director of another prominent pro-Israel lobby group, We Believe in Israel. The pair met on the sidelines of the Labour party conference in Liverpool.

Labour donors

Hotovely has also been meeting with Labour donors amid the Gaza genocide, raising concerns about the proximity of the party’s funders to the Israeli government.

Stuart Roden, a chairman of Israeli venture capital firm Hetz Ventures, donated over half a million pounds to the Labour party ahead of the 2024 general election. He has since become a major funder of the thinktank Labour Together.

Roden appears twice in Hotovely’s diary, with both meetings taking place in July 2024, shortly after Keir Starmer’s government came to power.

The first rendezvous was at a gallery in London, while the second was held in Hotovely’s residence.

Roden told the Spectator in October 2023 that the IDF would “do everything in its power, as it always has done, to avoid civilian casualties”, arguing that Israel was engaged in a “clash of civilisations” where one side respects civilian life and the other does not.

By this time, the death toll in Gaza had risen to over 1,500 people.

He was also filmed shouting at peaceful pro-Palestine protesters outside the Labour party conference the same month. “You murdered children” he screamed at the crowd, which included elderly women, telling journalists the demonstration should be banned.

“Behind the scenes, Roden has an informal dialogue with the [Labour] party leadership”, the Financial Times reported last year. Roden said: “I express views on some of the things I care about”.

Hotovely also met with Jonathan Goldstein at the embassy residence in London.

Goldstein is a property tycoon who backed David Lammy’s campaign to become London mayor in 2014 and donated football tickets to Starmer in 2022, personally accompanying him to the game.

A former chair of the Jewish Leadership Council, Goldstein has attended pro-Israel marches in London and travelled to Tel Aviv to discuss “cooperation” with its minster of strategic affairs, Gilad Erdan.

Roden and Goldstein were approached for comment.

Businessmen

In November 2023, shortly after the Israeli government had imposed a total siege on Gaza, Hotovely met privately with Michael Denison, the head of international advisory at British oil giant BP.

It is unclear what Hotovely discussed with Denison, whose role involves “political risk management” and developing “relationships with UK FCDO [Foreign Office] and foreign diplomatic missions in London”.

Days before the meeting, however, Israel’s Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure had announced the award of new licences to six energy companies for offshore natural gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.

One of the bids was won by a joint consortium of BP, Azeri national oil company SOCAR, and Israeli corporation NewMed Energy.

Though the bids had been made earlier in the year, the timing of the announcement was designed to build investor confidence in Israel amid its escalating war on Gaza.

“Even now, major natural gas exploration companies put their trust in Israel’s robustness and want to invest here”, Israel’s energy minister Israel Katz declared.

BP has continued to work with the Israeli government amid the devastation of Gaza.

The company was criticised by UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese in her recent report “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide”, which focusses on the complicity of private companies in the genocide.

“BP is expanding involvement in the Israeli economy, with exploration licences confirmed in March 2025, which allow BP to explore Palestinian maritime expanses illegally exploited by Israel”, wrote Albanese.

Hotovely also met in London with representatives from Rafael UK, an Israeli state-owned arms firm which manufactures missiles for urban warfare.

BP did not respond to a request for comment.

Lords

A series of members of the House of Lords have also met with Hotovely during the Gaza genocide.

Lord Browne, the former CEO of BP and current chairman of Israeli logistics firm Windward, met with the ambassador in late October 2023.

Weeks later, Hotovely was joined for breakfast by Lord Feldman, the former Tory party chairman who is now executive partner at Israeli venture capital firm, Hetz, alongside Roden.

In July 2024, Lord Andrew Roberts visited Hotovely’s residence in London for breakfast. He would go on to publish a report about 7 October which was funded by Cedars Oak, a consultancy firm owned by Polak and Mendelsohn.

In September, Hotovely also brunched at the residence with Lord Kestenbaum, formerly on the board of directors of pro-Israel lobby group BICOM.