Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home party, in Washington to lobby for further sanctions against the Iranian regime.

In a tense exchange on Thursday with Sky News Foreign Affairs Editor Sam Kiley, Israel’s Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said that the Jewish state is on the front lines of the wider international war against terror.

“We are fighting your war, make no mistake,” the minister insisted, adding that if Israel were to succumb to radical Islam, the UK would be targeted next.

Bennett also strongly objected to the recent use of the term “apartheid” with reference to Israel by British Parliament members.

“For you to sit in London and call us ‘apartheid,’ that’s unacceptable when we’re the only free state” in the region,  Bennett told the veteran journalist. “You should be praising Israel for being in a very tough situation, fighting in a world of Al Qaeda and Hamas and ISIS now… If this radical Islamic regime flows over Israel it’s going to hit London, in fact it is. They killed a soldier on a London street and they’re going to do that again.”

The economy minister characterized the suggestion that Israel practices apartheid as a “blatant lie” as the Jewish state is the only country in the region to grant full equal rights to its minorities, according to Bennett.

“They vote for our Parliament, they vote for my Parliament, they have members of Parliament. They pay taxes. They go to work. They enjoy full equal rights,” Bennett explained of Israel’s Arab minority. “I don’t recall that in Saudi Arabia women can drive and I do remember a few Arab states that kill gays and stone them. And I know that Syria is butchering its own people. So for you to suggest that Israel is an apartheid state, when we’re the only place in the Middle East that provides full equal rights to its citizens, that is a blatant lie, and I don’t accept that approach.”

Bennett concluded: “We are fighting the same war of the free world against this terrible axis. We would expect the world to help us rather than call us ‘apartheid’ or any other unacceptable names.”

Watch Israeli minister Naftali Bennett’s Sky News interview below: