UK’s shadow foreign minister in pocket of Israel lobby
By David Cronin – The Electronic Intifada – 10/28/2011
Britain’s Labor Party has been trying to rebrand itself lately after a 13-year spell in government. During an annual conference last month, the most memorable remark by its leader Ed Miliband was “I am not Tony Blair.”
This commitment to change does not appear to have affected Labor’s stance on the Middle East. John Spellar, a shadow Foreign Office minister, has an especially close relationship with London’s pro-Israel lobby.
An inspection of Spellar’s declaration of interests shows that he travelled to the Herzliya security conference, one of the key events on the Israeli political calendar, in February. His airfare and accommodation (estimated total: £1,970 or $3,170) was paid for by David Menton, a director of the Britain Israel Research Center (BICOM). In its own words, that lobby outfit is “dedicated to creating a more supportive environment for Israel in Britain.”
Thanks to a source who shall remain nameless, I also learned that Spellar’s researcher Linda Smith is a partner of BICOM staff member Luke Akehurst (a former spin doctor for the arms industry). Smith and Akehurst both serve as Labor members of Hackney Council, a local authority in London.
I emailed Smith earlier today, asking if her views on the Middle East differ from those of Akehurst but did not receive a reply. Spellar has also not responded to a request for comment.
Lobby at center of resignation scandal
This information about Spellar’s connection to BICOM appears all the more significant given the organization’s role in a controversy leading to the recent resignation of Liam Fox as Britain’s defense secretary. Fox, who belongs to the Conservative Party, was severely embarrassed over revelations that his close friend Adam Werritty was posing as his official adviser during foreign travels, when Werritty had been given no such job by the British government. The Guardian newspaper revealed that Werritty’s jet-set lifestyle was being bankrolled by three prosperous Zionists. They included Poju Zabludowicz, BICOM’s chairman. When Werritty attended the 2009 Herzilya conference, his expenses were covered by BICOM.
David Menton, the man who picked up the tab for Spellar’s trip to Israel earlier this year, is a business associate of Zabludowicz, a billionaire who owns a sizeable chunk of Las Vegas. Menton is a founder of Synova Capital, a private equity fund. According to Synova’s website, the fund’s “cornerstone investor” is the Tamares Group, which is led by Zabludowicz.
I was intrigued to read an article by Spellar, in which he bragged of Labor’s affinity with the poor. It is difficult to square that posture with his willingness to go on junkets funded by a wealthy supporter of Israel, a state that denies an entire people their most elementary rights.
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Revisionist History Books Banned by Amazon
By Michael Hoffman • Unz Review • August 25, 2018
On August 13, 2018 Amazon banned Judaism’s Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded, which was published in 2011 and sold by Amazon for the past seven years. Along with the much larger study, Judaism Discovered, (sold by Amazon since 2008), it has had an international impact both as a softcover volume as well as a digital book circulating on the Amazon Kindle.
Sales to India, Japan and the Middle East were rapidly growing. The digital Kindle format is particularly important for the free circulation of books because it bypasses borders and customs and hurdles over the prohibitive cost of shipping which the US Postal Service imposed on mail to overseas destinations several years ago (eliminating economical surface mail).
Amazon has also banned The Great Holocaust Trial: The Landmark Battle for the Right to Doubt the West’s Most Sacred Relic (sold by Amazon since 2010).
These volumes maintain a high standard of scholarly excellence, had a majority of favorable reviews by Amazon customers, are free of hatred and bigotry and have sold thousands of copies on Amazon. Out of the blue we were told that suddenly “Amazon KDP” discovered that the books are in violation of Amazon’s “content guidelines.” Asking for documentation of the charge results in no response. It is enough that the accusation has been tendered. The accused are guilty until proved innocent, although how proof of innocence is presented is anyone’s guess. There is no appeals process. This is what is known as “Tech Tyranny.”
There is a nationwide purge underway that amounts to a new McCarthyism — blacklisting and banning politically incorrect speech and history books under the rubric of “hate speech” accusations, initiated in part by two Zionist thought police organizations, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). It’s a flimsy pretext for censoring controversial scholarly books that can’t be refuted.
In addition to our books being hate-free, we note that there are hundreds of hate-filled Zionist and rabbinic books brimming with ferocious bigotry for Palestinians, Germans and goyim in general, which are sold by Amazon. … continue
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That would explain Labours disinterest in the fact that a potential spy for a foreign nation was being paid to work in the heart of the M.o.D. They should have been calling for Liam Fox’s arrest on national security grounds.
Does anyone remember the Profumo scandal? How times change.
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Labour’s Jim Murphy is a top Zionist.
– Aangirfan
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Democracy: the choice between the red zionist or the blue zionist.
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Half of Parliament and most of the cabinet are in the pay of those behind Israel (Rothchilds etc).
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