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Employee Sues Hospital That Fired Her for Reporting COVID Vaccine Injuries to VAERS

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 22, 2024

A physician’s assistant is suing a New York hospital system, alleging it violated the federal False Claims Act by failing to complete mandatory reporting of injuries associated with the COVID-19 vaccine to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Deborah Conrad worked at United Memorial Medical Center, part of Rochester Regional Health (RRH), until October 2021, when she said she was fired for reporting vaccine-related adverse events.

Conrad filed the lawsuit in May 2023, but the complaint wasn’t unsealed and made publicly available until February, TrialSiteNews reported last week.

She is seeking job reinstatement and back pay for herself and civil penalties on behalf of the U.S. government.

Most importantly, Conrad told The Defender, she hopes the lawsuit will lead to changes in how vaccine adverse events are reported.

“How can anybody trust the vaccine program when medical professionals are not adhering to the reporting requirements of the one system we have in place that is meant to assure us that these things are safe?” she asked.

“I want policy change. I don’t care about the money, the vindication. I want to be able to trust the health system,” Conrad said.

Under the False Claims Act, whistleblowers can file a lawsuit on behalf of the federal government against an entity they allege profited from taxpayer funds by defrauding the government.

False Claims Act cases are initially sealed while the government investigates the cases and determines whether it will intervene and take the case on itself, or allow the whistleblower to proceed with the action.

The government decided not to intervene in the case. It is now unsealed and moving forward with Conrad as the “relator,” who gives evidence to the court on behalf of the U.S. government.

She told The Defender the evidence she is submitting to the court is substantial — she meticulously saved every email, patient file and recorded conversations with supervisors and other hospital staff.

United Memorial Medical Center, like all institutions in the U.S. that administered the COVID-19 vaccines, signed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) COVID-19 Vaccination Program Provider Agreement, according to the complaint.

The agreement stipulated that organizations providing the shots and which received compensation for doing so from the federal government were required to “report moderate and adverse events following vaccination” to VAERS.

By not doing so, Warner Mendenhall, the attorney representing Conrad, told The Defender, they were out of compliance with the agreement. And, he added, the agreement clearly stipulates that non-compliance violates the False Claims Act.

The hospital not only failed to report cases, it blocked Conrad from submitting approximately 170 reports of serious adverse events to VAERS between May 27 and Oct. 6, 2021, Conrad said.

The hospital system also failed to report over 12,000 adverse events, the complaint alleges.

Mendenhall said they estimated that number based on the number of people vaccinated at one of the healthcare facilities or another nearby clinic who then presented at the hospital for treatment for an injury that was likely linked to the vaccine.

The complaint contains several examples of such cases.

On behalf of the U.S., Conrad is seeking damages that fall into what Mendenhall described as “three buckets.”

First, he said, each entity was paid an administrative fee — approximately $40 — for each injection. The suit seeks a refund of that money to the government for the thousands of shots administered.

Next, for every failure to report, there is a mandatory penalty of at least $20,000. For 12,000 cases, that would total more than $240,000,000.

Finally, the “third bucket” of damages would be the cost of the treatment that people had to pay for their vaccine injuries. By failing to meet their obligations as a vaccine provider, he said the hospital failed to provide people with the proper necessary treatment they ought to be entitled to and those costs should be reimbursed.

If Conrad prevails in court, the hospital will go bankrupt — but that isn’t the intent, Mendenhall said.

“We don’t want to bankrupt community hospitals,” he said. “That’s not what we are about. We want them to do their job, to do what they are supposed to do and file the reports,” he said. “And we want Deb Conrad rehired to run the program.”

Conrad is suing only one hospital system, but there are roughly 2,800 systems in the country, Mendenhall said. “As far as I know, not a single one of them met their obligations under the vaccination program participation agreement. And they all signed it.”

The False Claims Act, “is a way for us as a people, if we want to hold these providers accountable for their wrongdoing, we actually can do it,” Mendenhall told Trial Site News. “There’s a very clear pathway here. It’s outlined here, and they all agreed to it.”

Ray Flores, senior outside counsel for Children’s Health Defense, told The Defender the case represented a “bold effort to hold those who allegedly defrauded the people of the United States accountable.”

In detailing the ways the hospital precluded providers from reporting to VAERS, “the allegations in the complaint solve part of the mystery of why only 1% of vaccine injuries are reported,” he said.

Mendenhall also represents Pfizer whistleblower Brook Jackson, who sued the drugmaker under the False Claims Act.

Conrad: ‘I kept getting gaslit and made fun of and told I was crazy’ 

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Conrad had been a physician assistant for nearly 20 years. She spent most of that time as a hospitalist, working in inpatient medicine and the intensive care unit in the same hospital.

At United Memorial, she was director of Advanced Practice Providers, sat on the medical executive board, saw patients and was the first non-physician to receive the Physician Excellence award.

When the COVID-19 vaccine came out, her whole life changed, Conrad said. As she had done throughout her career, she reported to the hospital the safety issues and new trends in illness that she was seeing, such as elderly vaccinated people hospitalized for COVID-19 or young people with blood clots.

In researching whether providers in other places were witnessing the same issues, Conrad discovered VAERS — which she said she and her colleagues had never been told about, despite claims later made by the hospital — and began reporting cases.

She volunteered to take on this reporting role for the hospital, reporting all of the adverse events that came into the facility.

As the number of adverse events grew, the reporting became too onerous, so Conrad asked the hospital to develop a plan to efficiently complete the reports, to protect patients and to remain in compliance.

Instead, the hospital informed her it would be auditing her work.

The hospital accused Conrad of over-reporting and being “antivaxxy.” This was a problem, the hospital informed her in an email included in the complaint, because “we are very much advocating for patients to receive the vaccine.”

She was forbidden from filing reports for any patient she was not directly caring for, even though her leadership role meant she oversaw all patients, Conrad said.

If she had other concerns, they said she could register them in the hospital’s internal email system, “Safe Connect,” which she did. However, those reports weren’t going anywhere.

Concerned the events weren’t being reported and that the hospital was out of compliance with the agreement it had signed, Conrad began reaching out to the CDC, the FDA, the New York State Department of Health and the hospital accreditation board.

Rather than receiving support, Conrad said:

“I kept getting gaslit and made fun of and told I was crazy.

“Then I got called into a meeting and they threatened to report me to the state for spreading misinformation, saying that basically doing VAERS reports and talking to patients about their potential side effects is misinformation, and that I was spreading vaccine hesitancy, and that’s not allowed.

“And they said if it continued they were going to report me to have basically my license taken away. Wow. So at that point, I knew I was in real trouble.”

She contacted a lawyer and went public with her experience on The Highwire and in The New York Times. She also started a GoFundMe campaign, anticipating her possible firing.

The hospital threatened to report her to the New York State Society of Physician Assistants for spreading vaccine misinformation. Just a few months earlier, the same organization had nominated Conrad for a seat on the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct.

In what Conrad called “direct retaliation,” on Oct. 6, 2021, she was publicly surrounded at her workstation by human resources staff and escorted to a room where she was interrogated about her public comments.

“They basically told me, are you going to leave quietly or are we going to walk you out?” she said.

Conrad said the firing was very public and humiliating, which she thought was meant to scare others. “As a result of me being publicly fired, it’s my understanding that now no one [at the hospital] is reporting to VAERS,” she said.

Providers aren’t trained to use VAERS

The VAERS system is the primary public reporting system for flagging vaccine safety issues. For members of the public, it’s a voluntary system. However, healthcare professionals are required to report certain events.

Yet, Conrad said, she never learned about VAERS in her medical training and the hospital never offered training for the system. She said they never mentioned the system to staff until she complained publicly.

“We come out of school knowing every side effect for every drug known to man, because they have no liability shield, but we are never taught there could be anything wrong with vaccines,” she said.

“We didn’t even know there’s a reporting system. Why is that? Why do we have a liability shield for vaccines if they’re so safe? Why would we need it when we don’t have it for drugs that we know are not always safe? None of it makes sense,” she added.

Conrad said this “flawed” and “fraudulent” system is responsible for the rise in “vaccine hesitancy.” “They blame people like me for this hesitancy,” she said, “but they are the ones who created the issue by not enforcing” safety and injury reporting.

Instead, she said, the public health agencies normalized previously unthinkable ideas, such as it’s normal for vaccines to make people sick, or that reused cloth masks would protect from infectious disease and much more.

Healthcare is about safety, she said. “First, do no harm. That’s the oath I took when I graduated. But they’re using the doctors to harm patients unknowingly and not teaching them about the safety mechanisms we put in place.”

Conrad said she hopes the lawsuit will help change that. Now that it is unsealed, she said, “We’re able to go back out there and start talking about things because the public cannot forget. We cannot forget what has been done. Otherwise it’ll happen again.”

Mendenhall said he expects a response from the hospital system next week. He predicts they will submit a motion to dismiss, which he intends to contest.

“This is the first case of its kind,” he said. “I predict we will succeed in defending any motion to dismiss because Deb did such a good job with the evidence and her story is very compelling.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

May 24, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Israeli troops abduct injured civilians from Gaza hospitals: Report

The Cradle | May 24, 2024

The Israeli army has been abducting injured Palestinian civilians from hospitals in Gaza and transporting them to a detention camp in the Negev, where they are shackled to beds and undergo major surgeries, often without painkillers, the Guardian reported on 24 May.

A whistleblower from the Sde Teiman detention camp told the Guardian some patients had come from hospitals in Gaza after being abducted by Israeli forces. “These were patients who had been captured by the Israeli army while being treated in Gaza hospitals and brought here. They had [missing] limbs and infected wounds. They were moaning in pain,” the source said.

The source described how the field hospital in the detention camp consisted of tents, including an emergency room where patients underwent surgery on a stretcher as there was no operating table.

The patients were handcuffed to the beds, made to wear diapers, and blindfolded.

In one case, a detainee’s hand had been amputated “because the wrists had become gangrenous due to handcuffing wounds.”

A second whistleblower who spoke with the Guardian said, “There were about 15 patients in total, they were all handcuffed and blindfolded. They were naked, wearing diapers and were covered by blankets. Most of them appeared to have obvious war injuries; some had undergone amputations, and others underwent major abdominal or chest surgery. They were practically naked except for a diaper.”

The source said he witnessed a patient undergoing painful medical procedures without any painkillers.

In the other section of the camp, the whistleblowers said up to 200 Palestinian detainees from Gaza are being held in cages under severe physical restrictions.

“The prisoners are detained in a sort of cages, all blindfolded and handcuffed,” the source said. “If someone speaks or moves, they are immediately silenced or they are forced to stand with their hands raised above their head and handcuffed for up to one hour.”

“If they are unable to keep their hands raised, the soldiers attach the handcuffs to the bars of the cage. Many of the detainees had infected wounds that were not being properly treated.”

The source claimed the Israeli military had no proof that detainees were members of Hamas. Some inmates repeatedly asked why they were there. According to the whistleblower, most were considered suspects, and some were released. “But they had not been formally charged. It was a kind of filtering camp, a provisional detention,” he said.

May 24, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US plans to be ‘very involved’ in post-war Gaza – Politico

RT | May 24, 2024

The US wants a “prominent” role in Gaza after Israel’s military operation in the Palestinian enclave ends, Politico has reported. Washington expects a joint Palestinian-Arab force of several thousand troops to take charge of security in Gaza after the current conflict.

On Thursday, Politico reported details of discussions within the administration of US President Joe Biden about what a post-war settlement should look like, citing four officials and a leaked document from the Department of State.

The US reportedly wants to retain a “civilian adviser” to any future security force, likely based in Egypt or Jordan. American forces, however, would “never enter Gaza itself” in order to avoid the impression that Washington was “dictating the future of the territory.”

A classified document from March envisioned an American filling the role of a “director-general” of the future security mission, according to the outlet. Under that proposal, the force would consist of roughly 2,000 Palestinians and 1,000 troops from Arab-speaking nations. It would be commanded by an officer from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, or “ideally” Egypt.

The timeline for the implementation of Washington’s plans are unclear, according to a US intelligence assessment described by Politico earlier this week. The document said Israel had managed to reduce the strength of Hamas forces by up to 35% since the group’s attack on Israel last October. However, it has recruited thousands of new fighters in recent months, a source in the intelligence community told Politico.

The Pentagon’s widely reported efforts to deliver humanitarian aid via a floating pier have been undermined by logistical and security issues. No food reached starving Palestinians between last Friday and Tuesday of this week, spokesman Pat Ryder told reporters, blaming the delay on local NGOs that were tasked with distributing the aid.

The US has refused to work with the UN Refugee Agency, a prominent provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, after Israel accused some of its employees of involvement in the October 7 attack. Last month, the UN said it had closed or suspended its probes into the allegations because Israel had failed to provide any evidence substantiating its claims.

May 24, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Genocide, recognising a Palestinian State and the two-state paradigm

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | May 23, 2024

“President Biden … has been equally emphatic on the record that the two-state solution should be brought about through direct negotiations through the parties, not for unilateral recognition,”  White House National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan, stated during a news briefing. Ireland, Spain and Norway’s decision to recognise a Palestinian State at a time of genocide is a belated symbolic act which the US is clearly displeased with, despite each country’s political autonomy.

If the symbolic gesture is to hold any meaning, however, it must be divested from the two-state narrative which is also part of the genocidal actions Israel is performing in Gaza.

So far, judging by the statements, the recognition is far from reaching practical political significance. Norway’s Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Store, equated the decision with purported equivalence: “two states, living side by side, in peace and security”. A Palestinian State will not stop Israel from committing genocide. Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, stated, “We’re not going to allow the possibility of the two-state solution to be destroyed by force because it’s the only just and sustainable solution to this terrible conflict.” Wrong. The two-state paradigm enabled Israel to colonise Palestine further. And, besides, the decolonial alternative exists. Ireland’s Prime Minister evoked the image of security and peace with neighbours, referring to the coloniser and the colonised. But world leaders know enough of colonialism to recognise that peace is not synonymous with colonisation.

Of course, the US would prefer negotiations to eclipse any recognition of a Palestinian State. Negotiations and the absence of them are also part of the political process that led to the current genocide in Gaza. But what Ireland, Spain and Norway are offering is still tethered to the two-state compromise. If it were not for the genocide unfolding in plain sight, the news would have been relegated to an announcement irksome to Israel. Even if the gesture is not backed by political action supporting decolonisation – the statements clearly show the leaders’ intent to safeguard the two-state diplomatic trajectory – Israel committing genocide in Gaza makes a belated, symbolic recognition of Palestine significant because, at the very least, it asserts the ongoing existence of the Palestinian people in the face of the ongoing genocide.

Israel is intent on eliminating Palestinians from Gaza and the US is diligently aiding Israel with its weapons shipments. Recognition of a Palestinian State at such a time puts the gesture in direct conflict with what Israel and the US are trying to achieve, even if the statements by Norway, Ireland and Spain have kept to the conventional narrative. What happens next is of far greater consequence.

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likely facing an international arrest warrant, which part of diplomacy will European countries want to preserve? And how much validity will the two-state compromise retain? It is one thing to harp on a defunct paradigm, but genocide not only can eliminate a population but also the diplomacy that Europe prides itself upon. It is up to any country that recognised Palestine to rethink its politics and diplomatically corner the US and Israel into isolation, by thinking beyond the two-state paradigm and relate the recognition of a Palestinian State to Palestinian decolonisation and liberation.

May 24, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli threats should be treated with the contempt they deserve

By Ibrahim Hewitt | MEMO | May 24, 2024

It was no surprise to see that Israel has reportedly threatened Ireland, Spain and Norway with “consequences” for planning to recognise the State of Palestine. Such a threat is straight from the classic Zionist playbook, as anyone who has been attacked physically or verbally for telling the truth about the colonial state’s occupation of Palestine can attest.

Indeed, you don’t even have to go that far to be the target of the pro-Israel lobby and its allies. Simply trying to provide humanitarian aid can be enough, as I can attest from personal experience. As a trustee and the chair of the Palestinian Relief and Development Fund, known as Interpal, from 1996 to 2020, I faced media allegations and personal insults from Zionist groups in the UK and abroad.

The charity itself was denounced by major media outlets as a supporter of Palestinian “terrorism” within the first two years of it being set up in 1994. Funds from Interpal, it was alleged, were used to “train suicide bombers”. It was a nonsensical allegation made, as all such claims were made, to divert our time and resources away from providing much-needed humanitarian aid to Palestinians in need in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as in Jordan and Lebanon.

On one occasion, a major newspaper accused us of diverting “millions of dollars” to Hamas rather than development projects in occupied Palestine. Another newspaper alleged we had stolen $100m from Hamas. The charity’s average annual income at the time was less than £5 million. As I said, nonsensical.

Moreover, I smile inwardly when I hear allegations of anti-Semitism thrown at any and all individuals and organisations opposing Israel’s nefarious occupation. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has said that Spain’s call to recognise Palestine, and liberate the land “from the river to the sea”, is “anti-Semitic”. The term has been weaponised to try to shut down any opposition to Israeli violations of international law.

However, when I was accused of being a “homophobic, anti-Semitic, terror activist” by members of the pro-Israel lobby, the words of a senior Metropolitan Police office were reassuring: “The absence of any police involvement is hugely significant.”

He had said this about the US designation of Interpal as a “global terrorist entity” in 2003, but it was equally applicable to allegations of illegal activity against me as an individual. The designation was imposed by the US with no due process, no investigation of the charity and no interaction with the trustees and staff. Israel provided a list of individuals and organisations to be “designated” to the White House, and George W Bush signed the order. We found out about this from the BBC website. That’s how it worked, and probably still works 20+ years later.

It’s all a ruse to shut down the conversation about the pernicious role of Zionism and the Zionist state in the world today, and the brutality of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. In the words of an anonymous US Treasury Official speaking to Interpal’s New York lawyer “off the record” years later, the designation of the charity was “political”, and had nothing to do with real or imagined violations of the law.

In other words, as is becoming more obvious to us all by the day, politicians in the West will do anything, no matter what the effect on the democracy that they claim to cherish and uphold, to protect the Zionist state of Israel. Many of these politicians have had their “loyalty” to the alien state bought by massive donations to their campaign funds; their own commitment to the democratic process, therefore, must be questioned.

It will be interesting to see if the “consequences” threatened by Israel force Ireland, Spain and Norway to change their minds about recognising the State of Palestine. I suspect not, because such a decision is generally made on genuine principles, not the power and wealth of lobby groups.

My hope is that the governments in Dublin, Madrid and Oslo will stick by their principles. This will not only encourage other states to recognise Palestine, but also give hope to the people taking to the streets in protest at Israel’s genocide that their voices are being heard as they call for a ceasefire, and that they too can treat Israeli threats with the contempt they deserve.

May 24, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 4 Comments

ICJ orders Israel to halt Rafah assault, allow entry of genocide investigators

The Cradle | May 24, 2024

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel on 24 May to halt its military offensive in Rafah as part of the ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa earlier this year.

The top UN court said that the current situation entails further risks of “irreparable damage” to the rights of Palestinians in Gaza and that conditions have been met for new emergency measures.

“[Israel must] immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” ICJ President Nawaf Salam said.

He also ordered Tel Aviv to “maintain open the Rafah crossing for unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” and to “take effective measures to ensure the unimpeded access to the Gaza Strip of any commission of inquiry, fact-finding mission or other investigative body mandated by competent organs of the United Nations to investigate allegations of genocide.”

Moreover, the World Court ordered Israeli officials to “submit a report to the Court on all measures taken to give effect to this Order, within one month as from the date of this Order.”

Following the ICJ session, Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Netanyahu will convene an emergency meeting later today, which will include Foreign Minister Israel Katz, war cabinet minister and opposition leader Benny Gantz, and the government’s judicial advisor.

Hamas also commented on the ruling, highlighting that Tel Aviv continues to commit “massacres” across the Gaza Strip and urged the court to issue an order for Israel to stop all its operations in the besieged enclave, not just in Rafah.

“What is happening in Jabalia and other governorates of the Strip is no less criminal and dangerous than what is happening in Rafah,” the Hamas statement reads.

“We call on the international community and the United Nations to pressure the occupation to immediately comply with this decision and to seriously and genuinely proceed in translating all UN resolutions that force the zionist occupation army to stop the genocide it has been committing against our people for more than seven months.”

For its part, South Africa welcomed Friday’s ruling and urged UN member states to back it.

“I believe it’s a much stronger, in terms of wording, set of provisional measures, very clear call for a cessation,” Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor told public broadcaster SABC.

The ruling comes as Israel’s now two-week bombing and ground offensive in Rafah has killed at least 171 people and displaced around one million Palestinians. Most had already been displaced by Israeli bombing and now face a further lack of shelter, food, water, and medicine.

South Africa made an urgent request in February for the court to consider whether Israel’s decision to launch an operation in Rafah “requires that the court uses its power to prevent further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.”

The country had filed its case at the end of December, declaring that Israel was breaching obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention in its military campaign in Gaza.

On 26 January, the ICJ ordered that Israel take steps to prevent acts of genocide by its military in Gaza and punish incitements to genocide.

The court, however, stopped short of ordering a ceasefire. South Africa had been aiming for an ICJ order of an emergency halt to Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Any decision of the sort would need backing from the UN Security Council.

On 16 May, the ICJ held hearings to consider South Africa’s request for additional emergency measures to halt Israel’s ongoing operation in Rafah, resulting in Friday’s ruling.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed over 35,000 Palestinians while razing much of the besieged enclave, including entire neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, farmland, and cemeteries.

Israel politicians and activists have repeatedly publicized their intent to destroy and ethnically cleanse Gaza to make way for future Jewish settlement.

May 24, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

ISRAEL LOBBY FUNDED A THIRD OF CONSERVATIVE MPS

BY JOHN MCEVOY | DECLASSIFIED UK | MAY 23, 2024

Some 126 of the Tory party’s 344 MPs have accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups, Declassified has found.

The revelation comes as Rishi Sunak calls a general election in which his unequivocal backing of Israel could cost the party votes.

The value of the donations or hospitality amounts to over £430,000, with the organisations paying for sitting Conservative MPs to visit Israel on 187 occasions.

Some of those trips also involved visits to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and a small number were co-sponsored by groups which do not form part of the Israel lobby.

The main funder is Conservative Friends of Israel, a parliamentary group which does not disclose its own sources of funding.

Other notable donors include the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange, and the European Leadership Network.

Thirteen Tory politicians have accepted over £50,000 in total to travel to Israel since 7 October, including for “solidarity” missions.

Friends of Israel

Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) is a pro-Israel lobby group set up in 1974 by Michael Fidler, a Tory politician described in one biography as having political views “reminiscent of the philosophy of Enoch Powell”.

The organisation has long standing links with the Israeli state, and is “beginning to resemble the Westminster outpost for Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud coalition”, according to veteran journalist Peter Oborne.

Around 80 percent of Tory MPs are members of CFI. Over the past decade, it has taken more MPs on overseas trips than any other political donor in Britain.

Publicly available data reviewed by Declassified shows that CFI has funded 118 sitting Tory MPs to travel to Israel on 160 occasions, providing over £330,000 towards the visits.

Those MPs include deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden, home secretary James Cleverly, and justice secretary Alex Chalk, prior to their appointment to the cabinet.

Some 22 of those CFI-led visits have been subsidised by the Israeli foreign ministry to the tune of over £8,000 in total.

The Israeli state has also independently funded trips for Nadhim Zahawi and Kwasi Kwarteng, two former UK chancellors, as well as John Whittingdale MP, then the shadow secretary of state for the environment.

Past CFI delegations have involved tours of factories run by Israel’s largest arms firm, Elbit Systems. When journalist David Cronin asked whether the lobby group was funded by Elbit Systems in 2011, a CFI spokesperson said: “I don’t have to give you those details”.

Solidarity missions

CFI’s lobbying activities have intensified since 7 October.

The group has led two “special solidarity” delegations to Israel amid the Gaza genocide, involving six MPs – Stephen Crabb, Theresa Villiers, Robert Jenrick, Michael Ellis, Nicola Richards, and Greg Smith.

In Israel, the MPs were hosted by president Isaac Herzog, whose statement in October 2023 – that the “entire nation” of Gaza was responsible for Hamas’ attack on Israel – was cited by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as plausible evidence of incitement to genocide.

CFI also funds parliamentary candidates to visit Israel even before they become elected.

Prior to the 2019 general election, CFI brought a delegation of prospective parliamentary candidates to Israel, seven of whom – Siobhan Baillie, Miriam Cates, Dehenna Davison, Peter Gibson, Tom Hunt, Robert Largan, and Matthew Vickers – are now MPs.

In February 2024, one month after Israel was put under investigation by the ICJ for genocide, CFI led another trip to Israel for four more prospective MPs, Alexander Clarkson, Katie Lam, Ben Obese-Jecty, and Bradley Thomas.

CFI’s lobbying efforts are not limited to funding trips to Israel.

The organisation also prepares briefing material for MPs, enjoying “superb access to Downing Street, Westminster, and Whitehall”, and hosts an annual banquet which functions as a public display of support for Israel.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak addressed their latest banquet in January, calling CFI “an integral part of our party”.

AIPAC

Other notable pro-Israel lobby organisations which have funded Tory MPs include the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish National Fund (JNF), and the National Jewish Assembly (NJA).

The total value of their donations is over £42,000.

AIPAC is a pro-Israel organisation based in Washington, and one of the most powerful lobbying forces in US politics.

Michael Gove, who has led the charge to ban British public bodies from boycotting Israel, accepted £3,086 from AIPAC to attend and speak at its conference in Washington in 2017.

James Morris MP attended an AIPAC conference in 2011, funded by its sister organisation the American Israel Education Foundation, while Henry Smith MP was funded directly by AIPAC to attend its conference the next year.

Other funded attendees of AIPAC events include Jonathan Djanogly MP and former UK home secretary Priti Patel. Their travel was paid for by the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank with opaque funders and close links to Israel.

The JNF is a quasi-governmental organisation which has supported illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine. It has been described by historian Ilan Pappé as a “colonialist agency of ethnic cleansing”.

Matthew Offord MP has accepted £2,799 from JNF UK to travel to Israel on two occasions.

The NJA, meanwhile, is chaired by Gary Mond, who was asked to step down from the Board of Deputies of British Jews after liking Islamophobic posts on Facebook. One of the NJA’s core objectives is “supporting Israel”.

Since 7 October, it has sent two “solidarity missions” to Israel, and contributed £27,801 to former UK home secretary Suella Braverman’s recent trip to Tel Aviv.

Following her trip, Braverman said that Israel’s killing of three British aid workers in Gaza should not be a reason for “Britain to soften its support for Israel”.

Braverman added that she was “certain that Israel is nowhere near breaking international law”, six weeks before the International Criminal Court announced arrest applications for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gollant.

ELNET and AICE

Two of the other key organisations that fund Tory MPs’ trips to Israel include the European Leadership Network (ELNET) and the Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange (AICE).

ELNET was formed in 2007 to “counter the widespread criticism of Israel in Europe”.

The organisation’s British wing is directed by former Labour MP and Labour Friends of Israel chair, Joan Ryan, while much of its operations are run from its office in Tel Aviv, headed by Emmanuel Navon.

In February, Navon described Israel’s planned offensive into Rafah as “necessary” and suggested that EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell “need not worry about Gaza civilians”.

ELNET has funded six Tory MPs to visit Israel since 7 October, including Shaun Bailey, Lisa Cameron, Antony Higginbotham, Tom Hunt, Matthew Offord, and Andrew Percy.

The organisation also paid for former defence secretary Liam Fox to attend the US-Europe-Israel Strategic Dialogue in Washington in 2022.

The total cost of these delegations was £22,776.

AICE was established in 2003 by the then Israeli foreign minister, Netanyahu, and his Australian counterpart.

Four Tory MPs – John Howell, Jack Lopresti, Andrew Percy, and Will Quince – have accepted over £18,000 from AICE to travel to Israel on ten occasions.

Lopresti is also the only British politician to have also accepted a donation from Israel’s largest arms firm, Elbit Systems.

In addition to this, he helped to open Elbit’s “research, development and manufacturing hub” in Bristol alongside the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, in 2023.

More recently, Lopresti has been calling for politicians to distance themselves from campaign group Palestine Action.

Yet there has been little media attention on Lopresti’s association with Elbit Systems, Palestine Action’s main target, whose drone was used to kill three UK aid workers in April.

Other Tory MPs have accepted funding from European Friends of Israel and the Israel Allies Foundation.

Individual donors

The above data does not include donations from individuals linked to pro-Israel lobby organisations. Nor does it include donations to the Conservative Party itself from pro-Israel lobby organisations or individuals.

However, this area also deserves attention. In 2009, Peter Oborne reported in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary that individuals linked to CFI had funded the Conservative Party to the tune of £10m.

A number of these individuals, such as Trevor Pears, Michael Lewis, David Meller, and Lord Kalms, have also donated to senior Tory figures.

That includes David Cameron, the unelected foreign secretary, who accepted £20,000 from Pears during his bid to become Tory party leader in 2005. Cameron also accepted hospitality from the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs three years later.

Grant Shapps, the current defence secretary, accepted £4,990 from Meller in July 2023, and an undisclosed amount from Lewis in 2005.

Other recipients of funding from Meller, Kalms, or Lewis include the former prime minister, Liz Truss, former shadow home secretary, David Davis, former defence secretary, Liam Fox, and Michael Gove.

The Israel lobby’s impact

The lobby is far from the only factor which conditions support for Israel in Britain.

The US government, which staunchly backs Israel, holds considerable sway over British foreign policy.

Some British politicians are committed Zionists, and would support Israel whether or not they received funding from the Israel lobby.

A small number of Tory MPs who have accepted Israel lobby funding, moreover, have gone on to oppose some of the Israeli government’s policies.

That includes former UK foreign secretary William Hague, who mildly criticised Israel’s attack on Lebanon in 2006 as “disproportionate”.

May 24, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Orban Calls Talks About ‘Russian Threat’ West’s Maneuver to Prepare for War

Sputnik – 24.05.2024

It is unlikely that Russia will attack a NATO country and talks about the “Russian threat” are nothing but a maneuver of the West to prepare for a war, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday.

“The likelihood that someone — we are not just talking about Russia, but about anyone — today will decide to attack a NATO country is extremely small. NATO is a defensive alliance and will not tolerate military actions that violate the sovereignty of any NATO country … Therefore, I interpret these references to the ‘Russian threat’ rather as maneuvers by the West and Europe to prepare for entry into war,” Orban told the Kossuth radio broadcaster.

Statements by Western politicians and media reports indicate that Europe is preparing for a war with Russia, the prime minister added.

“Before the two world wars, the media spent quite a long time preparing for entry into the war. I think that what is happening today in Brussels and Washington, but rather in Brussels than in Washington, is a kind of preparation of sentiment for a possible direct conflict. We can calmly say that preparations are underway for Europe to enter the war, this is happening in the media and in the statements of politicians,” Orban said.

May 24, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

US Launching Comprehensive Review of Bilateral Cooperation With Georgia

Sputnik – 24.05.2024

WASHINGTON – The US is launching a comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation with Georgia over the passing of a “foreign influence” law in the country, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

“I am also launching today a comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation between the US and Georgia. It remains our hope that Georgia’s leaders will reconsider the draft law and take steps to move forward with their nation’s democratic and Euro-Atlantic aspirations. As we review the relationship between our two countries, we will take into account Georgia’s actions in deciding our own,” Blinken said.

Additionally, the US is implementing a visa restriction policy on Georgian officials, and their families, who are responsible for facilitating passage of a foreign agents law that could derail the country’s path to join the EU, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press release.

“In response to these actions, the Department of State is implementing a new visa restriction policy for Georgia that will apply to individuals who are responsible for or complicit in undermining democracy in Georgia, as well as their family members,” Blinken said.

On Saturday, Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili vetoed the foreign agents bill that had been adopted by the country’s parliament last Tuesday. The parliament needs a simple majority to override the veto.

May 24, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 1 Comment

Massie Taunts AIPAC After Demolishing Primary Challengers

By Tyler Durden | Zerohedge | May 22, 2024

Despite having been targeted by the most powerful, pro-Israel political organization operating in America, libertarian-minded Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie stomped his two Republican primary challengers on Tuesday — and then used social media to mock his Israel-first detractors.

Massie cruised to victory, amassing 76% of the vote, while his two would-be vanquishers roughly split the difference, with Michael McGinnis edging Eric Deters by about 1%. With no Democratic opponent even bothering to take on Massie in November, he’s set up for a sixth term representing Kentucky’s 4th congressional district, which stretches all along the northernmost part of the state.

“Tonight’s victory is a referendum on thousands of independent votes I have cast in Washington DC on behalf of Kentucky’s 4th District,” said Massie.

“I’ve consistently upheld the Constitution by voting for and sponsoring legislation to support the right to keep and bear arms, the right to free speech, freedom of religion and the right to privacy. I’ve also fought against endless foreign wars, foreign aid and inflationary policies, regardless of who is in the White House.

Earlier this month, the independent campaign-spending arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) announced that it was pouring $300,000 into advertisements on Fox television affiliates across the Bluegrass State. The over-the-top ads said, “Israel, the Holy Land [are] under attack by Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah… and Congressman Tom Massie.”

Massie has repeatedly stood out as one of the very few Republicans willing to defy the wishes of the potent pro-Israel lobby. In recent months, he voted against the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would make universities tolerating unacceptable statements about Israel targets of federal civil rights-based punishments. He also voted against the latest, $14.3 billion aid package, noting that “Israel has a lower debt-to-GDP ratio than the United States.”

After Massie’s lopsided win was apparent, AIPAC tried to downplay the outcome, saying that, rather than trying to oust him in the primary, the group wanted to damage him statewide — clearly in anticipation of a possible Massie 2026 Senate run to take the seat of retiring Senate Majority Leader and quintessential establishment swamp creature Mitch McConnell.

Massie said AIPAC was guilty of “election campaign malpractice.” Referring to the $400,000 total that AIPAC had spent against him recently, he told McClatchy DC, “I’m laughing because it has the same effect as lighting it on fire and burning it… What it could do is up my name ID statewide, but two years from now nobody’s going to remember what the ad was about.”

He also deftly turned AIPAC’s announcement of its attack-blitz into a fundraising opportunity. As word of AIPAC’s  campaign spread on social media and via ZeroHedge and other outlets, more than 1,200 people contributed $101,000 to his coffers in just four days.

On Tuesday evening, Massie seized on AIPAC’s defensive tweet, drawing attention to the fact that it had been “ratio’d” by the Twitterverse.

See also:

System Update | December 2023

May 24, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Video, Wars for Israel | , | 3 Comments