Majority of British youth think Israel ‘should not exist’: Poll
Press TV – June 5, 2024
The majority of young British people think that Israel “should not exist”, blaming the occupying entity for the ongoing genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip, a new opinion poll shows.
Released on Wednesday, the survey, carried out by British news and opinion website UnHerd, suggested that 54 percent of 18-24-year-olds in Britain thought the Israeli regime “should not exist” compared with seven percent of 65-year-olds and older.
“A preliminary finding of an exclusive survey of 1,012 voters about foreign policy, conducted by Focaldata and due to be released tomorrow on UnHerd, found that a striking 54% of 18-24-year-olds agreed with the statement that” the Israeli regime “should not exist.”
According to the new polling, 50 percent of the age group also blamed the occupying regime for the ongoing violence in the war-torn Palestinian enclave.
Back in December, a poll suggested that 51 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 believed the key solution to bring to a close the Israel-Palestinian conflict was for “Israel to be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.”
Israel’s bloody war machine has killed over 36,500 Palestinians since October 7, 2023. The vast majority of the fatalities are women and children.
The savage campaign was launched after Hamas carried out its historic Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities.
Israel has additionally enforced a comprehensive blockade on the coastal sliver, severing the supply of fuel, electricity, sustenance and water to the population of over two million Palestinians residing there.
Threat to Arrest Russian Journalists Signals Growing Political Persecution in West
By John Miles – Sputnik – 04.06.2024
Western governments are increasingly turning towards overt methods of repression as they lose their grip on control of the masses.
The Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) has been forced to disavow comments by a legal director with the organization calling for the arrest of Russian journalists after intense backlash.
Anna Neistat, who leads the foundation’s The Docket project, claimed Thursday that her team is urging international authorities to prosecute Russian reporters.
“We want them to travel to other countries and be arrested there,” said Neistat, revealing that she is pressuring the European Union and International Criminal Court to pursue the matter. Neistat made the comments during an interview with the US state-backed propaganda outlet Voice of America.
The organization has since backpedaled on the provocative claim with a statement asserting that “someone in our foundation misspoke,” but observers see the proposal as yet another sign of the West’s growing authoritarianism and intolerance of dissenting voices.
Author and political analyst Caleb Maupin joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Monday to discuss the incident.
“There’s a lot of things to keep in mind in reaction to this news story,” said the author and reporter. “The first of which is that the European Union has basically already outlawed all Russian media within the EU space, right? You can’t watch RT. Websites are suppressed, blocked, and it’s pretty hard to look at Russian media in the EU.”
“RT France has been shut down. You can’t watch RT in Belgium, you can’t watch RT in EU countries,” he continued. “What is a little bit different, though, about this is that this was specifically aimed at journalists who would report in Russian, for Russian audiences, but would do so from EU countries. And the idea was that they would be charged, and what’s interesting also is that the warrants for their arrest would be secret.”
“They would be arrested upon arrival and it would be a way to basically just kidnap these reporters and journalists and hold them hostage. And, if you look at it, it’s a particularly nasty proposal. And that’s probably why I noticed that George Clooney is now backing away from it and saying, ‘oh, people from our foundation misspoke, we didn’t mean this,’ etcetera.”
European countries have made increasingly aggressive attempts in recent years to restrict media and control the flow of information across the continent. The EU has outright banned Russian media outlets from broadcasting within the 27-nation bloc, but measures have been taken against third-party platforms, as well. The video sharing website Rumble was forced to block French users from accessing the platform after refusing to comply with government demands to block Russian content.
Politicians in the UK have also explored blocking the website, and the country recently detained journalist Kit Klarenberg at an airport in London, questioning him for five hours about his political views.
Across the Atlantic, the United States has famously condemned journalist Julian Assange to 12 years of effective confinement after the Wikileaks founder published leaked material revealing US war crimes in Iraq. Former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made plans to kidnap and murder the firebrand transparency activist, it was recently revealed.
The uproar over the CFJ’s comments comes as Sputnik contributor Scott Ritter was denied travel to speak at a conference in Russia Monday, having his passport confiscated by authorities on apparent orders from the US State Department. Free speech concerns have also been raised over police crackdowns on campus pro-Palestine encampments, a move demanded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I will say, though, that the Ukrainians have been saying this from the beginning,” said Maupin of the calls to arrest Russian journalists. “I mean, they have this list of ‘information terrorists’ – which I’m proudly on, by the way, I’m listed by the Ukrainian government as an ‘information terrorist’ – and they have been calling for the assassination and murder of journalists, and they’ve done it since the war has begun.”
“This is not a change for Ukraine. What’s changed here is that the Clooney Foundation made such a statement and wanted to enlist EU governments in carrying it out.”
Western governments are usually more subtle in their attempts to control information, noted Maupin, typically relying more on efforts to influence popular narratives rather than outright censorship. The move towards more overt repression may be seen as a response to the increased transparency allowed by the Internet, or perhaps another sign of the West’s loss of power as a multipolar world order comes into view.
“They like subtly bringing up points they like,” Maupin noted. “Finding people who say things that they agree with and boosting them rather than saying it themselves. This is how the intelligence world works, and a huge amount of what the American intelligence apparatus does is construct media narratives and insert ideas into media discourse.”
“A lot of what the intelligence apparatus does is just boost certain messages and try to control the conversation in a subtle way to advance US foreign policy goals.”
Will the Gaza Genocide be the Beginning of The End of Israel & Zionism? (Miko Peled)
Afshin Rattansi | June 2, 2024
On this episode, we speak to Miko Peled, grandson of one of the signatories of Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence and Founder of the Palestine House of Freedom. He discusses the purpose of Palestine House of Freedom and the goal of shifting the pro-Zionist narratives in Washington, the effect of the mass student protests taking in the US against the genocide in Gaza, the Biden Administration’s continued arming and enabling of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, why the conversation must be shifted to ending Israeli apartheid and demanding a Free Palestine, whether the Gaza genocide marks the beginning of the end of Israel and Zionism, why the two-state solution is realistically impossible and morally wrong, the genocidal state of Israeli society and the political future of Benjamin Netanyahu, why the goal of Israel is the extermination of as many Palestinians as possible and not the defeat of the Palestinian resistance, the absurdity of the ICJ giving Israel time to end the genocide, and much more.
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Labour’s energy claims are ‘divorced from reality’
Net Zero Watch | May 31, 2024
The Labour Party is saying that its energy policies – a rapid decarbonisation of the electricity system – will save consumers money. The claim is apparently based on an October 2023 report by Ember,[1] which says that a decarbonised electricity system can reduce bills by £300 per household.
However, the report also says[2] that the authors are assuming that windfarms in the future will secure ‘the same price as [Contracts for Difference] auction round 4’. The prices achieved in Round 4 (£37.50) are around half the price (£73/MWh) currently on offer to offshore windfarms in Round 6 [3]. And industry insiders are suggesting that even the latter figure may be inadequate.[4]
In other words, Labour’s claimed savings rely on assuming that wind power costs half of what it actually does.
A second problem Labour’s putative savings figure is that Ember’s report compares bills in their hypothetical decarbonised electricity system against bills in the third quarter of 2023, which were still inflated by the Ukraine war.
Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
Labour’s claim of a reduction in household bills is based on figures that are entirely divorced from today’s reality.
And Mr Montford continued by calling for a new reality-based debate on Net Zero.
When it comes to energy policy, the political establishment is operating in a fact-free void. For the sake of the country, they need to start asking very hard questions about what they are being told by civil servants and environmental activists like Ember.
Notes
2. Page 20.
3. All values are in 2012 prices, as is standard practice when discussing CfDs. In current prices, AR4 is worth £47/MWh, and AR6 is offering around £102/MWh.
Google Tightens Influence on UK Elections with New “Moderation” Tactics
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 2, 2024
Google has found itself yet another election to “support.”
After the company made announcements to this effect related to the EU (European Parliament) June ballot, voters in the UK can now also look forward to – or dread, as the case may be – the tech giant’s role in their upcoming general election.
A blog post by Google UK Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy Katie O’Donovan announced even more “moderation” and a flurry of other measures, most of which have become tried-and-tested instruments of Google’s censorship over the past years.
They are divided in three categories – pushing (“surfacing”) content and sources of information picked by Google as authoritative and of high quality, along with YouTube information panels, investing in what it calls Trust & Safety operations, as well as “equipping campaigns with the best-in-class security tools and training.”
Another common point is combating “misinformation” – together with what the blog post refers to as “the wider ecosystem.” That concerns Google News Initiative and PA Media, a private news agency, and their Election Check 24, which is supposed to safeguard the UK election from “mis- and dis-information.”
Searches related to voting are “rigged” to return results manipulated to boost what Google considers authoritative sources – notably, the UK government’s site.
As for AI, the promise is that users of Google platforms will receive “help navigating” that type of content.
This includes the obligation for advertisers to reveal that ads “include synthetic content that inauthentically depicts real or realistic-looking people or events” (this definition can easily be stretched to cover parody, memes, and similar).
“Disclosure” here, however, is still differentiated from Google’s outright ban on manipulated media that it decides “misleads people.” Such content is labeled, and banned if considered as having the ability to maybe pose “a serious risk of egregious harm.”
And then there’s Google’s AI chatbot Gemini, which the giant has restricted in terms of what types of election-related queries it will respond to – once again, as a way to root out “misinformation” while promoting “fairness.”
This falls under what the company considers to be “a responsible approach to generative AI products.”
But as always, AI is also seen as a “tool for good” – for example, when it allows for building “faster and more adaptable enforcement systems.”
Ex-RAF Copter Pilots Sue UK Defense Ministry For Exposure to Cancer-Causing Agents
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 29.05.2024
Almost 40 former UK Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots and aircrew who have developed cancer as a result of toxic exhaust fumes from military helicopters are taking legal actions against the Ministry of Defenсe (MoD), The Times has reported.
The government has been aware of the fumes-related risks since 1999, but did nothing about it, according to testimony from sick personnel and their family members.
The number of those who have sued the MoD is predicted to double in the coming weeks. At least three of those affected are already understood to have died, with some former service personnel being handed out-of-court settlements.
The pilots who traveled in Sea King, Westland Wessex, Puma and CH-47 Chinook helicopters have been diagnosed with lung cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, throat cancer, multiple myeloma, and testicular cancer. Notably, while Sea King and Westland Wessex choppers were retired, Puma and Chinook remain in service in the RAF.
Those affected reportedly include personnel of all ranks, “from those in the highest positions in the armed forces to leading aircrew and sergeants.”
Jonathan Dingle, a leading barrister at Normanton Chambers who is working on the cases, told The Times that engine jet efflux gases, which contain benzene carcinogens, that “were apparently being sucked through the cabin and out again through the cockpits — mixing as the air which everyone onboard the aircraft was breathing.”
The pilots, however, “were not provided with masks or filters or purified air or any form of filtration system. They were not warned about the whole system,” Dingle added.
A MoD spokeswoman has meanwhile reacted by stating that the ministry “hugely” values its service personnel and veterans and owes “a debt of gratitude to all those who serve, often with great personal sacrifice.” According to the spokeswoman, those who “believe they have suffered ill health due to service from April 6, 2005 have the existing and longstanding right to apply for no-fault compensation under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme.”
Protests and demonstrations around the world condemn the Israeli massacres in Gaza
Palestinian Information Center – May 29, 2024
European and Arab cities and capitals on Tuesday witnessed solidarity protests, marches, and vigils with the Gaza Strip, condemning the ongoing Israeli massacres against the displaced in Rafah in the south of the enclave.
The protesters demanded an end to the war and the punishment of the Israeli officials responsible for the genocide in Gaza, and also called for a halt to supplying Israel with the weapons it uses to kill women and children and destroy residential buildings in the enclave.
In Britain, thousands of supporters of Palestine demonstrated in the streets of the British capital London, condemning the continued Israeli massacres in the city of Rafah.
The protesters rallying in the vicinity of Downing Street, the official residence and office of the prime minister, called on the British government to condemn the Israeli aggression and stop arms exports to Tel Aviv. They raised banners condemning the continued aggression on Gaza and demanding an immediate ceasefire.
Dozens of protesters blocked the entrance to the Israeli arms factory belonging to the “Elbit” company in the British village of Chineham, in support of Gaza and condemning the crimes of genocide.
In Belgium, the Belgian police dispersed protesters in the capital Brussels with water cannons as they tried to reach the Israeli embassy as part of a protest against the bombardment of Rafah.
In Ireland, Palestinian, Arab and Irish activists supporting the Palestinian cause demonstrated in front of the Irish Parliament in Dublin, coinciding with the Irish government’s recognition of the State of Palestine.
The protesters raised the Palestinian flags and banners in support of Palestinian rights in front of the parliament garden, which witnessed the raising of the Palestinian flag for the first time.
In France, thousands of people demonstrated on Tuesday evening in Paris for the second day in a row, protesting the Israeli massacres in Rafah.
The place de la République in the center of the capital was crowded with people, and Palestinian flags were placed on the statue in the center, with a large banner reading “Stop the Genocide”.
In Norway, a demonstration was held in front of the Norwegian Parliament building to celebrate the government’s recognition of the State of Palestine, and to demand the withdrawal of Norwegian investments from Israel and pressure for an immediate and sustainable ceasefire.
The demonstrators raised Palestinian flags and banners calling for an immediate ceasefire, and banners accusing Israel of committing a war of extermination. The demonstrators called for the punishment of those responsible for the genocide in Gaza.
In the Netherlands, dozens of supporters of Palestine held a silent protest in front of the city hall in Utrecht, to condemn the burning of tents and the killing of civilian children and women in Tel Sultan, west of Rafah.
The protesters laid on the ground in front of the building to represent the scene of the victims’ deaths in Gaza, raising Palestinian flags and chanting slogans condemning the Dutch government’s support for Israel since the beginning of the aggression, and calling for the protection of Rafah.
In Canada, the city of Toronto witnessed a massive demonstration on Monday evening to condemn the massacre of the tents committed by the Israeli army in the Palestinian city of Rafah.
The activists marched through the streets of the city, chanting slogans condemning the ongoing Israeli crimes, and calling for an end to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and a ceasefire.
In Mexico, pro-Palestinian supporters held a protest demonstration in front of the Israeli embassy in Mexico City, condemning the Israeli massacre in Rafah and rejecting the continued aggression on Gaza.
Many of the demonstrators tried to storm the embassy building and pelted it with stones, amid clashes with the Mexican police.
In Jordan, hundreds of Jordanians demonstrated around the Israeli embassy west of the capital Amman, condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza against the besieged civilian population.
The protesters chanted slogans supporting the Palestinian resistance, calling for the need to deliver humanitarian and medical aid.
They also condemned normalization with Israel and called on the Jordanian government and Arab governments to end all diplomatic and economic agreements with Israel.
In Yemen, protesters organized rallies and marches condemning the Israeli massacres in Rafah, according to the Saba news agency.
Hundreds of students participated in marches in the governorates of Sanaa, Amran and Hajjah, in support and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza and in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people.
In Morocco, hundreds of Moroccans, including human rights activists, organized a rally in front of the Parliament building in the capital Rabat, in solidarity with Gaza and condemning the recent massacres in Rafah.
Through banners calling to “Stop the Rafah Massacres”, the participating protesters expressed their rejection of Israel’s defiance of all international conventions and rulings of the International Court of Justice through its continued massacres in Rafah, calling on international institutions to activate their mechanisms to deter it.
Many Moroccan cities, including Tangier, are witnessing similar protest marches, at an almost daily pace, in solidarity with the Palestinian people and rejecting normalization.
Ukraine striking targets deep inside Russia with Western weapons – AFP
RT | May 29, 2024
Ukraine has used Western weapons against targets inside what it recognizes as Russian territory on multiple occasions, Agence France Presse (AFP) has claimed.
Some senior Western officials have urged nations that donate longer-range munitions to Ukraine not to ban their use deep inside Russia, while others have publicly objected to the idea. A restriction against such strikes has notably been imposed by the US, the main supplier of arms to Kiev. Washington has said the ban is meant to prevent an escalation of the conflict, and has made no indication that it will be lifted.
On Tuesday, the news agency cited several experts, who believe that donors should not be concerned, because several other Russian red lines have supposedly been crossed without consequence.
”Western weapons have already been used on several occasions against Russia’s territory, most recently against the southern town of Krasnodar, several Western sources said,” the report claimed.
AFP offered no details on those incidents or the weapons involved. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron has publicly stated that Ukraine “has the right” to hit targets in Russia with UK-made arms.
Last week, a Ukrainian intelligence source claimed that the country had targeted an early warning radar station based in Russia’s Krasnodar Region on May 22, and later another site in Orenburg Region.
Both locations have roles in nuclear deterrence. Their primary task is to detect an incoming missile and give the military enough time to launch a retaliation before nuclear weapons hit Russian territory.
The claim was given some credence by Dmitry Rogozin, a former senior Russian military official and now a lawmaker. He said it could be false, but if true, it means that Washington “has hired a reckless bandit, who is trying to damage… a key element of our system of strategic nuclear forces combat control.”
According to public statements by the Russian leadership, the country does retaliate when its red lines are crossed in the Ukraine conflict. After Kiev damaged the Crimean Bridge with a truck loaded with explosives in 2022, Moscow added Ukraine’s power grid to its list of military targets.
This year’s campaign of Ukrainian kamikaze drone raids on Russian oil facilities resulted in retaliatory missile strikes against Ukrainian thermal power stations. As of this week, all of them were either destroyed or damaged, according to Yury Boyko, a senior Ukrainian energy official.
Russia’s Growing Media Influence in the World Sparks Alarm in the West
Sputnik – 28.05.2024
Russian broadcasters such as Sputnik may be outperforming their Western counterparts in terms of media coverage abroad, UK-based non-profit called Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) claims.
In its written evidence submission to the UK Parliament International Development Committee’s Inquiry into Future funding of the BBC World Service, AIB stated that “the global distribution of Russia’s international [media] operations is possibly greater than that of Western broadcasters.”
Sputnik and RT TV and radio services are being broadcast in many of the Global South countries – “including, but not limited to Venezuela, Syria, Mexico, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and South Africa” – and these media operations help Russia spread its influence around the world, AIB laments.
All this praise, however, should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, seeing how the main purpose of the AIB’s document appears to be securing more British government funding for the BBC.
The Drive for War
By Craig Murray | May 18, 2024
The collective shrug with which the Western media and political class noted the attempted assassination of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has been telling.
Can you imagine the outrage and emotion that would have been expressed by Western powers if not Fico but a pro-Ukraine, anti-Russian leader within the EU had been attacked? The new orders for weapons that would have been presented to the arms manufacturers, the troops that would have been deployed, the sabres that would have been rattled?
Instead we have the media telling us that Fico opposed sending arms to Ukraine and opposed threatening Russia. We are told he did not accept the mainstream narrative on Covid vaccinations. The media do not quite say he deserved to be shot, but they come very, very close.
Fellow EU leaders followed correct form in making statements of shock and disgust at the attack on Fico, but they were formal and perfunctory. The “not actually one of us” message was very clear.
There are now an ordered set of neoliberal beliefs to which anybody in a Western nation participating in public affairs must subscribe, or they are beyond the pale.
Not to subscribe to all of these beliefs makes you a “populist”, a “conspiracy theorist”, a “Putin puppet” or a “useful idiot”.
These are some of the “key beliefs”:
No. 1) Wealth is only created by a small number of ultra-wealthy capitalists on whom the employment of everybody else ultimately depends.
No. 2) The laws governing financial structures must therefore tend to concentrate wealth to these individuals, so that they may deploy it as they choose.
No. 3) State-created currency must only be concentrated in and distributed to private financial institutions.
No. 4) Public spending is always less efficient than private spending.
No. 5) Russia, China and Iran pose an existential threat to the West. That comprises both an economic threat and a physical, military threat.
No. 6) Colonialism was a boon to the world, bringing economic development, trade and education to people of inferior cultures.
No. 7) Islam is a threat to Western values and to world development.
No. 8) Israel is a necessary project for spreading Western values to the uncivilised Middle East.
No. 9) Security necessitates devoting very substantial resources to arms production and the waging of continual war.
No. 10) Nothing must threaten the military and arms industry interest. No battle against corruption or crime can override the need for the security military industrial complex to be completely unchallenged and internally supreme.
Dependent Orthodoxies
Within this architecture of belief, other orthodoxies hang dependent, such as the correct way to respond to a complex pandemic, or support for NATO and impunity for the security services. (Support for Israel is probably better portrayed as a dependent point, but with the subject of Gaza so prominent at the moment I have figuratively moved it into the main structure.)
Any deviation on any point of belief is a challenge to the entire system, and thus must be eradicated. You will note there is no room whatsoever, within this architecture of thought, for values like freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. They simply do not fit. Nor is it possible within this architecture to incorporate actual democracy, which would give people a choice of what to believe.
If you accept this architecture of thought, then you must argue that the genocide in Gaza is a good thing, and it threatens the entire structure if you state that it is not a good thing. That is why we have witnessed the spectacle of politicians defying and then repressing their own people, willing to place all of their political capital at the service of genocidal Zionism.
Words struggle to convey the horrors we have all seen from Gaza, and in no way does it lessen the terrible suffering nor the extent of the crime to observe that it has caused a major rift in the neoliberal belief system which cannot be hidden from the people.
Gaza has ramifications leading to questioning throughout the system. Why is Tik Tok being banned, to stop people getting information on Gaza? Why is it a problem that the platform is owned by China?
What has China done that makes it an enemy? China has no military designs on the West. Of recent purchases most of us have made of physical goods, a high proportion have come from China. Why is an important trade partner an “enemy”?
Why is Russia our enemy? The notion that the Russian army is going to land on the Wash is utterly implausible. The Russian state, over centuries and wildly differing regimes, has never had the slightest desire to invade the British Isles. In the U.K., under various governments, for almost three centuries charlatans have been claiming a threat of Russian invasion to justify higher defence expenditure.
Why the need to have “enemies” at all?
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support.
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.
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”.
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