Janine Roberts: Zionist Jews finance the Labour Party

Eds. Janine Roberts’ article on the influence of the Israel Lobby in British politics is by far the most thorough and comprehensive analysis on this topic we have seen. While the role of the Israel Lobby in the United States has been very well described, most notably in John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt’s The Israel Lobby, the equally powerful role of Israel and its supporters in England has received only sporadic attention. Due its length, the article may be daunting to some, and in the following we present excerpts designed to illustrate some of the more important points.  

Janine Roberts 

The Palestine Chronicle 

May 24, 2008 

On the contrary, in some ways the Zionist lobby in this country has been even more successful [than in the US] — not simply historically, with getting the Balfour Declaration, but particularly in very recent times. In the US there are 13 Jews in the Senate and 30 in the House of Representatives, while in the UK, where we have a Jewish community 20 times smaller, there are many more Jewish people in Parliament. There are 18 in the House of Commons and 41 in the House of Lords. It is the highest Jewish representation in the West, and this achievement is due in part to Tony Blair’s patronage. 

Before New Labour was invented, the Labour party was more sympathetic to the Palestinians. Jon Mendelsohn of the Labour Friends of Israel has explained how it changed: “Blair has attacked the anti-Israelism that had existed in the Labour Party. Old Labour was cowboys-and-Indians politics, picking underdogs to support, but the milieu has changed. Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to Labour Friends of Israel meetings.” 

One of Blair’s first acts on becoming an MP in 1983 was to join Labour Friends of Israel. But the major change only occurred after he rose to control of the Labour party. To carry out his planned policies, he needed to try to break the funding influence of the trade unions. So he needed an ally with ample funds. [Emphasis added.] 

 In 1994, a legal friend and colleague of his, Eldred Tabachnik, Q.C., the former president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, introduced him to Michael Levy, a pop music mogul and fundraiser for Jewish and Israeli causes, a member of the Jewish Agency World Board of Governors, and a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust. This was at a dinner party hosted by the Israeli diplomat Gideon Meir. 

 Soon afterwards Blair was invited to Levy’s palatial home and tennis courts. According to Andrew Porter of The Business, Levy expressed his willingness “to raise large sums of money for the party” if there was a “tacit understanding that Labour would never again, while Blair was leader, be anti-Israel”. 

 The result: Levy ran the Labour Leader’s Office Fund to finance Blair’s campaign in the 1997 General Election. Levy in effect made New Labour possible. For this he was rewarded immediately with a peerage, as were some of their other donors. Levy has described himself as “a leading international Zionist” and he has since praised Blair for his “solid and committed support of the State of Israel”. 

But, Blair needed a constant source of funds if he was to reduce the influence of the unions and, it seems, he needed to hide its source lest it be questioned. One of the better known figures at Labour Friends of Israel is David Abrahams, a Jewish property developer. The President of the Zionist Federation, Eric Moonman vouches for him: “I know David well and have travelled with him on a number of occasions.’ Abrahams took on part of the task of secretly funding New Labour. He gave more than £650,000 to the Party under four other people’s names — a move since admitted to be unlawful by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown but which has had no legal consequence. 

Abrahams explains generally that he wanted to remain anonymous as he is a ‘private person.’ But he said far more to the British Jewish Chronicle. He said he gave the money to Labour secretly since he did not want ‘Jewish money’ and the Labour Party to be linked, thinking this would make people suspect there was a Jewish conspiracy. 

Gordon Brown  

Gordon is more personally immersed in Zionism than Blair. It is something he grew up with in his childhood. He told a recent gathering, “I have been proud to be a member of Labour Friends of Israel over three decades. My father used to spend many weeks in Israel, he was the chairman of the Church of Scotland’s Israel Committee. He went on visits to meet people twice a year for more than 20 years.”.... 

One of Gordon Brown’s first acts after assuming the Prime Minister’s role was to accept an appointment as Patron of the Jewish National Fund founded in 1901. The Israeli government sold to this Fund the land seized from Arab refugees – and then made this land only available for Jews to settle on. It planted forests over the uprooted olive trees of former Palestinian settlements. It currently owns about 14% of Israel.….. 

But it is Brown’s appointments that are much more worrying. He has ensured continued Jewish funding of New Labour by appointing Mendelssohn of Labour Friends of Israel as his chief fundraiser for the next election. He has also appointed former British ambassador to Israel, Simon McDonald, as his chief foreign policy adviser. Israel has expressed satisfaction with the choice, saying he is “a true friend to Israel.”

He also made James Purnell, the chairman of Labour Friends of Israel from 2002 to 2004, secretary of state for culture media and sport, giving him oversight over the British Broadcasting Corporation and the rest of the British media. In a letter published in Prospect in December 2004, Purell said: “Some people are trying to turn Israel into a global villain, the new pariah regime to take the place of apartheid-era South Africa … When some people talk as if Israel is entirely to blame, I ask why. The only answer I can find is that there is something deep in our cultural memory that makes us disposed to blame Jews.” (In 2008 Brown put Purnell in charge of Pensions.) 

Gordon Brown gave Jim Murphy, Chairman of Labour Friends of Israel from 2000-02, the position of Minister of State for Europe with responsibility for the BBC World Service and the British Council. Most worrying of all, his new Middle East Minister is Kim Howells, a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel. The Director of Labour Friends of Israel is David Mencer, a former volunteer for the Israeli Defence Force.…… 

The Labour Party’s policy-defining Smith Institute is now very much under the influence of the Israeli lobby. Its chairman is Lord Haskel, who is also a member of the Parliamentary Executive of the Labour Friends of Israel. The Smith Institute’s board includes Baroness Meta Ramsay, a longtime MI-6 intelligence officer who is House of Lords chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, and Tony Blair is of course now the Quartet’s Envoy to the Middle East. 

They actively monitor the media and try to remove criticism of Israel. Thus an alleged reference to Israel as that ‘shitty little country’ made by the French Ambassador at a dinner hosted by Conrad Black immediately elicited a letter from the LFI demanding that the Ambassador be sacked. [He was. Eds.] Likewise they maintained a dossier on Ken Livingstone. 

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown seems to be the only mainstream journalist to have dared to question the Labour Friends of Israel. In an article entitled “Such lobbyists and their back-room influence should make us very uneasy” published on 03 December 2007 she stated: 

“Pardon me for asking. Perhaps I shouldn’t. For an easy life, some things, you learn, are best left unsaid. Nervous, am I? You bet. But these questions will not stand aside or lie down. They have been bothering me since the Labour party donor row broke last week. They are raised here in good faith. I have no wish to bring the wrath of Moses upon me and I can already hear the accusations of anti-Semitism because I dare to raise the question: Can someone explain what exactly is the role of the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) in our political life? And its twin, the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) too.…….

 A Recent Achievement of Labour Friends of Israel 

 They have strongly and powerfully lobbied for the UK and EU to cut off financial aid to the Gaza Strip as long as the elected Hamas government of Hamas is in power. Thus they share responsibility with Israel for the current atrocious and miserable living conditions in the Gaza, including the children dying because they are not allowed to go to Israeli hospitals and Gazan hospitals have been sanctioned out of medical supplies.….. 

As for the Tories  

The political director of Conservative Friends of Israel claims that with over 2,000 members and registered supporters alongside 80 percent of the Conservative MPs, they are now the largest affiliated group in the party. They run six deputations to Israel a year — paid for by the organisation. They engage in intensive lobbying — including providing briefing notes to Brown, They maintain constant contact with the Israeli embassy. 

 Their website is stridently anti Hezbollah and they maintain a careful vetting of all new Parliamentary candidates. “Within the Conservative Party, we actively support candidates, especially in marginal constituencies. Our programme for prospective parliamentary candidates provides weekly briefings, events with speakers, and a chance to participate in delegations to Israel. Our members give financial support and campaigning help where it matters.”….. [more]