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The United Kingdom of Israel?
TOO Editors: If America is the “United States of Israel” (USI), we now have Britain, too, in that role (UKI). Indeed, everyone has his price, it seems. (Hence the need for good campaign finance laws.) A long standing puzzle has been why the Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair (never thought of as stupid), went along with the war on Iraq. I waded through two gossip books by the well connected (and amusing) Piers Morgan to find out what was going on between Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson or Lord [sic] Levy which might explain Blair’s political allegiances. Stupid me. Making friends with powerful politicians is part of their strategy, alright, but MONEY is fundamental. But why now is there a scandal in the U.K. over the massive, but discrete, Jewish funding of both major political parties via Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI)? Certainly big news in all the British media: e.g., the BBC, the Independent, the Sun, the Telegraph. Could it be that in Britain, too, “everyone” is repelled by Israeli thuggery but is wary of being labeled “anti-Semitic” and, so, needs a good excuse for attacking Israel and its Jewish advocates publicly? The U.K. has paid dearly for its circumspection.It seems that despite the clear conflicts between British interests and Jewish interests on this matter, the chattering classes in England are simply watching this happen and perhaps discussing it privately. Presumably, they are terrified of being labeled anti-Semites for broaching the issue — part of the pall of political correctness that hangs over all of Europe utterly unable to to assert it's interests. The only exception so far is a commentary by British Muslim writer,
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, writing in The Independent (Dec. 3, 2007):The shadowy role of Labour Friends of Israel: Such lobbyists and their back-room influence should make us very uneasy
Excerpts [bold added]: 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. In an open democracy, we are entitled to make such queries — indeed, it is a duty….
We witnessed the tortuous police investigation into the peer's affairs during the cash for honours investigations, but not once was there any scrutiny of Levy's connection to LFI and how that might have led to the offer of his prestigious position as the Middle East envoy, handed to him by his tennis partner, Tony Blair.
I rang some of my Jewish friends who support LFI and are well acquainted with Abrahams and Mendelsohn. Two have known both professionally for some time and others have personal relationships with these men. I felt their unease as we talked about this latest unsavoury New Labour scandal…
Mendelsohn is a passionate Zionist and infamous lobbyist, described by the Jewish Chronicle as "one of the best-connected power brokers". So we can assume LFI plays a part in shaping our foreign policies in the Middle East — the most inflammable tinderbox in the world today. And that is neither right nor fair… I would venture to suggest that Tony Blair's abject performance during the last Israeli assault on Lebanon was partly the result of the special relationship he had with LFI. [more]