Last week I wrote about how Labor Friends of Israel (LFI) – a lobby group within Britain’s largest opposition party – appears to be breaking a law on political donations. I am happy to report that the UK’s Electoral Commission has now received a formal request to investigate the LFI and similar organizations affiliated to the country’s ruling coalition.
Jenny Tonge, a member of the House of Lords, has alerted the Commission to the lack of transparency over how Zionist support groups are funded.
Tonge’s letter draws attention to apparent omissions in the information that the “friends of Israel” groups within Labor and the senior government party, the Conservatives, have submitted to the Commission. Under legislation dating from 2001, all donations exceeding £7,500 ($11,600) to “member’s associations” within political parties have to be disclosed.
The LFI has reported spending nearly £77,000 on trips to the Middle East for members of Parliament between 2003 and 2009 and is known to have at least two full-time members of staff. The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) have reported expenditure of more than £110,000 on travel since 2011, yet have indicated that they only received donations totalling £29,350 in that period.
Tonge wrote, “The Commission surely has an obligation to examine their finances, together with those of Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, to ensure that they have not failed to declare any donations above the threshold, as it does seem remarkable to have this level of expenditure without significant donations from groups or individuals.”
Pounding the drumbeat of war
The LFI’s reticence over its funding is at odds with its determination to prove that it is shaping policy. Its 15 December newsletter gloated at how the first visit to Israel and the West Bank by Douglas Alexander, since his appointment as shadow foreign secretary in January this year, was hosted by the LFI.
During the visit Alexander met Israel’s chief spindoctor Mark Regev, a man who has perfected the art of looking suave while telling lies. Alexander showed just how amenable he was to Israeli propaganda by going to see a high school in southern Israel -- where, in his words “classrooms doubled up as bomb shelters.”
His itinerary did not include an excursion into the nearby Gaza Strip, where he could have inspected schools destroyed by the highly-equipped Israeli military during Operation Cast Lead three years ago. At least 353 Palestinian children were killed by Israel in that three-week offensive.
The same newsletter illustrates that LFI – like its beloved Regev – has a tenuous relationship with the truth. It brands Iran’s nuclear programme “illegal” and notes that the Labor hierarchy has pledged support for sanctions against the Tehran regime. Readers are not provided with any background details about how it was Israel, not Iran, that introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East and how it is Israel, not Iran, that has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The newsletter proceeds to recommend an article by Alan Johnson from the Britain Israel Research Center (BICOM), who praised the British government’s determination “to end the diplomatic merry-go-round, to see Iran plain and to act, now and decisively, to confront it.”
If the “Friends of Israel” are pounding the drumbeat of war against Iran, then it is vital that they be closely monitored.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 28 December 2011.
Showing posts with label Conservative Friends of Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conservative Friends of Israel. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
"Bickering" Britain accommodates Israeli settlements
One of the first things any journalist covering the Middle East should learn is that rumors of tension between Israel and the West are very much exaggerated. The latest “row” over the expansion of settlements is no exception.
According to the news agency AFP, Britain, France and Germany have led condemnation of Israel’s newly-announced plans to build more houses in the Jewish-only settlements of East Jerusalem and the wider West Bank. Predictably, the Israeli foreign ministry appears disgruntled by this stance. Avigdor Lieberman’s officials are telling the European Union to focus on Iran and Syria, rather than on “inappropriate bickering with one country,” namely Israel.
With a little bit of background research, AFP could have learned that far from being appalled by Israeli settlements, the EU’s governments are accommodating their construction.
A statement made to Britain’s members of Parliament (MPs) on 5 December illustrates that point. Alistair Burt, a Foreign Office minister in the London government, was asked about the statistics provided by Israel to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Israel joined that club of industrialised countries last year, in a diplomatic triumph for Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues.
Compromise of convenience
Burt told his fellow MPs of a compromise reached whereby the OECD has agreed to consider the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Golan Heights as property of Israel for certain purposes. Following a visit by OECD officials to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics in the summer this year, it was agreed that Israel would not need to provide “disaggregated data” on macroeconomic issues that distinguish between “pre-1967 Israel and the post-1967 areas.”
Although Burt tried to present the issue as a technical one, his choice of language is revealing. Instead of spelling out that Israel occupies the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza and the Golan Heights in violation of international law, he simply referred to those territories as “post-1967 areas.” He went on to hint that the compromise was made on practical grounds because the “post-1967 areas” only account for 4 percent of Israel’s gross domestic product.
So there you have it: the West is happy to accommodate the Israeli occupation for the sake of convenience.
If I was to inclined to buy Burt a Christmas present, it would have to be a copy of Shir Hever’s book The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation. It shows how claims that the occupation is of negligible importance to Israel’s economy are made habitually by mainstream analysts. Hever demolishes those claims by highlighting how the territories that Israel occupies comprise its second largest export market and how Israel has built a lucrative military and “homeland security” industry around the occupation. You can be sure that the 4% estimate cited by Burt does not take such critically important factors into account.
“Remarkable success story”
Exactly one week after Burt made those comments, he attended the annual lunch of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a lobby group within the main party of the UK’s ruling coalition.
The keynote address to that gathering of 120 parliamentarians and 400 businesspeople was given by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (in a country less wedded to imperial bombast, he would simply be called the finance minister). Osborne told his audience that “Israel’s a remarkable success story when it comes to the development of hi-tech industry and it’s really a beacon to the world of how you can foster these small companies that grow into world-beating businesses.”
The review of this sumptuous banquet on the CFI’s website doesn’t give the impression that Osborne was intent on “inappropriate bickering” with Israel. Rather, he seemed more interested in nurturing closer commercial ties with this “remarkable success story.”
Nobody with any knowledge of history would be surprised that the elites in Europe’s one-time colonial powers feel an affinity with Israel. Journalists should bear that in mind the next time they hear rumors of tension.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 22 December 2011.
According to the news agency AFP, Britain, France and Germany have led condemnation of Israel’s newly-announced plans to build more houses in the Jewish-only settlements of East Jerusalem and the wider West Bank. Predictably, the Israeli foreign ministry appears disgruntled by this stance. Avigdor Lieberman’s officials are telling the European Union to focus on Iran and Syria, rather than on “inappropriate bickering with one country,” namely Israel.
With a little bit of background research, AFP could have learned that far from being appalled by Israeli settlements, the EU’s governments are accommodating their construction.
A statement made to Britain’s members of Parliament (MPs) on 5 December illustrates that point. Alistair Burt, a Foreign Office minister in the London government, was asked about the statistics provided by Israel to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Israel joined that club of industrialised countries last year, in a diplomatic triumph for Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues.
Compromise of convenience
Burt told his fellow MPs of a compromise reached whereby the OECD has agreed to consider the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Golan Heights as property of Israel for certain purposes. Following a visit by OECD officials to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics in the summer this year, it was agreed that Israel would not need to provide “disaggregated data” on macroeconomic issues that distinguish between “pre-1967 Israel and the post-1967 areas.”
Although Burt tried to present the issue as a technical one, his choice of language is revealing. Instead of spelling out that Israel occupies the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza and the Golan Heights in violation of international law, he simply referred to those territories as “post-1967 areas.” He went on to hint that the compromise was made on practical grounds because the “post-1967 areas” only account for 4 percent of Israel’s gross domestic product.
So there you have it: the West is happy to accommodate the Israeli occupation for the sake of convenience.
If I was to inclined to buy Burt a Christmas present, it would have to be a copy of Shir Hever’s book The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation. It shows how claims that the occupation is of negligible importance to Israel’s economy are made habitually by mainstream analysts. Hever demolishes those claims by highlighting how the territories that Israel occupies comprise its second largest export market and how Israel has built a lucrative military and “homeland security” industry around the occupation. You can be sure that the 4% estimate cited by Burt does not take such critically important factors into account.
“Remarkable success story”
Exactly one week after Burt made those comments, he attended the annual lunch of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a lobby group within the main party of the UK’s ruling coalition.
The keynote address to that gathering of 120 parliamentarians and 400 businesspeople was given by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (in a country less wedded to imperial bombast, he would simply be called the finance minister). Osborne told his audience that “Israel’s a remarkable success story when it comes to the development of hi-tech industry and it’s really a beacon to the world of how you can foster these small companies that grow into world-beating businesses.”
The review of this sumptuous banquet on the CFI’s website doesn’t give the impression that Osborne was intent on “inappropriate bickering” with Israel. Rather, he seemed more interested in nurturing closer commercial ties with this “remarkable success story.”
Nobody with any knowledge of history would be surprised that the elites in Europe’s one-time colonial powers feel an affinity with Israel. Journalists should bear that in mind the next time they hear rumors of tension.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 22 December 2011.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Israel pays for junket by British MPs
Could the Israeli government be buying favors from British members of parliament (MPs)?
I spent some time today wading through the register of financial interests for MPs from the Conservatives, the party of prime minister David Cameron. These showed that a number of them took part in a trip to the Middle East in early summer that was funded by Israel’s foreign ministry.
Declarations made by Chloe Smith, Aidan Burley, James Morris and Neil Parish cite estimates that the cost of their visit from 29 May to 3 June amounted to £1,548 ($2,429) each. They report that £574 of that sum came from the Israeli foreign ministry and the remaining £974 from an internal party group called Conservative Friends of Israel.
It is striking that the trip occurred at a time when Britain was in the process of changing its law on universal jurisdiction (the principle that a country may prosecute grave human rights abuses irrespective of where they occur) at the behest of Israel. In 2009, Tzipi Livni, Israel’s ex-foreign minister, chickened out of a trip to London because some political activists had sought a warrant for her arrest over Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza. Under a revised law that entered into force last week, new bureaucratic obstacles have been placed in the way of apprehending war criminals on British soil.
Watering down war crimes law
The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), which organized the MPs’ trip, has been working diligently to have the universal jurisdiction law watered down to the liking of Israel’s politicians. And it is hard to believe that the fate of the new bill wasn’t discussed during the visit.
While the CFI likes to gloat of how it can attract 150 parliamentarians, 500 businesspeople and Cameron himself to its annual lunch, it is less transparent about the sources of its money.
According to the CFI’s website, both the summer trip and a previous one that it organized for MPs in February featured tours of production facilities run by the arms company Elbit. So I called the CFI to ask if Elbit is one of the group’s donors. “I don’t have to give you those details,” a spokeswoman told me.
I pressed a bit further and enquired why her group does not publish accounts. “According to the law, we don’t have to do that,” the spokeswoman replied, before calling a halt to our conversation.
I have also contacted Elbit, requesting if it provides support to CFI. I am still awaiting the firm’s response.
Elbit, let us never forget, is the maker of the Hermes drones that were used to attack civilians during Operation Cast Lead. The tacit support for that attack from both of Britain’s largest parties, Labor and the Conservatives, can partly be explained by how a consortium involving Elbit has provided the British army with a Hermes 450 drone for use in Afghanistan. Amnesty International has reported that engines used in Elbit’s drones have been fitted by a plant belonging to the company near England’s second largest city, Birmingham.
With economic and neo-imperial interests at stake, it is little wonder that the well-heeled Conservatives are not bothered by the plight of Gaza’s “little people”.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada, 20 September 2011.
I spent some time today wading through the register of financial interests for MPs from the Conservatives, the party of prime minister David Cameron. These showed that a number of them took part in a trip to the Middle East in early summer that was funded by Israel’s foreign ministry.
Declarations made by Chloe Smith, Aidan Burley, James Morris and Neil Parish cite estimates that the cost of their visit from 29 May to 3 June amounted to £1,548 ($2,429) each. They report that £574 of that sum came from the Israeli foreign ministry and the remaining £974 from an internal party group called Conservative Friends of Israel.
It is striking that the trip occurred at a time when Britain was in the process of changing its law on universal jurisdiction (the principle that a country may prosecute grave human rights abuses irrespective of where they occur) at the behest of Israel. In 2009, Tzipi Livni, Israel’s ex-foreign minister, chickened out of a trip to London because some political activists had sought a warrant for her arrest over Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza. Under a revised law that entered into force last week, new bureaucratic obstacles have been placed in the way of apprehending war criminals on British soil.
Watering down war crimes law
The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), which organized the MPs’ trip, has been working diligently to have the universal jurisdiction law watered down to the liking of Israel’s politicians. And it is hard to believe that the fate of the new bill wasn’t discussed during the visit.
While the CFI likes to gloat of how it can attract 150 parliamentarians, 500 businesspeople and Cameron himself to its annual lunch, it is less transparent about the sources of its money.
According to the CFI’s website, both the summer trip and a previous one that it organized for MPs in February featured tours of production facilities run by the arms company Elbit. So I called the CFI to ask if Elbit is one of the group’s donors. “I don’t have to give you those details,” a spokeswoman told me.
I pressed a bit further and enquired why her group does not publish accounts. “According to the law, we don’t have to do that,” the spokeswoman replied, before calling a halt to our conversation.
I have also contacted Elbit, requesting if it provides support to CFI. I am still awaiting the firm’s response.
Elbit, let us never forget, is the maker of the Hermes drones that were used to attack civilians during Operation Cast Lead. The tacit support for that attack from both of Britain’s largest parties, Labor and the Conservatives, can partly be explained by how a consortium involving Elbit has provided the British army with a Hermes 450 drone for use in Afghanistan. Amnesty International has reported that engines used in Elbit’s drones have been fitted by a plant belonging to the company near England’s second largest city, Birmingham.
With economic and neo-imperial interests at stake, it is little wonder that the well-heeled Conservatives are not bothered by the plight of Gaza’s “little people”.
·First published by The Electronic Intifada, 20 September 2011.
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