Barbara Opall-Rome: defense specialist or war industry stooge?

Spending three decades as a stenographer for the weapons industry would give anyone a warped sense of morality. So when Barbara Opall-Rome – the doyen of Israel’s “defense correspondents” – refers to “journalistic integrity,” she may understand that term differently than most people.

Opall-Rome recently tweeted that she had stayed “at a gorgeous property owned by the emir of Qatar” while on vacation. Because the details she gave were sparse, I contacted her to enquire if the Qatari authorities had provided her with free accommodation.

In response, Opall-Rome assured me that she and her husband “paid top dollar” to holiday at a Seychelles resort and were unaware that it was Qatari-owned until after their arrival.

“Sorry to confuse you with the facts,” she added. “And I trust if you have any journalistic integrity, you will rephrase your questions so they more closely resemble actual questions rather than accusations.”

I have zero intention of rephrasing the questions put to Opall-Rome. It is not unreasonable to ask public figures for clarification about something they have written or posted on the Internet.

In this particular case, it was legitimate to enquire if Opall-Rome had accepted any gifts from Qatar, given how its government has been wooing Israel’s supporters lately.

Opall-Rome’s apparent advocacy of journalistic integrity sits awkwardly with how she has built up a career promoting an industry based on death and destruction.

As recognition of her long service to the arms industry, Opall-Rome now hosts her own show on the Tel Aviv-based television channel i24News.

She uses “Strictly Security” – the show’s name – to celebrate Israel as a “land of milk and cyber startups.”

A recent broadcast marking the anniversary of the state’s establishment applauded how Israel had become a leading player in the global arms trade.

“In 70 years of independence, this small immigrants’ country is in a constant state of war,” Opall-Rome said. “But Israelis – as they often do – take these lemons and make lemonade.”

Amoral

Only someone amoral could resort to such a euphemism. Opall-Rome was likening the weapons with which Israel inflicts terror on Palestinians to fizzy drinks.

“Strictly Security” portrays the occupation of the West Bank as sophisticated. Earlier this year, it reported on how Israel had installed “smart checkpoints” in Hebron.

The advanced surveillance technology in these checkpoints “minimizes the physical contact between Israeli soldiers and the residents,” Opall-Rome gushed. A clip showing one of those Palestinian residents saying the word “apartheid” did not alter how the entire feature was an effort to sanitize Israel’s brutality.

For the past 30 years, Opall-Rome has been a reporter with DefenseNews. That magazine is – if its marketing brochures are accurate – read by a global elite that oversees military expenditure worth more than $1.75 trillion per annum.

Opall-Rome, who previously worked from Washington, has headed the magazine’s Israel office since 1999.

Some of her “reporting” has been thinly-veiled lobbying for the arms industry. In a 2017 article about how the boss of Israel Aerospace Industries had been denied a visa to the US, she noted how contesting the refusal had cost the publicly-owned weapons maker at least $100,000 in attorney fees.

The $100,000 sum was “Israeli taxpayer money that could have gone into research and development,” she lamented.

Although Opall-Rome responded promptly to my email about her vacation, a follow-up query on why she shills for weapons makers went unanswered. In that query, I asked if she had ever exposed the harm caused by the arms industry.

Tough questions?

The closest Opall-Rome gets to posing tough questions is to ask why Israel relied on F-16s rather than the “precious” new F-35s in its arsenal while bombing Syria a few months ago.

The legal and ethical questions about attacking another nation were ducked in her “analysis.” Echoing state propaganda, Opall-Rome has depicted Israel’s previous actions in Syria – such as the 2007 assault on a nuclear facility – as benevolent.

Similarly, she has taken at face value Israel’s assertions that Iran is the “aggressor.” And she has described people in Gaza who try and enter present-day Israel as “infiltrators.” That racist slur omits how Palestinian refugees have a UN-recognized right of return to historic Palestine, as well as the right to resist occupation and apartheid.

During its annual conference last weekend, the National Union of Journalists for Britain and Ireland discussed how Israel and its supporters are seeking to influence press coverage with their propaganda activities. The union made a commitment to support journalists who disobey instructions from editors or management that they cover Israel’s most blatant propaganda exercise this year: starting the Giro d’Italia bike race in Jerusalem.

The union’s discussion was sorely-needed. Too many reporters – from Britain, Ireland, the US and beyond – have treated Israel’s talking points as if they are solid facts.

By doing so, they have ignored the plight of Palestinian media workers who risk – and sometimes lose – their lives while chronicling Israel’s crimes.

Opall-Rome is the kind of reporter who should be disowned by her profession. Her stories recycle – without any hint of skepticism – lies pumped out by the Israeli authorities and the pro-Israel lobby.

She is a “journalist” with a complete lack of integrity.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 26 April 2018.

Builder of apartheid wall gets EU funding

I have been following Europe’s policy on Palestine for almost 20 years. Throughout that time, I cannot recall an official EU statement more obscene than the one issued after Israel killed nine people in Gaza last Friday.

Rather than condemn the killings, the EU merely claimed that they raise “serious questions about the proportionate use of force.”

Zoom in on those words: proportionate use of force.

The underlying message is that Israel may resort to violence against Palestinians living under siege and occupation. EU representatives would just prefer it if Israel doesn’t go too far.

The same kind of thinking can be discerned within Israel’s elite.

During the first month of the second intifada – which began in late September 2000 – Israeli troops fired an estimated one million bullets in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Amos Malka, then head of intelligence in the Israeli military, is among those who have expressed misgivings about that massive display of force.

Malka’s misgivings related to tactics, rather than ethics. In a paper he subsequently wrote on his experiences with the military, Malka argued that Israel should be willing to use extreme violence on occasions. The paper reflects the standard Israeli view that acts of Palestinian resistance may be labeled collectively as “terrorism.”

“The terrorist or guerrilla organization must take into consideration that Israel can ‘go crazy’ and lash out far beyond its standard responses,” he wrote.

Since retiring from the army in 2002, Malka has taken a number of posts with Israel’s war industry.

For example, he chairs the board of TAT Technologies, a firm making air conditioning systems and other equipment for military aircraft and tanks. As the firm’s clients include the Israeli air force and leading weapons manufacturers from Israel and the US, there is a near certainty that its products have enabled attacks on Palestinians.

Always eager to help Israel’s arms industry, the EU is subsidizing TAT Technologies. The firm is taking part in an EU-funded research project on aircraft engines worth $3.5 million.

Tacky

Brochures published by TAT Technologies say that it offers “cool solutions for hot problems.” That slogan is similarly tacky to the name of the aforementioned research project: DEVILS.

The clumsy marketing does not conceal how the EU is happy to take taxpayers’ money and hand it to corporate scoundrels.

Another beneficiary of EU grants is Nesher, Israel’s leading cement maker.

Nesher is deeply involved in building the infrastructure of Israel’s occupation. Its materials have been used for Israel’s settlement activities in the West Bank, including the light rail network in East Jerusalem.

About 15 years ago, Amnesty International stated that Nesher had probably supplied material, too, for Israel’s apartheid wall. The wall, which snakes through the West Bank, was ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004.

The Amnesty finding was based on an admission by Nesher’s then parent company, the Dublin-based CRH, that cement supplied by Nesher was “in all probability” being used to build the wall. Following a lengthy campaign by Palestine solidarity activists, CRH announced in 2016 that it had pulled out of the Israeli market.

Nesher’s role in the occupation has been well-documented. That makes it all the more inexcusable for the EU to approve the firm’s participation in a research project worth $8.5 million on the reuse of carbon dioxide.

The project in question is being presented as a contribution to the fight against climate change. Yet the idea that Nesher could be regarded as environmentally benign is simply farcical.

The construction of Israel’s apartheid wall has destroyed vast areas of land and thousands of trees. Located beside a vitally important groundwater basin, its construction advances Israeli efforts to steal natural resources from Palestinians.

Environmental damage can’t be magicked away. Wrapping a fake green ribbon around its activities doesn’t alter how the EU is embracing Israel’s war profiteers.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 11 April 2018.

EU funds Israel's war industry

Propaganda does not always go according to plan.

The Israeli military opted to remove a video depicting it as a feminist organization from Facebook earlier this month.

Some less than liberal Zionists were upset by the video’s implicit message that women soldiers are just as capable of killing Palestinians as their male counterparts.

Israel is fortunate that its key partners are impervious to such embarrassing squabbles.

Emanuele Giaufret, the European Union’s ambassador in Tel Aviv, is among those partners. He keeps himself busy by backslapping Israeli recipients of EU science grants.

During a recent reception, Giaufret praised Israeli firms and institutions for their “amazing ideas.” He promoted, too, a short film on “collaborative projects” between the EU and Israel.

The film features a representative of Israel Aerospace Industries.

Viewers are not told that Israel Aerospace Industries is a weapons maker. Rather, they are informed that the firm is developing the aircraft of the future.

Israel Aerospace Industries – a state-owned enterprise – has manufactured the Heron drone, which has been used in attacks on Gaza.

The company appears to regard that as a selling point. Brochures for the Heron describe it as “combat proven.”

Creepy

Bureaucrats in Brussels have not been perturbed by that creepy euphemism. They have approved the participation of Israel Aerospace Industries in Horizon 2020, the EU’s latest research program.

At least one of the grants which the firm has received through that program is for work focused on drone technology.

Other grants are for research on engines and on making planes and helicopters lighter.

The EU’s scientific activities are supposed to be civilian. Yet EU representatives have previously conceded there is nothing to stop the fruits of the research they oversee from being used for other purposes.

That indicates the EU is helping Israel to manufacture more lethal arms than it now possesses.

Israel Aerospace Industries is not a small mom-and-pop firm that needs a dig out from the EU taxpayer. At the end of last year, it had an orders backlog worth more than $11 billion.

One of Israel Aerospace Industries’ most profitable divisions is called Elta Systems.

That firm was recently picked by the Trump administration to build a prototype for the planned wall along the US border with Mexico.

Radar systems developed by Elta got what arms traders call their operational debut during Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza. The radars apparently allow multiple targets to be identified simultaneously.

As the 2014 attack caused massive death and destruction to civilians and civilian infrastructure, that means Elta made a significant contribution to Israel’s crimes against humanity.

That has not prevented the European Union from awarding Elta a number of science grants.

Conniving with cruelty

Israel is adept at accessing EU funds. It has already drawn down more than $530 million from Horizon 2020.

As that seven-year program runs until the end of the decade, the final figure for how much Israel receives will inevitably be far higher.

The EU’s diplomats have dodged some vital issues: The “amazing ideas” that excite Emanuele Giaufret are often shaped or influenced by the Israeli military.

Mellanox, for example, is a lucrative business dedicated to accelerating the transfer of data via the Internet.

Its CEO Eyal Waldman has bragged about his term serving in the “elite” Golani Brigade – a unit of the Israeli military. His training with that brigade enables his firm “to kill with one bullet instead of five or 100 like our competitors,” he has said.

That he was speaking figuratively does not alter how Israel has turned its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza – an occupation in which the Golani Brigade has played a prominent role – to its competitive advantage.

A thriving technology sector has been built up largely because the occupation affords many opportunities for testing innovations.

By handing out subsidies to firms like Mellanox, the EU is encouraging Israeli militarism.

Through its research programs, the EU also gives millions to Elbit Systems, another of Israel’s major weapons firms that manufacturers internationally banned cluster bombs.

Other participants in Horizon 2020 have the Israeli military on their client lists. They include IsraTeam, a consultancy involved in an EU-financed project for research on “terrorism” and organized crime.

Israel uses “terrorism” as an all-encompassing term for resistance to its oppressive behavior. By doing so, it can get away with grotesque human rights abuses, including the routine use of torture.

The suppliers of weapons and services to Israel’s military are conducting cruel experiments against Palestinians.

Inviting those suppliers into its science programs is a major way that the EU connives with cruelty.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 29 March 2018.

Like Trump, EU aids theft of Jerusalem

The West’s policies on Palestine can be divided into two broad categories: the mindless and the misleading.

By deciding to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Donald Trump has behaved in a mindless manner. The most plausible explanation for why the US president did so is that acting like a pyromaniac endears him to his pro-Israel campaign bankroller Sheldon Adelson and to an extremist – mainly Christian – constituency.

Despite his propensity for telling lies, Trump has been more honest on this particular dossier than the European Union and its robotic representatives. They claim to be pursuing peace and a two-state solution, while aiding Israeli authorities that have no interest in either objective.

Scientific research has been accorded a high priority in cooperation between Israel and the EU. Israel is an active participant in Horizon 2020, an EU scheme aimed at encouraging innovation, which has been earmarked almost $100 billion over a seven-year period.

I have trawled through around 700 projects financed under the scheme and involving Israel. They exemplify how signals given by the EU have been hugely misleading.

Seismic?

Back in 2013, Israel accused the Union of causing an “earthquake,” according to the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz. The Israeli political elite was peeved by guidelines prepared for Horizon 2020, indicating that Israeli firms or institutions based in the occupied West Bank – including East Jerusalem – would not be eligible for its grants.

The publication of those guidelines was not the seismic event that Haaretz hyped it up to be.

They had been drafted after Brussels officials had been informed that some recipients of EU grants were less than transparent – to put it mildly.

The Israel Antiquities Authority took part in the Union’s previous science program, even though its headquarters were located in occupied East Jerusalem. It had supplied a post office box inside Israel as its address, when applying for an EU grant.

The Israel Antiquities Authority has not been punished for that trickery. It is now taking part in a $5 million heritage preservation project under Horizon 2020.

The address given for the authority on the website for that project is the Rockefeller Museum. That building is in East Jerusalem.

A little-noticed loophole in the EU’s 2013 guidelines allow Israeli public bodies to benefit from Horizon 2020 regardless of where they are located.

An announcement by the Israel Antiquities Authority that it is moving offices to West Jerusalem does not atone for its role in dispossessing Palestinians.

The authority has been overseeing excavations as part of plans to develop an archeological park in Silwan, an East Jerusalem neighborhood. While doing so, it has formed a partnership with Elad, an Israeli settler organization that drives Palestinians out of their homes.

The European Commission – which administers Horizon 2020 – tried to justify the way it is bending over backwards to please Israel.

A spokesperson for the Commission stated that it was “constantly making sure every rule is respected,” when I requested a comment. That is a flimsy and formulaic excuse for its complicity in the colonization of Jerusalem.

A number of other Israeli bodies active in East Jerusalem have been awarded grants under Horizon 2020.

Israel’s science ministry – based in East Jerusalem – has signed up to EU projects on diet and gender equality.

Hebrew University of Jerusalem, meanwhile, is likely to preserve its status as Israel’s top participant in EU research activities.

Spurious

Of the 700 projects I examined, Hebrew University was involved in more than 80. Some of the subsidies bestowed on the college amount to almost $2.5 million each.

Hebrew University is run from Mount Scopus in East Jerusalem. The EU regards that as acceptable because Mount Scopus was commandeered by Zionist forces in 1948, rather than during the June 1967 war (when Israel nabbed the remainder of East Jerusalem).

The EU’s spurious stance ignores how Hebrew University has been encroaching into territory seized in 1967 and how it enthusiastically supports Israel’s forces of occupation.

Several Israeli bodies implicated in human rights violations benefit from the EU’s largesse.

The Israeli-controlled Jerusalem municipality has placed something of a chokehold around Palestinian neighborhoods. The procedures it has introduced make Palestinian construction virtually impossible, while favoring colonization by Israelis.

The list of ways in which the municipality contributes to Israeli apartheid has just got longer. It is seeking to block residents of two Palestinian villages – al-Walaja and Battir – from reaching a spring that has provided their communities with water for 3,000 years.

With sordid irony, the EU has approved the municipality’s participation in a sustainable cities initiative, also worth $5 million.

Israel’s public security ministry oversees a prison service which regularly subjects Palestinians to torture.

Gilad Erdan, the current Israeli minister for public security, has given the nod – at least tacitly – to a provocative shift in policing. The result is that police are openly siding with activists wishing to take over and destroy Islamic holy sites at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound so that they can build a Jewish temple.

Erdan’s attempts to tighten Israel’s grip on East Jerusalem have not deterred the EU from embracing him. The public security ministry is involved in EU research projects on border surveillance, interrogation techniques and searching the internet for “terrorist” content.

Hooligan

Israel’s national water company Mekorot is an environmental hooligan. UN investigators have documented how it imperils Palestinians’ right to water by drying up wells and springs in the West Bank.

Shamefully, the EU is enabling Mekorot to cultivate a more responsible image by taking part in Horizon 2020 activities on the protection of water infrastructure and reducing pollution.

Firms that help to impose a siege on Gaza are equally welcome in Horizon 2020.

The state-owned Israel Electric Corporation cut power supplies to Gaza’s hospitals drastically last year, thereby placing the lives of patients in danger. The same corporation is involved in EU projects on information technology.

Israel’s weapons industry also benefits from Horizon 2020.

Elbit, the supplier of drones, white phosphorus and other munitions used during major Israeli assaults on Gaza, has been allocated an EU subsidy worth $860,000 to help it develop new cockpit components for future aircraft. The stated aim of this work is to advance a cuddly-sounding initiative called Clean Sky.

A profiteer from war crimes is thereby helped to masquerade as a savior of the planet. And the EU can keep on kidding itself that everything is fine and dandy.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 17 March 2018.

Perverse arguments from Israel's perverse lobby

Pro-Israel advocates took umbrage lately when an EU lawmaker suggested they belonged to a “perverse lobby.”

Daniel Schwammenthal is a protagonist in that lobby, whose arguments tend to be perverse.

He heads the AJC Transatlantic Institute, the Brussels office of the American Jewish Committee. According to his narrative, Israel is always being picked on by nasty neighbors.

While the turmoil in the Middle East can be difficult to fully comprehend, Schwammenthal and his colleagues see things with an absolute clarity. In their view, Israel is the “fireman,” while the governments in Damascus and Tehran are a joint “arsonist.” Or – as Schwammenthal has put it – Israel is the “victim” and its rivals the “aggressor.”

Schwammenthal’s comment was directed at Carl Bildt, formerly Sweden’s foreign minister.

Bildt had tried to strike a specious balance in a tweet by stating that Iran “obviously” sent a drone into Israeli airspace during February – something the Tehran authorities have denied – though also acknowledging that “Israel regularly violates the airspace of Syria and Lebanon” – something which is irrefutable.

Altruistic?

It was by no means the first time that Schwammenthal tried to cast Israel as innocent or altruistic. Writing for The Wall Street Journal in December last year, he claimed that Israel’s intervention in Syria’s war had been limited to “providing medical help” and depriving Hizballah of what he called “strategic weapons.”

Schwammenthal failed to remind his readers that Israel’s “medical help” has been somewhat selective. It has treated wounded fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, a group affiliated to al-Qaida, so that they can return to the war. Israel, therefore, has been helping terrorists, not running a charity.

Israel has recently ramped up its support for armed groups in Syria. The Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz reported last month that at least seven “Sunni rebel organizations in the Syrian Golan are now getting arms and ammunition from Israel, along with money to buy additional armaments.”

In the same Wall Street Journal article, Schwammenthal predicted that if a violent situation erupts in Lebanon, “Israeli efforts to avoid civilian deaths” will be ignored by journalists and the United Nations. Such efforts “surpass even NATO standards,” he added.

His reference point is not reassuring – NATO forces have bombed hospitals and weddings in Afghanistan. NATO is not a bunch of peaceniks, as Schwammenthal implied, but a military alliance dominated by that infamous arsonist, the United States.

Nor does Israel have a good record of sparing noncombatants. Most of the 900 civilians killed during the 2006 assault on Lebanon died from “Israel’s indiscriminate airstrikes,” Human Rights Watch has stated.

That assault spawned the Dahiya doctrine, named after a Beirut neighborhood that was destroyed by Israel on the pretext that Hizballah militants lived there. Under the doctrine – subsequently employed in Gaza – Israel treats civilian villages as military bases, thereby giving its troops carte blanche to commit the most heinous war crimes.

Was that what Schwammenthal meant by “Israeli efforts to avoid civilian deaths”?

Not surprisingly, his article drew no attention to how Israel has occupied part of Syria – the Golan Heights – since 1967.

Tweaking injustice

Schwammenthal can be brazenly misleading. In another recent tweet, he suggested that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is not illegal, “only settlements are, according to some.”

Contrary to what Schwammenthal hinted, the settlements and a long list of illegal Israeli policies and practices designed to enforce the occupation – frequent killings, arbitrary detentions, home demolitions and collective punishments – are inseparable from the overall occupation.

Located in a zone that comprises more than 60 percent of the West Bank, the settlements have not been deemed illegal by a few maverick lawyers. Their illegality has been confirmed by multiple UN Security Council resolutions and by the International Court of Justice.

Schwammenthal has suggested that it is extremist to reject a two-state solution for Palestine. An event which he hosted last month gave a glimpse of how that type of “solution” may look in practice. The main guest was Yair Lapid, a party leader with ambitions to be Israel’s prime minister.

Lapid contended that “the best thing” for Israel would be “for us to separate from the Palestinians.” It clearly would not be a separation based on equality, he indicated, as Israel would be stronger militarily than the Palestinians.

Appearing like a recipe for a continuation of Israeli apartheid in some form, that “vision” contradicts Schwammenthal’s attempts to paint Israel as a perpetual victim. Yet if he was offended by his invitee’s remarks, Schwammenthal did not say so.

His reticence on this important point is logical. Schwammenthal smears Palestine solidarity activists yet is silent when Israel’s apologists give the impression that manifest injustices can be tweaked to look moderate or reasonable.

People of conscience would have grave difficulty sleeping at night if they had to swallow such flagrant hypocrisy. The swallowing is probably easier for those who belong to a perverse lobby.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 9 March 2018.

Failed British politician hired by leading Israel lobbyist

In between working for the weapons industry, Britain’s top pro-Israel advocate Stuart Polak is known to give charities a helping hand. Rivals can even benefit from his benevolent deeds, judging by one barely noticed addition to his entourage.

Although Polak has supported the Conservative Party for decades, he recently came to the “rescue” of a Labour Party politician who had been abandoned by voters.

Natascha Engel, the politician in question, lost her parliamentary seat in last year’s general election. Since then, she has been appointed to the advisory board of Polak’s consultancy firm TWC Associates.

The firm’s clients include Israel’s Elbit Systems, a manufacturer of drones and white phosphorus and other munitions which Israel has used while attacking Gaza.

Elbit stated last year that it wished to regard Britain as an “actual home market,” because its activities have grown significantly in that country.

Elbit now owns at least five subsidiaries in Britain. And it would appear that Stuart Polak has used his influence to enable Elbit gain to a stronger foothold in the British market.

Dick Applegate, an Elbit strategist, has told undercover journalists that Polak could arrange access to useful contacts “from the prime minister down.”

Engel did not reply to a query asking if she was concerned that Elbit’s weapons are used to kill Palestinians.

U-turn

Her willingness to embrace – at least implicitly – Israel’s arms industry is something of a U-turn. In December 2008, Engel was among a group of Labour politicians to sign a letter describing Operation Cast Lead, a major Israeli offensive against Gaza, as “an outrage.”

Despite signing that letter, Engel’s track record indicates that she was generally uncritical of Britain’s pernicious policies on the Middle East.

She sought to shield Tony Blair from accountability by opposing calls for investigations into the invasion of Iraq while he was still prime minister.

In 2011, she backed the West’s military assault on Libya.

In her view, the US and its allies were starting a war “for the right reasons,” albeit without being “clear enough” about the likely consequences.

We know now that the result of the assault was massive destruction in Libya – with many side-effects for the wider region. Engel’s caveat does not mitigate her responsibility for supporting a calamitous decision.

The activities of TWC Associates cannot be detached from Polak’s lengthy career as a pro-Israel lobbyist. He spent 25 years heading Conservative Friends of Israel.

He has been rewarded for his services to the Israel lobby with a seat in the House of Lords, the British parliament’s unelected upper chamber.

A number of Polak’s colleagues in TWC Associates have either worked for the pro-Israel lobby or developed strong business connections with Israel.

Scott Hamilton, a key member of the TWC management, was previously a consultant to European Friends of Israel, a Brussels-based pressure group that Polak founded.

Justine Zwerling, who also sits on the TWC advisory board, has worked in Israel for both the British government and the London Stock Exchange. She is involved in a project called Vibe Israel, which seeks to promote Israel as stylish and innovative, thereby distracting from its crimes against the Palestinians.

Engel is evidently enterprising. She set up her own firm – Palace Yard Communications – in July last year, just a few weeks after losing her parliamentary seat.

If she plays her cards rights, Engel could command a far higher salary than she did as an elected representative. By teaming up with Stuart Polak and Israel’s arms industry, she could gain a slice of the profits made through killing Palestinian children.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 22 February 2018.

Are weapons at the heart of Britain's romance with Israel?

What are British politicians really saying when they wax lyrical about Israel? Do they genuinely believe the myths about it being a thriving democracy? Or are they in awe of how Israel can – quite literally – get away with murder?

Gavin Williamson, Britain’s defense secretary, has hinted that there is something rotten behind the romance. After celebrating Israel as a “beacon of light and hope” during a recent speech, he described its military investments as “impressive.”

If Williamson has done a modicum of homework, he must know that the Israeli weapons industry brags – albeit in a coded way – about testing its products on Palestinians living under siege and occupation. His fawning betrayed an admiration for how a profitable industry has been built through subjugating an entire people.

The fawning occurred when Williamson addressed a reception organized by Conservative Friends of Israel, a pressure group within Britain’s ruling party. He was among kindred spirits: it is unlikely to a be a coincidence that some of the group’s most ardent supporters are also lobbyists for the arms industry.

Take James Arbuthnot. In 2015, Arbuthnot was hired by Thales UK, a branch of the French weapons-maker Thales. He had previously chaired Conservative Friends of Israel. He also sat in the British parliament for 28 years.

Announcing the recruitment, Thales UK stated that Arbuthnot would join its advisory board. As its advisers are not “formal officers” of the company, they are “expressly prohibited” from lobbying on its behalf, Thales added.

Submarine supporter

While Arbuthnot may not have directly solicited business for Thales since then, he has taken part in discussions of relevance to the firm.

After his appointment by Thales, Arbuthnot later in 2015 joined the House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber in the British parliament. He has used that platform to advocate that Britain should develop four nuclear submarines.

Thales works on Britain’s nuclear submarine program. By opposing disarmament, Arbuthnot was pushing a political agenda conducive to his employer and the wider arms industry.

Does Arbuthnot erase all thought of the fees he receives from Thales every time he chats with contacts amassed during his political career?

Arbuthnot remains active in Conservative Friends of Israel. Earlier this month, he attended a discussion between the group and Ofir Akunis, Israel’s science minister and a hardline apologist for the theft of Palestinian land.

Devoted to drones

Going by Arbuthnot’s track record, it is highly unlikely that he availed of that occasion to scold Akunis. Arbuthnot has backed Israel’s acts of aggression and their enablers. At the time of the 2011 Arab uprisings, he effectively praised Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian dictator, for his role in enforcing Israel’s blockade on Gaza.

The ghastly consequences of Mubarak’s orders were that Gaza’s inhabitants had no way of escaping Israel’s bombs during Operation Cast Lead, a major offensive two years earlier. Writing for the website Conservative Home, Arbuthnot ignored those consequences, while noting with apparent favor that Mubarak “kept the border [between Egypt and Gaza] secure.”

Arbuthnot’s support for Israel cannot be disentangled from his work on strengthening the weapons industry. He spent a total of nine years heading a key parliamentary committee on military issues. In that capacity, he tried to justify drones by contending that their operators had been unfairly maligned as “video gaming ‘warrior geeks.’”

That vote of confidence in remote-controlled killing machines probably did not go unnoticed by his current employer. Thales is developing a drone program known as Watchkeeper for the British Army. Another partner in that program is Elbit, the Israeli weapons giant.

Conservative Friends of Israel is also linked to Elbit. The lobby group’s erstwhile director, Stuart Polak, is a leading figure in a “political strategy” firm that numbers Elbit among its clients.

Like Arbuthnot, Polak joined the House of Lords in 2015. Last year, he was found to have arranged meetings between Priti Patel, then a British government minister, and a number of Israeli politicians without respecting official protocol.

Patel resigned her ministerial post amid the ensuing controversy, yet there were no repercussions for Polak – beyond some possible damage to his reputation.

Trip to Turkey

Polak and Arbuthnot both participated in a recent trip to Turkey, where they met Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s president.

Hilal Kaplan, who wrote a puff piece on the visit for Istanbul newspaper the Daily Salah, observed that it took place following two lucrative weapons deals between Turkey and Britain. Kaplan did not spell out the British lords’ own connections to the arms industry or the pro-Israel lobby.

The lords appear to have been on their best behavior in Turkey, implicitly expressing their approval for its actions against Kurdish fighters in Syria. Their friendly gestures towards Erdogan are significant, considering that the Turkish president has posed as a defender of Palestinian rights.

As Polak is arguably Britain’s top pro-Israel lobbyist, it is hard to believe that he hasn’t briefed that state’s politicians or diplomats about his Turkish sojourn. It was financed by the Bosphorus Center for Global Affairs, an organization that monitors press coverage unfavorable to Erdogan.

The pro-Israel lobby in Britain is secretive about its precise activities, including its relationship to the arms industry. For all their talk about beacons of light, Israel’s supporters keep many things in the dark.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 16 February 2018.