{"id":2388,"date":"2017-01-08T22:50:22","date_gmt":"2017-01-08T20:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=2388"},"modified":"2017-01-14T17:01:01","modified_gmt":"2017-01-14T15:01:01","slug":"how-many-british-mps-are-working-for-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2017-01-08\/how-many-british-mps-are-working-for-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"How many British MPs are working for Israel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATED BELOW<\/strong>:\u00a0The four half-hour episodes of Al Jazeera’s investigation.<\/em><\/p>\n

Al Jazeera are to be congratulated on an undercover investigation<\/a> exposing something most of us\u00a0could probably have guessed: that some Israeli embassy staff in the UK \u2013 let’s not pussy around, Mossad agents \u2013 are working with senior political activists and politicians in the Conservative and Labour parties to subvert their own parties from within, and skew British foreign policy so that it benefits Israeli, rather than British, interests.<\/p>\n

One cannot really blame Israel for doing this. Most states promote their interests as best they can. But one can and should expose and shame the British politicians who are collaborating with Israel in further harming\u00a0Britain’s representative democracy.<\/p>\n

It is not as though these people cannot be easily identified. They even advertise what they are up to. They are members of the Conservative and Labour Friends of Israel. They dominate both\u00a0parliamentary parties, but especially the Conservatives. According to the CFI\u2019s figures, fully 80 per cent of Tory MPs belong to the party\u2019s Friends of Israel group.<\/p>\n

Once, no one would have hesitated to call British politicians acting in the interests of a foreign power, and very possibly taking financial benefits for doing so, “traitors”. And yet, as Al Jazeera\u2019s secretly filmed footage shows, Israeli spies like Shai Masot can readily meet and conspire with a Tory minister’s\u00a0much-trusted aide to discuss\u00a0how best to \u201ctake down\u201d the deputy foreign minister, Alan Duncan, over his\u00a0criticisms of Israel\u2019s illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Maria Strizzolo, education minister Robert Halfon’s assistant, suggests engineering a \u201clittle scandal\u201d to damage Duncan.<\/p>\n

Masot and Israel\u2019s intelligence services cannot infuence British foreign policy through the opposition Labour party, but that doesn\u2019t prevent them from\u00a0also taking a keen interest in Labour MPs. Masot is filmed talking to Labour Friends of Israel’s chair, Joan Ryan, about \u201clots of money\u201d \u2013 more than \u00a31 million \u2013 he has received\u00a0from the Israeli government to send yet another batch of Labour MPs on an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel, where they will be wined and dined, and primed by top officials to adopt even more extreme pro-Israel positions. LFI\u00a0is known for sending the largest proportion of MPs to Israel on these kinds of trips.<\/p>\n

Does that have an effect on British domestic politics. You bet it does! Israel isn’t a charity.<\/p>\n

A large number of those who have been making Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s life a misery belong to Labour Friends of Israel. They are the same MPs who have been talking up an \u201canti-semitism crisis\u201d in the Labour party \u2013 based on zero tangible evidence \u2013 since Corbyn became party leader. Were they following the dictates of their conscience? Did they really fear an anti-semitism plague had suddenly beset their party? Or were they playing deeply cynical politics to oust a leader who supports justice for the Palestinian people and is considered by Israel\u2019s rightwing government, which has no interest in making peace with the Palestinians, to be bad news for Israel?<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera\u2019s investigation has not been shown yet, so we can rely only on the snippets released so far, either by Al Jazeera itself or additional leaks of the investigation provided<\/a> by the Mail on Sunday.<\/p>\n

It is worth listening to a Tory minister in the government of recently departed David Cameron, who writes anonymously in the Mail on Sunday. S\/he warns of a double whammy to British politics caused by Israel and its British partisans \u2013 one that is starting to approach the damage done to the US political system by Israel.<\/p>\n

The British government skews its foreign policy to avoid upsetting Jewish donors, s\/he says. MPs, meanwhile, act like agents of a foreign power \u2013 s\/he generously assumes\u00a0unwittingly \u2013 rather than representatives of the British people. Forget international law, these politicians are not even promoting British<\/em>\u00a0interests.<\/p>\n

Here is what the minister writes:<\/p>\n

British foreign policy is in hock to Israeli influence at the heart of our politics, and those in authority have ignored what is going on.<\/p>\n

For years the CFI and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), have worked with \u2013 even for \u2013 the Israeli government and their London embassy to promote Israeli policy and thwart UK Government policy and the actions of Ministers who try to defend Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n

Lots of countries try to force their views on others, but what is scandalous in the UK is that instead of resisting it, successive Governments have submitted to it, taken donors\u2019 money, and allowed Israeli influence-peddling to shape policy and even determine the fate of Ministers.<\/p>\n

Even now, if I were to reveal who I am, I would be subjected to a relentless barrage of abuse and character assassination. \u2026<\/p>\n

It now seems clear people in the Conservative and Labour Parties have been working with the Israeli embassy, which has used them to demonise and trash MPs who criticise Israel; an army of Israel\u2019s useful idiots in Parliament.<\/p>\n

This is politically corrupt, and diplomatically indefensible. The conduct of certain MPs needs to be exposed as the poisonous and deceitful infiltration of our politics by the unwitting agents of another country \u2026<\/p>\n

We need a full inquiry into the Israeli Embassy, the links, access and funding of the CFI and LFI.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is rare that I agree with a Tory government minister, but such an inquiry cannot come too soon.<\/p>\n

Note too that it\u00a0is an indictment of the\u00a0UK\u00a0media\u00a0that Al-Jazeera, rather than the British fourth estate, has\u00a0exposed\u00a0Israel’s\u00a0moves to subvert the British political system. It is not as though reporters from the BBC, Guardian, Times and the Mail haven’t had ministers like the one above complaining to them for years about\u00a0interference from Israel. So why did\u00a0they not long ago\u00a0send\u00a0in undercover teams to expose\u00a0this collusion\u00a0between\u00a0Israel and\u00a0British MPs?<\/p>\n

We have had weeks\u00a0of stories about the\u00a0supposed efforts of Russia and Putin to subvert the US\u00a0election, without a hint\u00a0yet of any evidence, and based on\u00a0a central allegation against the Russians that they compromised\u00a0the election result by releasing truthful information about wrongdoing\u00a0in the Democratic party. Russian diplomats have been expelled based on these evidence-free claims, and President Obama has vowed to take other,\u00a0covert action against Russia.<\/p>\n

Here we have\u00a0documented evidence of the Israeli government\u00a0secretly\u00a0plotting with “friendly” British MPs\u00a0to oust\u00a0a British government minister. If that isn’t interference in the British political system I don’t know what is. Will we similarly have weeks of coverage of this story in the UK\u00a0media, or will it be quickly filed away and forgotten?<\/p>\n

And will any action beyond the removal of\u00a0Masot be demanded by the British government? It seems unlikely. The\u00a0Foreign Office has already issued a statement saying\u00a0that, following\u00a0Masot’s dismissal, it considers the matter closed.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Episode 1<\/em><\/p>\n