Why was it left to the Qatar TV Station Al Jazeera to Expose the Israeli Embassies Undermining of British Democracy?
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| Alan Duncan - on the hit list of the Israeli Embassy |
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| Corbyn humiliating himself at the Labour Friends of Israel fringe meeting 2016 - they hate him but invite him anyway - LFI is an extension of the Israeli state and hopefully Corbyn will learn his lesson |
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| The idea of doing a genuine investigation into who was behind the anti-Semitism allegations probably never occurred to the Establishment BBC |
Instead it was left to Al Jazeera who in its six months investigation Israel’s parliamentary plot against UK politicians have done what the BBC, Channel 4, The Guardian or Independent should have done. They should have conducted the investigation instead of leaving it to a Quatari based TV station.
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| Channel 4's pathetic Dispatches programme proved there was a link between Momentum and Jeremy for PM! |
It is a telling indictment of the Establishment-based politics of all these news organisations, including the ‘liberal’ Guardian, that none of them even thought to ask whether or not the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign that erupted even before Jeremy Corbyn was elected, might be a co-ordinated and systematic campaign, orchestrated by the Israeli and possibly American embassies in conjunction with MPs who were in essence strategic assets of both countries.
It is not as if they didn’t have any clues. In a talk to Manchester PSC last June, which I haven’t yet full transcribed, I made it clear what the origins of the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign were :
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| Shai Masot - a Mossad operative (MI6 equivalent) engaged in 'taking down' British politicians through dirty tricks |
Jeremy Corbyn’s election last September, although many people greeted it effusively, if you think about it, I’m not a conspiracy theorist by any means, ... But if you believe, in Washington or Tel Aviv for that matter, the election of someone who was so identified with the Palestine movement for 30 years, someone who is anti-Trident, who is anti-NATO and anti-capitalist is going to be regarded with equanimity, and the US intelligence agencies, the movers and shakers and the powers that be, said to themselves it’s a fair cop, the Labour Party has gone to the left, we just have to accept it. I have to say if you believe that you are a born innocent.
The CIA are past masters at overthrowing and destabilising regimes, not simply in Latin America or Central America or Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East or Asia, but in Europe ... They had stay-at-home armies in virtually every European country.
So the idea that the anti-Semitism scandal in the Labour Party was a product of genuine anti-Semitism that suddenly sprang up out of nowhere is a total nonsense. We had the first manifestations of it, Corbyn was accused of associating with holocaust deniers, in particular someone called Paul Eisen.’
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| Ruth Smeeth, who made a false allegation of anti-Semitism at the Chakrabarti press conference against Black activist also collared a few thousand pounds from Labour Friends of Israel |
At the Boycott Israel Conference on November 5th I responded to a question thus:
‘someone asked about Mark Regev and the Israeli embassy, I don’t think Mark Regev began it but certainly he’s involved in it. If you look at it from this perspective, when Corbyn was elected or seemed likely to be elected to the Labour leadership, I imagine panic set in, not just in the Israeli embassy but the US embassy. Britain is the closest ally of the United States in Europe, the special relationship; the idea that someone who is anti-NATO, anti-Trident and so on, with his record, I would be amazed if the CIA and the Intelligence Agencies weren’t doing something. I mean that’s what they’re paid to do all over the world; why not in Britain? It would be bonkers if they didn’t; they would be failing in their duties, so, yes, of course they have been behind this campaign.
It was quite easy to predict what was happening but the Guardian was at that time, via Jonathan Freedland and Owen Jones, both of whom are reputed to have close links to British Intelligence organisations, a key part in the false anti-Semitism campaign. The Guardian ran a whole series of articles for example Freedland’s Labour and the left have an antisemitism problemand Owen Jones’ Antisemitism is a poison – the left must take leadership against it within two days of each other.
The BBC of course has run so many slanted and biased programmes on the ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis that one is spoilt for choice. I made a long complaint against one, particularly egregious example. Andrew Neils’ Sunday Politics programme last April.
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| Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement, Mark Regev of the Israeli Embassy and Shai Masot, the Intelligence Operative who is leaving quickly plus Labour MPs |
The only reason therefore why it would not have been possible for a British news organisation to have run with this story was because all of them, without exception, were compromised. All news organisations assumed that the anti-Semitism campaign manufactured and patented in the Israeli Embassy and disseminated via the Jewish Labour Movement was genuine. Not one establishment journalist asked why would anti-Semitism just spring up under the Labour Party’s new anti-racist leader, Jeremy Corbyn?
Of course Corbyn’s pitifully weak response, despite having initially been accused by the Daily Mail and Jewish Chronicle of anti-Semitism himself didn’t help matters. Instead of saying that he condemned anti-Semitism but that he also condemned the false use of anti-Semitism accusations against anti-Zionists, not least because it undermined the fight against genuine anti-Semitism, he retreated. He kept saying that he wasn’t an anti-Semite, which no one doubted but was irrelevant.
Whether it was stupidity or political cowardice or both is for others to decide but Corbyn made a rod for his own back because his accusers weren’t talking about the same ‘anti-Semitism’. When they spoke about anti-Semitism they meant ‘new anti-Semitism’ i.e. anti-Zionism and the Home Affairs Select Committee Reporthas just redefined anti-Semitism. Instead of Brian Klug’s simple definition of anti-Semitism as ‘hostility to Jews as Jews’ they have come up with a 400+ word definition that conflates anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism.
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| Tory MP and Minister of State for Education whose aide was undermining a fellow Minister |
Even worse when Theresa May recently endorsed this definition, Jeremy Corbyn even more stupidly backed her. Despite his 30 years involvement in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Corbyn seems to have learnt nothing. See The Government's new definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ is an attempt to criminalise support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism - Jeremy Corbyn’s acceptance of this Tory definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ is shameful and must be reversed
Corbyn’s reaction to the anti-Semitism campaign strengthened the Zionist attack. It is good that Emily Thornberry has now called for an inquiry into the Israeli Embassy’s interference in Britain’s political parties. However it does not go far enough. On the basis of what is already known and the liaison between Israel’s Mossad Agent and Political Secretary at the Israeli Embassy, Shai Masot, the Labour Friends of Israel should be proscribed. My understanding is that the Jewish Labour Movement will also be shown in the documentaries to come to have been working hand –in-hand with the Israeli Embassy, as we have long suspected. If so, it should be disaffiliated as the overseas wing of the Israeli Labour Party and in effect an intelligence organisation operating inside the British Labour Party. Now is the time to call out the Zionists and their secret state within the Labour Party.
We should have no doubt that Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which had a $50m budget with which to fight BDS employed much of it subverting politics in this country. Not only did they seek to ‘take down’ British politicians such as Alan Duncan, but they instigated and ran with bogus ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations whose purpose was to destabilise the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party.
Joan Ryan MP, the corrupt right-wing Chair of LFI spokeat their fringe meeting of welcoming “avery strong commitment to a two-state solution. We don’t want to be living in fear that we’re going to have to fight some battle in the party for a commitment to that two state solution.’ Strangely enough, when the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning the settlements that are the main barrier to a 2 State Solution these hypocrites were silent! They support 2 states but also support the settlements.
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| Extract from Joan Ryan's entry in the Members' Register of Interests - Joan Ryan MP, Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, has the record for the largest amount of expenses claimed in a year - she trousered over £6,000 from LFI in expenses paid trips. |
Luke Akehurst, leader of the Right in the Labour Party and Director of We Believe in Israel said: “It’s a shame he didn’t make this speech this time last year. ... given where he came from it was a carefully drafted speech that had appropriate wording in terms of the way it addressed core issues in the Middle East and the way it addressed antisemitism. My initial sense was there was not much one could find to criticise in what was said.”
Praise from these people is condemnation enough but we should also condemn people like Jon Lansman who consistently backed up Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement. When Jackie Walker was secretly recorded at a JLM training session and her remarks distorted, instead of leaping to her defence Lansman said:
‘“I spoke to Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement this morning, he’s very upset and I can understand that...’ For knifing Jackie in the back and supporting an open racist, Lansman should be dispatched by the forthcoming Momentum conference.
We should also be dispatching MPs like the execrable Joan Ryan who received cool £6,627.02 for trips to Israel last year. No doubt others MPs who sponsor Labour Friends of Israel are in receipt of friendly support, official and unofficial.
Below is an article by Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth and an ex-Guardian journalist.
Tony Greenstein
8 January 2017
Al Jazeera are to be congratulated on an undercover investigation exposing something most of us could probably have guessed: that some Israeli embassy staff in the UK – let’s not pussy around, Mossad agents – 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.
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 Britain’s representative democracy.
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 parliamentary parties, but especially the Conservatives. According to the CFI’s figures, fully 80 per cent of Tory MPs belong to the party’s Friends of Israel group.
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’s secretly filmed footage shows, Israeli spies like Shai Masot can readily meet and conspire with a Tory MP’s much-trusted aide to discuss how best to “take down” the deputy foreign minister, Alan Duncan, over his criticisms of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Maria Strizzolo, MP Robert Halfon’s assistant, suggests engineering a “little scandal” to damage Duncan.
Masot and Israel’s intelligence services cannot influence British foreign policy through the opposition Labour party, but that doesn’t prevent them from also taking a keen interest in Labour MPs. Masot is filmed talking to Labour Friends of Israel’s chair, Joan Ryan, about “lots of money” – more than £1 million – he has received from 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 is known for sending the largest proportion of MPs to Israel on these kinds of trips.
Does that have an effect on British domestic politics. You bet it does! Israel isn’t a charity.
A large number of those who have been making Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s life a misery belong to Labour Friends of Israel. They are the same MPs who have been talking up an “anti-semitism crisis” in the Labour party – based on zero tangible evidence – 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’s rightwing government, which has no interest in making peace with the Palestinians, to be bad news for Israel?
Al Jazeera’s investigation has not been shown yet, so we can only rely on the snippets released so far, either by Al Jazeera itself or additional leaks of the investigation provided by the Mail on Sunday.
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 – one that is starting to approach the damage done to the US political system by Israel.
The British government skews its foreign policy to avoid upsetting Jewish donors, s/he says. MPs, meanwhile, act like agents of a foreign power – s/he generously assumes unwittingly – rather than representatives of the British people. Forget international law, these politicians are not even promoting British interests.
Here is what the minister writes:
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.
For years the CFI and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), have worked with – even for – 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.
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’ money, and allowed Israeli influence-peddling to shape policy and even determine the fate of Ministers.
Even now, if I were to reveal who I am, I would be subjected to a relentless barrage of abuse and character assassination. …
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’s useful idiots in Parliament.
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 …
We need a full inquiry into the Israeli Embassy, the links, access and funding of the CFI and LFI.
It is rare that I agree with a Tory government minister, but such an inquiry cannot come too soon.
Note too that it is an indictment of the UK media that Al-Jazeera, rather than the British fourth estate, has exposed Israel’s moves to subvert the British political system. It is not as though reporters from the BBC, Guardian, Times and the Mail haven’t had have ministers like the one above complaining to them for years about interference from Israel. So why did they not long ago send in undercover teams to expose this collaboration between Israel and British MPs?
We have had weeks of stories about the supposed efforts of Russia and Putin to subvert the US election, without a hint yet of any evidence, and based on a central allegation against the Russians that they damaged the election by releasing truthful information about wrongdoing in the Democratic party. Russian diplomats have been expelled based on these evidence-free claims, and President Obama has vowed to take other, covert action against Russia.
Here we have documented evidence of the Israeli government secretly plotting with “friendly” British MPs to oust a 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 media, or will it be quickly filed away and forgotten?
And will any action beyond the removal of Masot be demanded by the British government. It seems unlikely. The Foreign Office has already issued a statement saying that, following Masot’s dismissal, it considers the matter closed.
UK MPs urge probe into Israeli plot against politicians
Al Jazeera reveals discussions between Israeli diplomat and UK civil servant to "take down" anti-settlement politicians.
Senior members of parliament have slammed comments made by an Israeli diplomat on plans to "take down" the UK's deputy foreign secretary over his criticism of Israel's settlement policy in the occupied West Bank.
Emily Thornberry, the Labour Party's shadow foreign secretary, called the statements by Shai Masot - a senior political offficer at the Israeli embassy in London - "extremely disturbing" and demanded a probe into the potential extent of political "interference" in the United Kingdom.
Masot's comments were secretly captured on film during a six-month undercover operation by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, which reveals plots by the Israeli diplomat and a British civil servant to destroy the careers of senior politicians .
"It is simply not good enough for the Foreign Office to say the matter is closed. This is a national security issue," Thornberry said in a statement.
"The embassy official involved should be withdrawn, and the government should launch an immediate inquiry into the extent of this improper interference and demand from the Israeli government that it be brought to an end," she said.
In the recorded conversation with Maria Strizzolo, who was then chief of staff to MP Robert Halfon, the deputy chairman of the ruling Conservative Party, Masot asked if he could give her some names of parliamentarians he would suggest she "take down".
Masot named Deputy Foreign Minister Sir Robert [? Alan —MM] Duncan, who in 2014 said while he fully supports Israel's right to exist, he believes settlements on occupied Palestinian land represent an "ever-deepening stain on the face of the globe".
He also likened the situation in Hebron in the occupied West Bank to apartheid.
Strizzolo later hinted that "a little scandal" might see Duncan dismissed.
At the same dinner table conversation, Masot described British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Duncan's boss, as an "idiot … without any kind of responsibilities", while Strizzolo said he was "solid on Israel".
Since the announcement by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit of its findings - and the international media coverage that followed - the Israeli embassy tweeted a response saying that Masot would be "ending his term shortly", adding that Mark Regev, ambassador of Israel to the UK, had apologised to Duncan "and made clear that the embassy considered the remarks to be completely unacceptable".
Al Jazeera learned on Sunday that Strizzolo had resigned from her post.
Scottish National Party MP Alex Salmond reiterated the call on Sunday for Masot's deportation.
"Boris Johnson must right now revoke Mr Masot's diplomatic status and remove him from the country as would most certainly have happened had the circumstances been reversed. Perhaps then the Israeli government representatives will regard the foreign secretary as less of a fool."
Salmond also backed an official probe into the matter "so that we can be confident our elected officials are free to carry out their jobs to the best of their ability and without fear of having their reputation smeared by embassy officials who do not agree with their views".
Ben White, a researcher and journalist who has written about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, told Al Jazeera it is not surprising that Israel would seek to influence British politicians, but he added this case was unique because it involved a secret video that has been publicised.
"We know that the Israeli foreign ministry - and also interestingly the Israeli ministry of strategic affairs, which it actually seemed that this individual [Masot] is an employee of - are very focused on fighting what they see as dangerous, powerful solidarity activism with particular focus on trying to thwart and undermine the Boycott Divest and Sanctions campaign," said White.
Al Jazeera reveals discussions of Israel diplomat and British civil servant to 'take down' anti-settlement politicians. Shai Masot, senior political officer at the Israeli embassy [Al Jazeera]
The incident is just one among the Investigative Unit's many findings, which will be revealed in a four-part series "The Lobby" that will broadcast daily on Al Jazeera from January 15 at 22:30 GMT.
The undercover investigation shows how the Israeli government is involved in a brazen, covert influence campaign in Britain.
For half a year, Robin (an alias), an undercover reporter working with Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, met with members of Britain's lobby network that enjoys strong support from the Israeli government by way of the Israeli embassy in London.
Robin posed as a graduate activist with strong sympathies towards Israel who was keen to help combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement prominent in Britain.
Shaping foreign policy agenda
Strizzolo, while advising Robin, revealed she had a strategy of manipulation to ensure Israel remains at the top of the UK's foreign policy agenda.
"If at least you can get a small group of MPs that you know you can always rely on, when there is something coming to parliament and you know you brief them, you say: 'you don't have to do anything, we are going to give you the speech, we are going to give you all the information, we are going to do everything for you'," she said.
She also advised trying to infiltrate Prime Minster's Questions, a weekly session in which the leader of the country answers questions from MPs. The debate is televised live.
"If they already have the question to table for PMQs [Prime Minister's Questions], it's harder to say: 'No, no, no, I won't do it'," she said.
Strizzolo then boasted how her own efforts once made an immediate impact on the national debate.
While in Israel with the Conservative Friends of Israel parliamentary group in 2014, she persuaded MP Halfon to question the prime minster in public over three missing teenagers believed to have been kidnapped and murdered "to get a response from the government", Strizzolo said.
Halfon took the request and called on former prime minister David Cameron to support the Israeli government, which he said should do "everything possible to take out Hamas terrorist networks". In response, Cameron promised that Britain would "stand by Israel".
Al Jazeera Investigative Unit's series "The Lobby" can be viewed on Al Jazeera at the following times:
Episode One - Sunday, January 15: 22:30 GMT
Episode Two - Monday, January 16, 22:30 GMT
Episode Three - Tuesday, January 17, 22:30 GMT
Episode Four - Wednesday, January 18, 22:30 GMT
The series will also be available online .
Source: Al Jazeera News