Why would HR UK comment on the current funding scandal facing Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party and third-party donations from David Abrahams? The answer is we would not – the issue is a domestic one that does not involve Israel or the Mideast conflict.
Some media, however, have shamelessly added an Israeli angle to the unrelated political mix. Melanie Phillips criticises the Daily Telegraph, which:
published a picture of Abrahams shaking hands with Israel’s former ambassador to London, Zvi Heifetz, last year. This, we are given to understand, is supposed to be incriminating – so much so it merits front page splash treatment. A Jew shaking hands with an Israeli, eh! Hmnn, must be dirty work afoot! And for good measure the Telegraph story tells us that Heifetz was questioned then cleared over money-laundering allegations. Mr Heifetz was recently appointed as an adviser to Mr Blair in his role as Middle East peace envoy.
Woah — a multiple smear. There was no reason to mention the fact that Heifetz was cleared except to suggest that a shadow still hangs over him – which it does not. There was no reason to bring in Heifetz’s role as an adviser to Blair, except to imply a further connection between Abrahams and some kind of Israel lobby. Above all, there was no more reason to link Abrahams to Heifetz than to his local darts club.
Comments to the Daily Telegraph – [email protected]
Continuing in this vein is Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent, who draws upon classic “Zionist conspiracy” charges to present the funding scandal as directly linked to the Labour Friends of Israel lobbying organisation. Stephen Pollard responds:
Even in her intro – some of her best friends are Jews, you know – she’s at it, decrying how she’s had to weigh up whether or not to reveal the truth lest she face “the wrath of Moses”. Ah yes, Moses, short hand for ‘the Jews’ (the sort of short hand, by the way, that Nazis used).
Brave heroine of truth that she is, she won’t be silenced by them yids:
[T]hese questions will not stand aside or lie down. They have been bothering me since the Labour party donor row broke last week.
And the truth is?
David Abrahams, the strange shape-shifter at the centre of the funding furore, was once Mr Big in LFI; so is John Mendelsohn, the smart fundraiser picked by Gordon Brown to garner “election resources” to finance the next Labour win. Lord Levy is also a key member of LFI.
Bingo! They’re all supporters of Israel. And we know what that means don’t we? They’re up to no good:
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.
Well done, Yasmin. Good to know that you have evidence of the real crimes which the Jewish Lord Levy – that’s Lord Levy THE JEW in case you’d not noticed from her piece – is guilty of and which the police didn’t find and which the CPS was unaware of.
BTW, nifty use there in the same sentence of two of the oldest tropes of the lot. Abrahams is “a strange shape-shifter” (the Jew as the rootless cosmopolitan) and also a “Mr Big” (they run the world, even if, er, Yasmin, you’ve simply made up the idea of Abrahams being the power either in front of or behind the throne at LFI because it suited you.)
Pretty great, eh? We’re not even two pars in to the piece and we’ve got accusations, innuendos, Jewish conspiracies and two of the oldest antisemitic tropes in existence.
Bizarrely, Alibhai-Brown states that “The current scandal and its links to LFI only encourages fascist and Islamicist propagators of the idea of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Look on the crazed websites today and you see how they feed on this crisis and rejoice.”
Perhaps Yasmin Alibhai-Brown would like to reflect on her own role in promoting such vicious nonsense, bringing the views of fringe anti-Semites into the mainstream media.
While one letter of complaint has already appeared in the Independent (which decided to ‘balance’ this with another in support of Alibhai-Brown), please send your own comments to [email protected], remembering to include your name, postal address and daytime telephone number if you wish to see it published.
WALT & MEARSHEIMER’S IMPACT ON BRITAIN
Perhaps Walt and Mearsheimer’s recent book tour has contributed to the atmosphere that encourages articles such as those featured above. Writing in Ha’aretz one month ago, Dave Rich hits the nail on the head:
The problem on this side of the Atlantic is that British politics lacks anything approaching the American system of openly declared political lobbies; a similar, AIPAC-style operation in Westminster would not just influence policy, it would also subvert fundamental democratic mechanisms. . . .Those who assume that Zionism has a global reach and unlimited power cannot but assume that what they now “know” – thanks to Mearsheimer and Walt – is done in Washington must have its equivalents in London, Paris and elsewhere.
So the might of Jewish organizations is inflated, conspiracies imagined, to fill the gap between the reality of a Jewish community trying to do its best for Israel, and the fantasy of politicians and prime ministers bowing their knee to the power of the almighty Lobby.
