The pro-Israeli role in donorgate

One of the angles on the recent troubles afflicting the British Labour Party is the role played by pro-Israelis.

The Jewish Chronicle highlights the faith element of this rather than the politics. They worry about an anti-Semitic backlash. Andrew Dismore MP is even of the opinion that the Labour Party breaking the law would not be considered a scandal at all if it weren't Jewish donors involved.

Their concern is that people are going to make comment about David Abrahams formerly being a member of Labour Friends of Israel till he was chucked out by Jon Mendelsohn who was the organisation's head before becoming Labour's fundraiser in chief. The previous occupant of that latter key role was his friend Michael Levy who was also LFI and has been described as a "leading international Zionist" (but was still remarkably appointed by Blair as the PM's personal envoy to the Middle East). Levy in particular brought many pro-Israelis to donate to the Labour Party cause.

It may well be that these men didn't expect to influence policy in any way. It may well also be that Tony Blair was independently pro-Israeli, most notably when he couldn't find any words of criticism for Israel's brutal bombardment of Lebanon in 2006. Cash may have played no role in his thinking.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown thinks that the role of lobbying in this manner is wrong. I disagree. If people are openly donating money, and openly running organisations, good luck to them. What is insipid is that no one makes any analysis of this. You can be sure if pro-Palestinians or indeed Muslims were operating like this, we would be hearing about it (see last paragraph below).

Also seen as anti-Semitic was the Daily Telegraph's front page headline "Hunt for the real donor" above a photograph of Abrahams shaking hands with then Israeli ambassador Zvi Heifetz (the Israeli embassy was also incidentally where Tony Blair and Levy first met). They skirted around the possibility that Abrahams himself was a conduit for money from Heifetz, something which the man now working for peace envoy Tony Blair denies. Nick Robinson said that he trusted the Telegraph had good lawyers if they were going down this line.

What made me guffaw heartily though was Martin Bright's criticism of this story as a 'conspiracy theory'. It may well be, but sounds strange coming from a man who has devoted copious column inches and television time to cooking up an 'Islamist conspiracy' involving a humble civil servant working in the Foreign Office.

Comments

[Yunus]

My conspiracy theory is that the Israel is actually a conduit for US monies. After all, the one thing more baffling than Blair's failure to criticise Israel during the attack on Lebanon was his near adulation for a buffoon many people think is a greater threat to world peace than Osama bin Liner, George W Bush.

[Anon]

In the United States, isn't AIPAC essentially a conduit for Israeli monies?