AIPAC Goes Transatlantic
The Israel Lobby has set its sights much further afield than the halls of power in Washington.
Like the US, Britain has long been captive of the Zionist lobby, which wields much influence in the country through access to ministers, donations to the parties, and the repression of public opinion critical of Israeli policies of apartheid and genocide.
The Starmer government purged Labour’s ranks of people sympathetic toward the Palestinians, taking cues from the Israel lobby by labeling the critics of Israel as anti-semites. Starmer himself declared a few months before taking over the leadership of Labour, “I support Zionism without qualification.”
He also stated on LBC radio in the UK that Israel has the right of siege in Gaza, including its cutting off of water and power (McShane 2023). This coheres with the view of retired Major General Giora Eiland, who called for a starvation policy in Gaza and told Israeli media: “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”
Starmer put into practice the next phase of his Zionist program by arresting critics of Israel through the employment of the draconian “Terrorism Act 2000, Section 12” which covers materials posted online. A journalist and pro-Palestinian activist, Sarah Wilkinson was arrested under the Act (originally enacted under the Tony Blair government) in August 2024 after a raid on her house by 12 police who confiscated all her electronic devices (Wilkins 2024). She was threatened with a long prison sentence for posting online remarks about the “incredible” way that Hamas was able to launch its assault on 7 October.
The same month, an independent British foreign affairs journalist Richard Medhurst, who is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, was arrested at Heathrow Airport and charged under the same act, which bans any writing regarded as favorable to proscribed entities, such as Hamas. There is no conceivable applications of this law to Jews or Israelis living in Britain who express even bloodcurdling support for terrorism and torture employed by the IDF against Palestinian civilians.
Israel exercises direct power connections to British electoral politics and Parliament through such groups as Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), founded in 1957, and Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), founded in 1974, both of which lobby for Israel.
For the Tories, upon election to Parliament, one almost automatically becomes a member of CFI. As a result, Conservative cabinet members have come to expect regular donations from the Israel lobby, which has amounted to hundreds of thousands of pounds going to at least one-third of all current sitting members of the party.
Large numbers of Labour MPs have also been feeding at the trough. Twenty percent of Labour’s sitting MPs have been funded by pro-Israel groups or individuals – including 15 who have been directly financed by the Israeli state.
The 2017 Al Jazeera documentary, “The Lobby,” exposed the fact that the Israeli government, working through its embassy in London, has had a direct hand in managing the various friends of Israel groups, including its many city branches. The Union of Jewish Students in the UK, which receives money from the Embassy, sends student delegations to Israel for propaganda immersion. Just prior to the 2024 general election, some 15 MPs took money from pro-Israel lobby groups, the LFI and CFI.
Twelve successful Labour candidates and three winning Conservatives took advantage of the Israeli largesse by accepting the travel invitations and expressing solidarity with Israeli apartheid and genocide policies.
Parallel with the U.S. but on a smaller scale in the UK, elections are open doors for contributions from wealthy individuals and corporate elites. The Zionist lobby is able to exploit these openings to block those Anglo-American politicians from interfering with the apartheid state. Suppressing Palestine rights is fully consistent with neo-conservative foreign policy and fits the long trajectory of western imperialism.
As the Al Jazeera documentary also disclosed, the Israeli main propaganda unit, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, regularly funnels talking points to British MPs to get them to serve as spokespersons for Israeli interests, such as during Prime Minister’s Question Time.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as well is channeling money to universities in Britain to promote propaganda through the efforts of the campus-based think tank, the Pinsker Centre, whose role is to construct a narrative of Jewish student victimhood without a word of condolence for Palestinian students whose relatives are being starved and slaughtered by Israeli Jews.
Beyond the campuses, AIPAC seeks to create a stronghold in Parliament similar to the power it wields in the U.S. Congress. The documentary also exposed plots in the Israeli Embassy in London to take down public officials who are seen as critical of the apartheid policy or insufficiently pro-Zionist.
Israel and its modern day maccabees have made their mark. Members of Labour Friends of Israel have used the (now increasingly discredited) tactic of labeling anyone who brings up Israel’s repression as “anti-semitic.” It was very successful in purging Labour of pro-Palestinian MPs and party members, particularly during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership period (2015-2020).
The “anti-semitic” tag is equivalent to the use of “heretic” during the Inquisition. Though today’s heretics raising such issues may not be burned at the stake, they may lose their position in the party or their jobs or their university matriculation status. The militant attitude of LFI incites fear and intimidation among those concerned about social justice.
Stuart Roden, hedge fund manager and chairman of the Israeli venture capital firm Hetz Ventures, [based in Tel Aviv] “has given the Labour party over half a million pounds ahead of the UK’s [2024] general election,” part of the £1 million he’s donated to Labour since 2023.
Roden is also the principal funder of a Zionist educational program, “I-gnite,” which teaches British children that “the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are acting proportionately in Gaza” (McEvoy 2024c). In October 2023, he was filmed confronting pro-Palestinian protesters but was not taken to task for interfering with the speech rights or feelings of Palestinian Britons or others involved in the demonstration.
AIPAC is just the newest of a number of pro-Israel influencers in the UK. These include the Jewish Leadership Council, the Zionist Federation, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, all elite organizations amongst the Jewish population of Britain.
It was under Tony Blair, a member of Labour Friends of Israel, that the Israel lobby began to seriously make political inroads in the government, according to a (UK) Channel 4 2009 investigative news program. The video also revealed that a press “watchdog” group on behalf of Israel, “Honest Reporting,” regularly challenged the Israel coverage in The Guardian and BBC. The organization is headquartered in Jerusalem with another branch in New York City.
Its managing editor at the time, Simon Plosker, had previously worked for the pro-Israel propaganda unit, Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom) as well as for the Israel army press office.
Bicom acts as an influencer upon the British public, largely by issuing press releases to the British media, funding trips to Israel for British journalists, and giving talks at British universities. Funding sources for Bicom have major investments in the occupied West Bank.
The heavy hand of Zionism International helped to build a coalition of leaders, including Trump’s CIA director Mike Pompeo, Trump himself, and Benjamin Netanyahu, dedicated to blocking Corbyn from becoming prime minister and removing him as Labour Party leader. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Starmer will be hard pressed to continue defending Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza and the West Bank as “the right of self-defense.”
From the Jordan to the Sea: Turning the Tide?
By May 2024, a Data for Progress poll indicated that 70% of likely American voters, including 83% of Democrats, favored a permanent ceasefire and de-escalation of violence in Gaza. A similar YouGov poll found that 56% of Britons favored cutting arms shipments to Israel and an immediate ceasefire (66%). Despite these findings, neither of the leading political parties in the US or UK have taken action to end human slaughter in Palestine.
In November 2024, the U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council resolution to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. The vote was 14 to 1. The Biden government, which had already given Israel over $20 billion in military support for the Israeli assault on Gaza and the West Bank, remained super-hawkish to the end.
Based on his actions as a first-term president, it is unlikely that Trump will use leverage on Israel to back away from its subjugation and slaughter of Gazan and West Bank civilians, confiscation of the remaining Palestinian state, and its “final solution.”
Unless the Gulf states, western Europe, and the UN take a more interventionist role in forcing the U.S. to end its complicity in the incomprehensible Israeli atrocities, there appears to be only two possible outcomes: extermination of the Palestinian people or a regional war involving Israel, the US, and UK against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran, with the possible material backing of Russia and China.
For Israel there can never be a win-win diplomatic solution. One way or another, the Zionist project may have met its Waterloo.
