November 09, 2017 Priti Patel Resigns - Israel Lobby Mourns The Loss Of A Valuable British Asset A British Minister of Hindu heritage was fired after it emerged that she secretly met Israeli officials in Israel and elsewhere without informing the Foreign Office. Back in Britain she then tried to arrange additional finances for Israel's arming of al-Qaeda in the Golan heights. The affair shines light on the nefarious influence of the Israel lobby on British politics. Priti Patel was International Development Secretary, responsible for British aid to various countries and organizations. She is a Thatcherite Conservative, a vocal supporter of Britain's exit from the European Union and of Hindu fascism in India: She has been a strong cheerleader of the Narendra Modi government, publicly praising a number of its policies including demonetisation. In August Patel went on a "family holiday" to Israel. Instead of enjoying the beach she met dozens of Israeli officials from Prime Minister Netanyahoo down to the heads of Zionist aid organizations. She was shepherded by one Lord Polak, a long time Israel lobbyist in British politics. Polak accompanied her to every meeting. None of these were disclosed to the British Embassy, the Foreign Office or Downing Street. Cabinet rules demand that all such meetings are coordinated and briefed through these official channels. Stuart Polak is a major character in Zionist lobbying in Britain: Ennobled by David Cameron two years ago, Lord Polak is a veteran of Westminster’s corridors of power. He has taken literally hundreds of Tory MPs to Israel over the years, educating them about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and securing their support in parliamentary votes and the public arena. Under his guidance, CFI became the biggest lobbying group in Westminster, holding lunches for 700 guests, making countless Downing Street visits, and developing contacts throughout Israel and the Middle East. Polak fled when the media tried to question him about his Israel visit arrangements for Patel. One of Patel's meetings was at an army hospital in the Israel occupied Syrian Golan heights where the Israeli military patches up al-Qaeda Jihadis which were wounded while fighting the Syrian government. Only last week the Israeli army in the occupied Golan supported a murderous attack of al-Qaeda Jihadis on the Syrian Druze village of Hader in the Quneitra area. The Jihadis in the Golan are surrounded by Syrian government forces. Their only supply line is through Israel occupied land. Druze in Israel who protested against the attack were arrested. Back in Britain Priti Patel asked her department to move British aid money from Palestinian causes to the Israeli military operation in the occupied Golan. (Funny how the Guardian in its wrap-up fails to mention that point ...) Additionally to her busy holiday, Priti Patel had two other meetings with Israeli officials which she similarly did not disclose. When it became clear yesterday that Priti Patel's behavior would cost her her job, the British Zionist lobby launched a rescue attempt. Based on anonymous sources the Jewish Chronicle claimed that Prime Minister May had been informed about two of the meetings and had ordered Patel to not disclose them: Number 10 instructed Development Secretary Priti Patel not to include her meeting with the Israel foreign ministry official Yuval Rotem in New York on 18 September in her list of undisclosed meetings with Israelis which was published on Monday, the JC has learned. Downing Street immediately denied the claim and no other source backed it up. The blackmail attempt failed. The Jewish Chronicle also was at the forefront of the slander campaign that tried to smear the British labor leader Corbyn as anti-semite. The Independent notes about the Patel affair: [T]here is another point about all those meetings which Patel helpfully, if belatedly, detailed in her apologetic statement on Monday: their remarkable one-sidedness. Patel heads a department which has a long history of humanitarian and development funding for Palestinians. Indeed she has taken a close interest in that funding, going so far as to announce a review last year which has already resulted in notable cuts of some £17m. This includes, to the widespread dismay of NGOs, cuts in funding to Gaza, where humanitarian and economic conditions are generally agreed to be at their direst ever. Cutting aid money to a devastated Gaza while handing it to the Israeli occupation army that supports Takfiris fighting Syria is beyond the already extreme British Zionist sculduggeries. Prime Minister May is herself a strong Zionist. She recently celebrated the Balfour declaration in which, a hundred years ago, the British empire promised land it did not own to a people that did not exit at the cost of the owners and inhabitants of that very land. That promise, handed to a very influential Jewish banker, opened new credit lines for the British war against Germany. It also reinforced lobbying efforts in the U.S. for entering the war on the British side. May asked the British people to feel "pride" for the treacherous paper and completely ignored the devastation it caused for the Palestinian people: The Israelis will be celebrating – and why not, for it set Britain’s seal on the future Israeli state in Palestine. Perhaps Israel would not have been created without it. But the fearful suffering and tragedy of the Palestinian refugees which was to follow in the coming years suggest that the Balfour letter – through its very wording – was certain to create a terrible wrongdoing which to this day curses the place we used to call the Holy Land. In January AlJazeera broadcasted an in depth investigation on the Zionist lobby in Britain. It proved that the lobby is directed by and its slander campaigns run from Israel's embassy in London. Peter Oborne and James Jones just published a long paper on The pro-Israel lobby in Britain. They find: The Friends of Israel groups in the House of Commons have firmly established themselves in the interstices of British political life. Their heavy presence at party conferences is taken for granted, their lunches and dinners an ingrained part of the Westminster social scene, the donations a vital part of the political financing. An environment now exists where MPs and ministers feel cautious about criticizing the foreign policy of the Israeli state, wary of opening themselves to criticism on the home front.

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While this pro-Israel lobbying is lawful, it is emphatically not transparent. We have shown in this pamphlet that journalists very rarely declare their [Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre] funded trips to Israel. We have also shown how patterns of donations from [Conservative Friends of Israel] members to Tory candidates are sometimes opaque. Indeed, the financial structure of the CFI as a whole is obscure.

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A similar observation applies to other pro-Israel pressure groups. While BICOM’s work is entirely legitimate, it is by no means transparent. They never declare, for example, which journalists go on trips and who they meet. Oborne and Jones also find that the Israel lobby does not reflect the opinion and values of British Jews. It is an extremely right-wing syndicate arranged to disguise its sources of money and the foreign interests involved in it. The Zionist lobby in Britain is vicious. It operates in the dark and hides its financing. This affair removes the curtain it uses to hide its malicious influence. It does not welcome the disinfecting sunlight this affair shines on it and is mourning the loss of its valuable asset. Priti Patel has been removed as a minister but is still a conservative Member of Parliament. The new revelations about her and the sinister powers influencing her will hopefully convince the British voters to finally kick her out. Posted by b on November 9, 2017 at 11:29 UTC | Permalink Comments