Writing for The Jewish Chronicle last week, columnist David Aaronovitch addressed the alleged rise in anti-Semitism in this country and attributed it to the Jews being “too quiet and too separate up till now”. He suggested a Jewish lobby would be a great idea, and starting with “Jews beginning to get themselves kippah-ed up and sitting in the audience at Question Time”.

It made me laugh, but coming from a highly reputable writer, it also made me cry.

Just before the most recent Gaza ceasefire, Downing Street confirmed it was conducting a review of arms sales to Israel after David Cameron said the UN was right to condemn the shelling of schools as a “moral outrage”. Some licenses, it said, would be revoked if there were a substantial resumption of bombings.

The ceasefire ended long ago, and the Israeli bombings have claimed hundreds more innocent victims, bringing the total of dead children to over 560. But UK arms sales to Israel continue unabated. Why?

When Baroness Warsi resigned from David Cameron’s cabinet, the event was reported in a major Indian publication under the headline: "Will Britain’s powerful Zionist lobby forgive Sayeeda Warsi?"

The article made me think that one reason why her colleagues and their mates in the media were so keen to dismiss the once-rising Muslim star as “incompetent” (unlike, say, IDS) and “over-promoted” (unlike, say, Grant Shapps) is because she dared lift the corner of a veil shrouding the pro-Israel lobby in Westminster.

It also made me wonder why this was the case, and also why the all-powerful nuclear-armed State of Israel was asserting itself over the Palestinians so murderously, killing hundreds of children without as much as a slap on the wrist from the British government.

Is there a guiding hand behind the strategy of making people so afraid of being accused of anti-Semitism (as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has explained so clearly) that they will feel unable to use their right to free speech, while at the same time alarming British Jews with the ludicrous spectre of “Germany in the 1930s” and “another holocaust”?

In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Show all 18 1 /18 In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict A Palestinian woman uses a piece of reebar she found amid the rubble, for support as she walks past destroyed homes in a street in Beit Hanun, northern Gaza Getty Images In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict Palestinian men wait for their names to be called to receive a ration of food aid at a UN compound in Gaza City Getty Images In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict Posters calling people to boycott Israeli products Getty Images In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict Residents of a neighborhood in Gaza City gather to put out a fire at a soap factory moments after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict A Palestinian, who was injured in clashes in the Gaza strip, is carried on a stretcher to an ambulance after the arrival of a group of injured Palestinians at Ankara's Esenboga airport In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict A Palestinian, who was injured in clashes in the Gaza strip, is carried on a stretcher to an ambulance after the arrival of a group of injured Palestinians at Ankara's Esenboga airport In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict Firefighters try to extinguish a fire that witnesses say was caused by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Israel has accepted a new Gaza ceasefire proposed by Egyptian mediators and will send negotiators to Cairo if the truce holds, Israeli officials said In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict Smoke from fires caused by Israeli strikes rises over Gaza City In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict People watch as a fire burns in a building that witnesses say was hit by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict Palestinian fire fighters extinguish a blaze at a soap factory moments after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict Palestinian firefighters try to put out the fire at a cleaning materials factory after it was hit by Israeli airstrike in Al-Meena neghbourhood in the west of Gaza City In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict Palestinians react as they put out a fire in an apartment which witnesses said was hit by an Israeli air strike in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict A relative kisses the body of Palestinian Nader Driss, whom medics said died of a gunshot wound by Israeli troops during clashes at a protest against the Israeli offensive in Gaza, during his funeral in the West Bank City of Hebron In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict Relatives of Palestinian woman Amani Baraka, whom medics said was killed in an Israeli air strike, mourn during her funeral in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict A Palestinian boy, whom medics said was wounded by Israeli shelling, is visited by members of a local aid society wearing costumes at a hospital in Gaza City In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict Jamal Doghmosh, a 48-year-old Palestinian mechanic who was injured in an Israeli air strike, recuperates at Shifa hospital in Gaza City. When Doghmosh woke up in hospital after the attack, he could not hear properly and found that three fingers from his right hand were also gone. He is one of thousands of Palestinians who have been left physically disabled by the conflict with Israel in the Gaza Strip In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict An injured Palestinian man from the Al-Elaa family sits inside his house after it was hit by an Israeli military strike in the Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip In pictures: Israel-Gaza conflict - summer 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict A view of the living room of the Okasha family house destroyed by an Israeli strike, in Jebaliya refugee camp, Gaza Strip. Two female members of the family were critically wounded in the strike

In the US, the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is acknowledged to be as powerful when it comes to foreign policy as the National Rifle Association (NRA) is in preventing any hint of gun control. Both operate similarly: they keep their sights on every member of the US’s notoriously venal and corruptible Congress, and make it abundantly clear to them that any deviation from total support from Israel will be harshly dealt with.

This approach (brilliantly exposed in the recent issue of The New Yorker) has helped AIPAC prevent Barack Obama doing what he really wants, which is to speak out about Benyamin Netanyahu’s murderous excesses. It also manoeuvred the Senate into approving billions for Israel with only six people in the room.

I never imagined there was an AIPAC equivalent here in the UK, not least because there are only around 250,000 Jews in this country – 0.5 per cent of the population. Another reason is that it deliberately keeps a vastly lower profile. But sheltering under the harmless-sounding titles of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) the pro-Israel lobby is incredibly powerful.

The late Conservative historian Robert Rhodes James described CFI as “the largest organisation in western Europe dedicated to the cause of the people of Israel”. And you may have never heard the name Stuart Polak, but the director of the CFI is possibly Westminster’s most effective operator.

It seems likely that Polak's influence was a significant factor in the government’s refusal to describe Israel's bombing of Gaza, including attacks on UNWRA, as “disproportionate”. Although surely this would have been the mildest of adjectives in view of what we have been seeing on our television screens every day.

In June 2009, six months after the Cast Lead operation against Gaza in which hundreds of civilians were bombed by Israel (sounds familiar?), David Cameron addressed the very grand annual lunch of the CFI at the Dorchester. Looking at his speech, my fellow journalist Peter Oborne was shocked to see no reference to Gaza whatsoever.

In an eerie echo of current events, Oborne noted that “Cameron went out of his way to praise Israel because it ‘strives to protect innocent life’," and recalls how he "found it impossible to reconcile the remarks made by the young Conservative leader with the numerous reports of human rights abuses in Gaza.

"Afterwards," he adds, "I said as much to some Tory MPs. They looked at me as if I was distressingly naive, drawing my attention to the very large number of Tory donors in the audience.”

Oborne also explains that “The Israel lobby has enjoyed superb contacts at the very top of British politics, and never hesitated to use them.” And it would seem that he’s right. At least half of the members of the shadow cabinet were members of the Conservative Friends of Israel before the 2010 election.

With this in mind, it seems too coincidental that there was little to no criticism of Israel after the illegal and deadly invasion of the Lebanon in 2004, or much response to a report into the war crimes committed during 2009/9's Cast Lead operation. Israel has admitted using white phosphorous during this operation. The chemical burns away at the skin, and its use is illegal under international law.

Michael Mates told Oborne on the record that “the pro-Israel lobby in our body politic is the most powerful political lobby. There’s nothing to touch them.” Mates added: “Their lobbying is done very discreetly, in very high places, which may be why it is so effective.”

Maybe it is for this covert use of power that has led Aaronovitch to wonder where the UK's Jewish lobby is. But for many of us, it is becoming clearer and clearer that it has been here all along.

A reference in this article to the Conservative Friends of Israel was previously hyperlinked to the website of an entirely unconnected group, the Christian Friends of Israel. We are sorry for the error.