Hat tip to Michelle, one of the great commenters on this blog, for letting me know about this article.
Priti Patel has finally done the decent thing, and resigned following the revelation of her highly secretive visit to Israel, where she met met leading politicians, while telling everyone she was just on a holiday. Part of the reason behind Patel’s little trip seems to have been to get the British government to divert some of the money it gives for international aid to Israel, so it can spend it on the IDF’s continuing occupation of the Golan Heights. This is territory which Israel nicked from the Syrians during the Six Day War.
Israel is already massively supported by Britain, the US and the EU, where it is treated almost as a member, despite not having formal membership. The IDF is one of the main instruments of the country’s brutal repression and ethnic cleansing of its indigenous Arab people, the Palestinians. During its independence campaign in 1948, the Israeli armed forces were responsible for a series of massacres, rapes and beatings against the Palestinians. The most notorious of these was Deir Yassin. But that was only one massacre out of many. Very many. Israeli soldiers killed people sheltering in a mosque, shot and threw handgrenades at women and children, and in one horrendous incident killed a group of Palestinians, who were coming towards them to offer them rice in the hope of getting some mercy. The IDF today enforces the brutal apartheid regime against the Palestinians, including the fouling of cisterns and wells to make the water undrinkable, and the demolition of houses and seizure of property by Israeli colonists.
I have no desire whatsoever to see my government give aid money to the IDF. And I very much doubt I’m alone.
This isn’t about anti-Semitism. I am very much aware that there is and always has been a very strong Jewish opposition to the ethnic cleansing and terror, which not only includes American and European Jews, but also Israelis such Ilan Pappe and human rights organisations such as BT’salem. Anyone, who dares to criticise Israel, is smeared and abused as an anti-Semite. But many anti-Zionist Jews, or simply Jews critical of the occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, feel that they are particularly singled out for abuse and vilification. Tony Greenstein, a veteran anti-Zionist and anti-Fascist campaigner, has quoted in his blog the left-wing comedian, Alexei Sayle. Sayle, the son of Jewish Communists, has said that it seems to him that the majority of people smeared as anti-Semites in the Labour Party were Jews.
Returning to Patel, an article by Adam Ramsay on the Open Democracy site, reveals that she has very extensive links to some very shady right-wing lobbying groups and thinktanks.
Before she was elected MP in 2010, Patel worked for the PR form Weber Shandwick, whose clients included British American Tobacco. Not only does the company produce a highly addictive and lethal drug, it also has links to the dictatorship in Myanmar and child labour. The article notes that some of the PR company’s employees were uncomfortable dealing with BAT. Not so Patel. She was perfectly relaxed.
BAT in their turn fund the right-wing think tanks the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute for Economic Affairs. In 2002, while Patel was working there, Weber Shandwick merged with the Israeli lobbyists Rimon Cohen, whose clients include the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, the illegal Migron settlement on the West Bank, and Benjamin Netanyahu. Whom Patel coincidentally met on her jaunt.
Weber Shandwick’s clients also included Bahrein, and just months after her election, the Bahreini’s flew her there to meet some of their ministers. This is a Gulf kingdom widely criticised for human rights abuses. In 2012 she went on another trip, this time to the United Arab Emirates, as part of the All Party Group, which went there. She made two return trips in 2013 and 2014. The first time she went with the World Consulting and Research Corporation, based in New Delhi. This outfit describe themselves as a brand equity and management organisation. The second trip was courtesy of Sun Mark Ltd., who are regular donors to her office. Weber Shandwick also added the Dubai firm Promoseven to its list of clients about the same time it merged with Rimon Cohen.
In 2014 she also attended a meeting in Washington, courtesy of the right-wing, and highly secretive British think tank, the Henry Jackson Society. The meeting was organised by AIPAC, the very powerful Israeli lobbying organisation in the US, about security in the Middle East. As for the Henry Jackson Society, they are so secretive about the source of their funds that they withdrew it from two parliamentary groups, rather than reveal where it comes from. Earlier this year the Charity Commission announced they were investigating it following allegations that it was being paid by the Japanese government to spread anti-Chinese propaganda.
Patel’s holiday to Israel also seems to have been sponsored by Stuart Polak, the former head and honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Israel. In 2009 Peter Oborne wrote a piece about the extensive influence the CFI has in the Tory party. Ramsay also notes that trips to Israel funded by the CFI and similar groups are the most consistent entry in the MPs’ and MSPs’ register of foreign interests.
The article concludes
Much has been written about the weakness of the current Conservative government, as exhibited by this scandal, Boris Johnson’s blunders, and last week’s resignation of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon amid allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour. But here is the problem. When governments are falling apart, special interest groups run riot. Flagrant abuses usually happen at times when minor abuses are normalised. What other powerful lobby groups are pushing ministers around? How did it get to the point that Patel thought she’d get away with this?
It’s a good question, though you’d have to work extremely hard to find out. The Labour MP Colin Challen wrote a piece years ago in Lobster reporting that half of Tory funding remains mysterious. As for the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs, they’re extreme right-wing think tanks that provided much of the ideology of the New Right during Thatcher’s grotty rise to power and period in office. They want to privatise everything, including the NHS and schools, as well as social security. I know. I’ve got the IEA’s pamphlets about the last two. The IEA also produced another pamphlet addressing a question vital to today’s women: Liberating Women – From Feminism. Which has been the line the Daily Mail’s taken almost since it was founded.
Mike yesterday put up a piece commenting on the strange verbiage of Patel’s resignation letter, and the reply from Theresa May. Both contained passages stressing that Patel was usually open and transparent about her business. Mike commented that neither of these letters actually looked like they’d been written by the two.
Mike comments that neither May nor Patel have acted transparently and openly, and we still don’t know what Downing Street’s role in this whole affair may have been. The Jewish Chronicle suggests it’s rather more than May and Patel are telling.
He concludes
This matter has demonstrated that Theresa May’s government has no interest in transparency and openness. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The minority Prime Minister will be hoping that it will go away, following the resignation of the offending minister.
It won’t.
We need to know exactly what happened, when it was arranged, with whom, who knew about it, who was there at the time, what was said about it afterwards and to whom, and whether all the information has been made public. My guess that it hasn’t.
Recent events involving Boris Johnson have shown that ministers cannot expect to be able to lie to us and expect us to accept it. We need the facts.
And if Theresa May can’t provide the answers, it won’t be one of her ministers who’ll need to resign.
And Patel’s trip to Israel is just one secretive lobbying trip, paid by some very shady people, of many.
It’s time this government was forced out, and some real transparency put in place.
Hope Not Hate on Anti-Semitism, Homophobia and the Islamophobes Speaking in Support of Tommy Robinson
June 13, 2018On Saturday the islamophobic far right held a march to protest against the arrest and jailing of Tommy Robinson, the founder of the EDL, and former member of the BNP and Pegida UK, for contempt of court. Robinson had been livestreaming his coverage of the trial of a group of Pakistani Muslim men accused of child abuse. There are very strict laws governing press coverage of trials, which Robinson broke, just as he had broken them a year or so before in Canterbury. This had earned him a suspended sentence, which automatically kicked in when he repeated the offence last week in Leeds. Robinson was arrested, convicted and jailed.
The laws Robinson broke are there to make sure that everyone gets a fair trial, and apply to all cases, not just those of Muslims accused of paedophilia. But Robinson’s supporters decided that he had been the victim of state censorship and imprisoned for his political beliefs by an establishment determined to protect paedophile Muslims and persecute Whites, hence the march. This was addressed by some of the most notorious islamophobes in Britain and the Netherlands.
Hope Not Hate have an article at their site identifying the speakers, and giving a brief description of their political careers and their very racist views on Islam and Muslims. They included the notorious anti-Islamic Dutch politician Gert Wilders; Anne-Marie Waters, who was formerly a Labour party member before joining Pegida with Tommy Robinson. In October last year, 2017, she launched another far right party, the For Britain Movement; Raheem Kassam, a former advisor to Nigel Farage and editor of Breitbart’s London branch. He’s also the direct of Student Rights, which claimed to be a campus monitoring group dedicated to combating extremism. In fact, it has no student members or links to student unions, though it is linked to the extreme rightwing American group, the Henry Jackson Society. It has also been criticised by several London student unions for targeting Muslim students, and the Institute of Race Relations also noted that its work was used by far right groups to target a Nuslim student event. He’s also the editor of another, Neoconservative news site, The Commentator.
And then there’s the extremely islamophobic UKIP MEP, Gerard Batten, who in 2011 addressed the Traditional Britain Group, the far right outfit that invited Jacob Rees-Mogg to their dinner. Mogg attended, but now claims he only did so because he didn’t really known what they were like. Which sounds very unlikely to me.
As well as vile views on Muslims, the article also describes the vicious hatred towards other groups of some of those associated with the speakers. Like Mandy Baldwin, a member of Waters’ For Britain Movement, who posted homophobic material from a Nazi website on a social media site. For Britain also includes several former members of the BNP and other Fascists, such as Sam Melia, who was a former member of the banned terrorist group, National Action. Another member, Stuart Nicholson, posted extremely anti-Semitic material on his Twitter account before it was withdrawn. In one of these, he retweeted a post that read “National Socialism is the alternative to degeneracy we currently face. It is a pathway to freedom and prosperity. It is an escape from Jewish Tyranny. It is the Future of our people.”
https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2018/06/08/march-tommy-robinson-extreme-anti-muslim-activists-line-speak/
It’s probably no surprise that some of those, who joined the anti-Islam movement also have a bitter hatred of gays and Jews, and openly support Nazism. All the stuff Nazis write about ‘Jewish tyranny’ is a vile lie, responsible for justifying the Holocaust under the Nazis. And Nazism never brought freedom and prosperity. For the German working class, is meant low wages and complete subordination of the workforce to the bosses as part of Hitler’s Fuhrerprinzip, or Leader Principle. Just as it meant the absolute political, social and economic dominance of the Nazi party and the proscription of all competing parties and organisations, whose members were rounded up and sent to the concentration camps.
I don’t doubt that not all members of the anti-Islam movement have views as extreme as these. But it does seem to show that if these people have their way and ban Islam and persecute or expel Muslims, sooner or later they will move on to attack other groups. Like gays and Jews.
Tags:'Student Rights' (Monitoring Group), Adolf Hitler, Anne-Marie Waters, anti-semitism, BNP, Breitbart, Concentration Camps, Courts, EDL, For Britain Movement, Gays, Gerard Batten, Gert Wilders, Henry Jackson Society, Hope Not Hate, Islamophobia, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Jews, Labour Party, Mandy Baldwin, MEPs, Muslims, National Action, Neocons, Paedophiles, Pegida UK, Raheem Kassam, Sam Melia, Social Media, Stuart Nicholson, Student Unions, The Commentator, the Holocaust, Tommy Robinson, Traditional Britain Group, Twitter, UKIP, Whites, Working Class
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