Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Before New Labour was invented, the Labour party was more sympathetic to the Palestinians. Jon Mendelsohn of the Labour Friends of Israel has explained how it changed: '"Blair has attacked the anti-Israelism that had existed in the Labour Party. Old Labour was cowboys-and-Indians politics, picking underdogs to support, but the milieu has changed. Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to Labour Friends of Israel meetings."'

One of Blair’s first acts on becoming an MP in 1983 was to join Labour Friends of Israel. But the major change only occurred after he rose to control of the Labour party. To carry out his planned policies, he needed to try to break the funding influence of the trade unions. So he needed an ally with ample funds.

In 1994, a legal friend and colleague of his, Eldred Tabachnik, Q.C., the former president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, introduced him to Michael Levy, a pop music mogul and fundraiser for Jewish and Israeli causes....

Levy expressed his willingness “to raise large sums of money for the party” if there was a “tacit understanding that Labour would never again, while Blair was leader, be anti-Israel”.

The result: Levy ran the Labour Leader’s Office Fund to finance Blair’s campaign in the 1997 General Election. Levy in effect made New Labour possible....

But, Blair needed a constant source of funds if he was to reduce the influence of the unions – and, it seems, he needed to hide its source lest it be questioned. One of the better known figures at Labour Friends of Israel is David Abrahams, a Jewish property developer.... Abrahams took on part of the task of secretly funding New Labour. He gave more than £650,000 to the Party under four other people’s names – a move since admitted to be unlawful by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown but which has had no legal consequence....

Levy became our “special envoy” to the Middle-East despite having a serous conflict of Interest. He was supposed to negotiate impartially with Palestinians and Israelis but he had acted as a fundraiser for former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak as well as lobbying for Israel in the UK. He has both a business and a house in Israel and calls himself an ‘international Zionist.’...

Gordon Brown

Gordon is more personally immersed in Zionism than Blair. It is something he grew up with in his childhood. He told a recent gathering, ‘I have been proud to be a member of Labour Friends of Israel over three decades. My father used to spend many weeks in Israel, he was the chairman of the Church of Scotland’s Israel Committee. He went on visits to meet people twice a year for more than 20 years.’

... One of Gordon Brown's first acts after assuming the Prime Minister's role was to accept an appointment as Patron of the Jewish National Fund founded in 1901. The Israeli government sold to this Fund the land seized from Arab refugees – and then made this land only available for Jews to settle on. It planted forests over the uprooted olive trees of former Palestinian settlements. It currently owns about 14% of Israel....

[Brown] has ensured continued Jewish funding of New Labour by appointing Mendelssohn of Labour Friends of Israel as his chief fundraiser for the next election. He has also appointed former British ambassador to Israel, Simon McDonald, as his chief foreign policy adviser. Israel has expressed satisfaction with the choice, saying he is "a true friend to Israel."... [Brown's] new Middle East Minister is Kim Howells, a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel. The Director of Labour Friends of Israel is David Mencer, a former volunteer for the Israeli Defence Force.