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It
is not often that one can, with pleasure, place on record that one was wrong in
expressing a particular opinion. But I can do this in the case of a TV
documentary film, Inside Britain's Israel Lobby, by the journalist and
political commentator Peter Oborne, broadcast on Monday 16th November by
Britain's Channel 4, an independent network, as part of its Dispatches
series.
On
the basis of the pro-Zionism of his regular employers The Spectator and
the Daily Mail (extreme in the case of the former, moderate in the case
of the latter), and what I perceived to be his involvement with the
Zionist-inspired media puffing the British National Party (BNP) towards its
present situation —
a pro-Israel populist party whose opposition to multi-racialism has been
replaced by an anti-Islam placebo —
I had predicted that Oborne's investigation of the Israel lobby would be a damp
squib at best, or disinformation at worst.
But
I was wrong about his film. It went to the heart of the exercise of Jewish power
in Britain. It established that this power is now so substantial and pervasive
that Jewry is able to manipulate key institutions of our nation, in particular
the governing Labour Party, the official opposition Conservative Party, and the
supposedly "independent and impartial by law" BBC for the benefit of a foreign
power: Israel.
Nobody
who saw the film could doubt that Zionist Jewry has been able to suborn many
people holding key positions with sundry organs of the British nation who have a
duty imposed by patriotism, honor and, in some cases, by law to uphold British
national sovereignty, political independence and democratic
freedoms.
In
my view these creatures have become 'Shabbas Goyim' who, in
return for career enhancement and/or cash, serve the interests of World Jewry in
all its locations and
apparitions and not just, as Oborne shows, the state of Israel.
I
will leave to another article the information I have about a cohort of
non-Jewish pro-Zionist journalists, mainly employed by Tory-supporting papers,
which made me expect the worst from Dispatches film before I saw it. This
information, considered in tandem with the film, provides us with a glimmer of
hope that Oborne's desertion from the cohort and his exposure of the Israel
Lobby may be part of a wider revolt by journalists against the relentless effort
by Zionist Jews to control their output in a way that puts Jewry and Israel
above criticism.
The
purpose of this article is to provide a taste of Oborne's research and to
comment on it. My review is based on seeing his film when broadcast, supported
by the full text of
Oborne's Dispatches commentary. This was posted in the "Our Kingdom —
power and liberty in Britain" section of the Open
Democracy web site, where it appears to be a pamphlet by
Oborne and one James Jones. No title, publisher, publication date or ISBN number
is given so it may be awaiting publication in hard copy form. With Oborne's text
the site has also posted a Foreword by
the Jewish anti-Zionist campaigner Antony Lerman
explaining why he assisted Oborne with the Dispatches report. Any
ambiguities may be resolved by those who have 50 minutes to spare by resort to
the YouTube
posting of the film. Unfortunately that posting has an embedded
block against downloading.
I
will, of course, intrude my own digressions into my review of Oborne's work, but
will take pains to separate my information and opinions from his. I may have
knowledge of matters either unknown to him or which, due to constraints of time
or a wish to avoid accusations "anti-Semitism," he was unable to
mention.
Despite
two very recent public opinion polls which indicate that that the general
election next Spring is likely to produce a "hung parliament", the psephological wisdom
prevailing for the past two years has it that the Conservative Party, led by
David Cameron, is likely to subject the current Labour Party government, led by
Gordon Brown, to a landslide defeat.
It
was in this context, coupled with David Cameron's cringing performance at this
year's annual luncheon staged by the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI)
—
which Oborne believes to be the best-funded lobbying group at Westminster
—
that his commentary began by dealing with Zionist manipulation of the Tory
Party:
Every year, in a central London hotel, a very grand lunch is thrown by the Conservative Friends of Israel. It is often addressed by the Conservative leader of the day. Many members of the shadow cabinet make it their business to be there along with a very large number of Tory peers and prospective candidates, while the Conservative MPs present amount to something close to a majority of the parliamentary party. It is a formidable turnout.
Oborne
remarked that the dominant event of the previous twelve months had been the
Israeli invasion of Gaza at the start of the year. He examined he text of
Cameron's speech to see how that event was handled.
I was shocked to see that Cameron made no reference at all to the invasion of Gaza, the massive destruction it caused, or the 1,370 deaths that had resulted. Indeed, Cameron went out of his way to praise Israel because it 'strives to protect innocent life'. I found it impossible to reconcile the remarks made by the young Conservative leader with the numerous reports of human rights abuses in Gaza. Afterwards I said as much to some Tory MPs. They looked at me as if I was distressingly näive, drawing my attention to the very large number of Tory donors in the audience.....
It is impossible to imagine any British political leader showing such equanimity and tolerance if British troops had committed even a fraction of the human rights abuses and war crimes of which Israel has been accused.
The
Saturday after that CFI luncheon Oborne criticized Cameron's speech in his
Daily Mail column, drawing particular attention to his failure to mention
Gaza and his speaking of "Israeli respect for the sanctity of human
life" and the presence of Jewish big business donors to Conservative
funds.
Immediately
he received a letter from CFI director Stuart Polak which lamented that his
"concentrating on the businessmen and David's alleged comments was
really unhelpful". Hot on the heels of Polak's letter was a missive
from CFI political director Robert Halfon who described Oborne's opinions as
"astonishing" and berated him for suggesting a "moral
equivalence" between Israel and Iran.
Such
letters from leading Zionist Lobby heavyweights usually have the effect of
causing hacks and their editors to issue profuse apologies and retractions. But
something in the deep background which we don't know about —
something more that just Israeli genocide in Gaza (which, disgusting though it
was, can hardly be described as unprecedented Israeli behavior) —
provided Oborne with additional backbone.
His
reaction to Polak's and Halfon's attempt to pressure him was
this:
I resolved then to ask the question: what led David Cameron to behave in the way he did at the CFI lunch at the Dorchester Hotel last June? What are the rules of British political behaviour which cause the Tory Party leader and his mass of MPs and parliamentary candidates to flock to the Friends of Israel lunch in the year of the Gaza invasion? And what are the rules of media discourse that ensure that such an event passes without notice?.....
Now
I want to ask a question that has never been seriously addressed in the
mainstream press: is there a Pro-Israel lobby in Britain, what does it do
and what influence does it wield?
[my emphasis]
That
is not the kind of question that the organized Jewish community thought would
ever again be posed in the mainstream media (albeit a channel whose
mandate is to cater to minority groups) and it is the reason why Oborne's film
was subjected to the Silent Treatment by much of the print and broadcasting
media even though Jewish web sites and discussion forums were crackling with
traffic —
but
more of the media reaction anon.
Oborne's
pursuit of answers to his questions inevitably led him to examine not only how
the Israel Lobby ensures that the Conservative Party pursues an Israel-friendly
line by deployment of financial and media patronage (with the specter of
character assassination, career destruction and financial ruin hovering in the
background), but also how it secures similar compliance from the Labour Party
and from national institutions such as the BBC, by application of precisely the
same model of bribery and intimidation.
As
to the Lobby's influence over the Tory Party, Oborne mentions that he consulted
the Lexis Nexis site to examine the way in which the CFI's activities are
largely ignored by the British media. His search revealed that since 1985 there
have been only 154 mentions of the CFI. In contrast, over the same period,
Michael Ashcroft, the (non-Jewish) billionaire donor to Tory Party funds
attracted 2,239; the Tobacco Manufacturers Association had 1,083; the Scotch
Whisky Association 2,895.
Under
revisions to the law implemented during the last decade with a view to providing
the electorate with "transparency" concerning political parties' sources of
funds, parties are required to "record" in their internal
accounts the sources of all donations of more than £200 but less than £5,000 and
are required to "report" in their accounts lodged with
the Electorate Commission (EC) the sources of all donations of £5,000 or more.
These annual accounts are posted on the EC's web site for public examination.
Oborne described how the Conservative Party is "bought-and-paid-for" by the CFI. This bribery is effected not just by big cash donations to Tory Central Office and to the party leader's "private office," but to the constituency organizations of individual MPs — or prospective parliamentary candidates.
The
CFI —
and also the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) —
gets around these EC regulations by making in its own name comparatively puny
donations. It then tips off its corporate and wealthy individual members to make
donations either to Conservative Central Office and/or to the constituency
organizations of favored MPs or candidates —
without any on-the-record mention of the CFI, Israel, Jewry or
whatever.
Oborne
gave two anecdotes of the way the system works, provided by informants who were
too afraid to go on record.
In
one case a man who is now a Tory MP described how before the 2005 election he
was lobbied by the CFI's Stuart Polak at a social occasion. At the end of the
meal, Polak asked the candidate if his campaign needed any money. A couple of
weeks later two checks arrived at the constituency office. Both came from
businessmen closely connected to the CFI whom the MP had never met and who had
never, so far as he knew, ever stepped inside his constituency.
In
the other case, a Tory parliamentary candidate contesting a marginal seat had gone to see Stuart Polak, where he
was tested on his views on Israel. Within a fortnight a check from a businessman
he had never met arrived in his constituency office.
Study
of donations to Conservative constituency offices before the 2005 election
reveals a clear pattern according to Oborne. A group of donors linked to the Zionist cause, almost
all of whom are on the board of the CFI and/or are prominently associated with
the Britain Israel
Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) made donations of
between £2,000 and £5,000 either personally or through their companies to the
constituency offices of certain Conservative candidates.
Despite
CFI and BICOM not formally merging, the two groups are closely coordinated. Many
of BICOM's key figures also play roles in the CFI: Trevor Pears, Michael Lewis
and Poju Zabludowicz —
all hugely wealthy —
are driving forces behind both lobbies.
Oborne
devoted special attention to Zabludowicz, a Finnish Jew whose father made
multi-millions as an international arms dealer. That fortune has now been
transferred to real estate investments, a portfolio that encompasses 40 per cent
of downtown Las Vegas and a shopping mall built in an illegal settlement in the
Israeli-occupied West Bank of Palestine.
Tory
leader David Cameron owes Trevor Pears and Poju Zabludowicz a special debt of
gratitude. When Cameron was campaigning to secure the party leadership he
received a £20,000 donation from Pears and donations amounting to £15,000 from
Tamares Real Estate Investments, a Zabludowicz subsidiary based in
Britain.
According
to Oborne, since 2005 (the year of the last Parliamentary general election) the
total of the CFI's donations to the Tory Party made in its own name, added to
those made by CFI members, personal and corporate, in their own names but at the
CFI's recommendation, has been in excess of £10 million.
On
17th November, the day after Dispatches was broadcast, the Jewish
Chronicle web site carried a
report
entitled "Dispatches criticised by leading Jews" which included an interview
with CFI director Stuart Polack. His remarks were coy, to say the
least:
The programme's claim that CFI donated £10m to the Conservatives over the last eight years was "deeply flawed."
"Deeply
flawed"?
Why
not "untrue" or "wrong" or "a lie"? "Deeply flawed" is clearly one of those
"non-denial denials" beloved by spin doctors who can also devise "non-apology
apologies". Do these flim-flam artists believe that all the goyim are
completely brain-dead?
Polak then went on to
say:
CFI as an organisation has donated only £30,000 since 2005. Each of these donations has been made transparently and publicly registered. In addition to this £30,000, it is undoubtedly the case that some of our supporters have also chosen, separately, to donate to the party as individuals.
Note
the "as an organisation." He ducks the crucial issue of
donations made by individuals and companies at the CFI's and BICOM's
instigation.
In
order to yet further obscure the Zionist purchase of the Conservative and Labour
parties, the CFI, the LFI and BICOM are constituted as "unincorporated
associations" —
not
companies, registered charities, political parties or other formal entities
which the law requires to maintain accounts for annual submission to the Inland
Revenue or other relevant statutory authorities.
These
are not the kind of arrangements we would expect from public spirited citizens
willing to expend their largesse in an open and above-board way to promote what
they see as good causes through political action.
These are arrangements employed by conspirators intent on corrupting public servants and anxious to hide the source of the bribes. One is put in mind of the criminal mastermind Meyer Lansky who created the financial structure of America's modern Cosa Nostra. When faced with prosecution he fled not to Sicily but to Israel where he claimed admission under the "Law of The Return" which grants Israeli citizenship to all "authentic Jews."
Turning
to the Zionist influence over the Labour Party (and hence, the current Labour
government), Oborne covered territory which is well known and notorious: the
relationship between Tony Blair —
Gordon Brown's predecessor as Prime Minister — and
Lord Michael Levy.
Levy
was the principal fund-raiser for Blair's "private office" through a so-called
"blind fund." £2 million was raised. Please note: Though they played tennis
together at Levy's mansion every week for several years, they never ever
discussed the names of the contributors or how much they were
giving.
Levy
was also the principal fund raiser for the Labour Party itself (in excess of £15
million). His success was such that he became known as "Lord Cashpoint." Blair
wanted Levy to replace the trade unions as Labour's principal source of income,
and told Levy as much.
The
saga of Levy's fall from grace as a result of his central involvement in the
"Cash for Honours" scandal —
for which he was arrested but, after a long wait, not prosecuted —
is well known and was concisely summarized by Oborne, so I need not repeat it
here. The full story is but a Google search away.
What
is not so well known —
at least until Oborne's film —
is that Levy was rewarded for his services to the Zionist cause by being
co-opted to the premier secular entity of British Jewry: the Jewish Leadership
Council (JLC). Who set up this secretive oligarchy, which is never mentioned in
the mass media, and how it was vested with supremacy, is not clear. Its
existence excites "conspiracy theorists" to make comparisons with the fabulous
"Learned Elders of Zion".
The
JLC's current membership is understood (at least by me) to include: Poju
Zabludowicz, Chairman of BICOM; Henry Grunwald, President of the Board of
Deputies of British Jews (JBD); Gerald Ronson, Chairman of the Community
Security Trust (CST); and Lord Greville Janner, President of the Holocaust
Educational Trust (HET) and of the LFI. All these Great Panjandrums of Jewry
are, of course, multi-millionaires or billionaires.
I
add to Oborne's information by mentioning that Levy is not the only member of
the JLC who has had his collar felt by the police.
In the late 1980s Gerald Ronson was
jailed for his part in a massive Guinness brewery share-trading fraud. On his
release he, along with other of his partners in crime, were "guests of honour"
[sic] at a Welcome Home banquet presided over by the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Jonathan
Sacks, who has since been ennobled and is now Lord Sacks.
Sad
to say, because of his criminal record, the Queen is unlikely to raise Ronson to
the peerage so that he can sit with Sacks in the House of Lords, but he has been
given a consolation prize by the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, who appointed him
as a member of the "Order of Civil Merit." This entitles him to be addressed as:
"Illustrísimo Señor Don Gerald Ronson". (You couldn't make it up, could
you?)
Ronson's
appointment as Chairman of the CST, Jewry's private security and "spook"
organization, was another Jewish one-finger salute to Britain's law enforcement
authorities. Here's why:
When
the CST was established in 1995/6 the London Metropolitan Police and the Greater
Manchester Police were prevailed upon by the then Conservative government to
provide the CST's personnel with training and intelligence sharing. It is likely
that the arrangement was devised by Neville Nagler, for years the senior Home
Office civil servant in charge of race relations matters who, immediately upon
retirement, was appointed Executive Director of the JBD.
This
was a quite unprecedented and, I believe, extra-legal arrangement between the
British police and a private political security formation with close and
admitted connections with a foreign power. The arrangement has continued under a
Labour government despite the appointment of Ronson, a convicted criminal, as
the CST chairman.
So senior police officers continue to be obliged — some may be more than willing — to attend annual CST banquets at swanky West End hotels presided over by a convicted fraudster and jail-bird, and exchange polite conversation with Zionist fanatics, some of whom are doubtless Mossad Sayanim..... and all "in the interests of good community relations."
At
the last CST dinner held early this year at the Grosvenor House Hotel in
Mayfair, Lord Levy made a beeline for Assistant-Commissioner John Yates, deputy
head of the Met at Scotland Yard. Yates headed the investigation into the "Cash
for Honours" scam and it fell to him to arrest Levy in connection with that
matter.
Before
the gaze of all present, Levy enjoyed administering ostentatious and patronizing
"no hard feelings" back-slaps on the hapless Yates. This officer's feelings, and
the corrosive effect news of it has had on wider police morale, political
independence and integrity, may be imagined.
I
conclude this digression on a lighter note. The central figure in the
Guinness/Distillers shares-fraud was prominent Jewish businessman Ernest
Saunders. He had part of his jail term remitted on the grounds that he had
Alzheimers disease. This incurable and fatal degenerative brain condition went
into an unprecedented remission upon his release. Indeed, he was able to start a
new career on the business studies lecture circuit, to the continuing amazement
of the medical profession —
and the admiration of us all.
“Shabbas
goyim” grovel in House of Commons Fiascos
Returning
to Oborne's Dispatches thread: The sickly farce enacted between leading
officials of the CFI and the LFI on the floor of the House of Commons (as they
engage in what the general public is told is "the Labour v. Conservative
ding-dong battle") was well covered.
He cited a recent Commons question from senior Tory MP David Amess "to enquire what the British government was doing to improve British relations with Israel."
The government's answer came from Ivan Lewis MP, the Foreign Office Minister with special responsibility for the Middle East. He replied: "Israel is a close ally of the United Kingdom and we have regular warm and productive exchanges at all levels..... We shall continue to foster a close relationship with Israel."
Many honorable members on both sides of the House, their constituency bank balances gagging for more Zionist donations, just as were given before the last general election — and the election before that, and before that, ad nauseam — nodded sagely and called "Hear hear!"
The
House of Commons order paper, the subsequent report in Hansard and media
coverage of these proceedings failed to mentioned that David Amess is the
secretary of the CFI while Ivan Lewis is a former vice-chairman of the LFI.
The Jewish
Lobby is not only able to stage-manage question sessions involving relatively
junior members of the government, it is able to set the agenda for the
well-known weekly Prime Minister's Questions.
In these time-limited sessions, it is very hard for ordinary members to "catch the Speaker's eye" — i.e., be given the opportunity to put a question and thereby gain massive publicity for a topic. (The recently-appointed Speaker is John Bercow, a Jew co-opted to the ancient and prestigious post from the Tory benches. His wife is a non-Jewish Labour Party prospective parliamentary candidate. What's the betting he's a member of the CFI and she's a members of the LFI?)
During Prime Minister's Questions at the end of November — too late for Oborne to include in his Dispatches report — Tory leader Cameron asked Prime Minister Brown about £130,000 of public funds said to have been made available to two Muslim schools run by the Shakhsiyah Foundation in Slough and Haringey which Cameron alleged had "links" to the "Islamic extremist" group Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Brown replied that he would investigate Cameron's concerns "very, very carefully."
The obvious
purpose of the question was to suggest that the current Labour administration
was soft on "Islamic extremists" (sub-text: "terrorists"!). But another unstated
item on the Jewish agenda was at work as well, namely:
Why was the government making grants to militant Islamic schools while the Jewish Free School (JFS) is shortly to appear at the Supreme Court to appeal against a High Court ruling that the school's admissions policy is "discriminatory on the grounds of race or ethnic origin" and, hence, illegal under the Race Relations Act?
Background:
The JFS refused to admit a boy whose father is Jewish according to the Orthodox
interpretation of the Halacha, but whose
mother was born into a non-Jewish family but converted to Judaism via the
Liberal-Reform route. Liberal-Reform conversions are not recognized as valid by
the majority United Synagogue congregation, from among whose rabbinate the Chief
Rabbi of the UK is always appointed. (Liberal-Reform conversions are likewise
not recognised by the Orthodox rabbinical authorities in Israel who adjudicate
on claims for citizenship under the Law of The
Return).
I
understand that the litigation against the JFS, though launched by the boy's
parents is —
or eventually became —
"legally-aided," that is, supported by grants of public funds via the Legal Aid
Fund.
I
surmise that the almost coincidentally similar litigation launched against the
BNP by the government's equality quango,
the
Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), to persuade the party to change
its constitution so as to open its membership to all applicants regardless of
their ethnic origin (a demand that BNP chairman Nick Griffin says he is willing
to accept without testing its legality before the courts!) was only instigated
to provide "proof" that the government and its agencies are even-handed in the
enforcement of anti-discriminatory legislation.
Having
explored the background to Cameron's question to the Prime Minister, we must
ask: Who provided the information on which the question was based? Step forward
Michael Gove, shadow Conservative education secretary. We know this because it
emerged that two weeks before Cameron put his question to Brown in public to a
blaze of publicity the same facts were rehearsed by Gove in a private letter he
sent to the government's education secretary Ed Balls.
But
we must dig deeper. Who provided Gove with the information about the obscure
alleged "links" between Islamic schools' owners, the Shakhsiyah
Foundation, and the alleged "Islamic extremists" of Hizb-ut-Tahrir? We have two
good clues.
Firstly,
last year Gove was appointed as an honorary patron of the Zionist Federation
(ZF). The very discreet announcement in the 28th March 2008 Jewish
Chronicle which recorded this appointment also mentioned that the previous
month he had been awarded the ZF's Jerusalem Prize "in honour of his
support for Israel's security and well-being." (No
mention was made of the amount of money which comes with this prize. Perhaps no
hard cash as granted by the Nobel Foundation, but the the certainty of a golden
career path.)
Secondly,
the Daily Telegraph of 3rd July 2007, reporting Gove's promotion as
shadow Education Secretary, ended by recording that Gove's wife is one Sarah
Vine, who I understand is Jewish and who was at the time of the report
—
and may still be —
a leader writer with The Times. Gove was assistant editor and chief
leader writer of The Times before his election to the House of Commons in
2005.
In
1998 Gove was the first senior journalist of a prestigious mass-circulation
newspaper to give substantial and helpful coverage to Nick Griffin when he was
seeking to displace John Tyndall as the leader of the BNP. That article set a
trend throughout the British media, but especially among papers who support the
Tory party and maintain a pro-Israel line.
(I
give more information about The Times and its disproportionate number of
Jewish senior staff later in this article.)
Turning
from the corruption of Conservative and Labour MPs, and, hence, of successive
Labour and Conservative governments, so that the war-mongering and genocidal
state of Israel might be protected and assisted, Oborne's other main theme was
the relentless campaign by the Israel Lobby to regulate the output of the
British media on the subject of Israel and Zionist influence at home and abroad.
Its principal target of this campaign for years has been the
BBC.
Here
I must again intrude a personal digression which I feel provides essential
background:
It
is true that "the Beeb" (as the BBC is popularly known) is full of Lefties of
various stripes who promote all manner of "politically correct" agendas,
including, of course "anti-racism." While I was prominently associated for more
than a decade with the now long-dead National Front, I was continuously a target
for their attacks.
So
while I have no personal motive for coming to the defense of these people, I
have to allow that for some of them their "anti-racist" beliefs are sincere and
applied without exception.
It is a pity that this principled approach does not allow them to realize that "racism" and "racialism" are different. The latter does not represent a desire to persecute, let alone exterminate, other races but a wish to protect one's own folk and ancient culture from the creeping genocide which is the inevitable and intended outcome of enforced race-mixing.
Zionists fret as some leftists wake up
Be
all this as it may, some of the principled anti-racist Lefties of the BBC
(including a few Jews) hold that Jewish "racism" is just as objectionable as any
other kind. They have seen with their own eyes as reporters on the ground that
Israel, supported by Zionist-Jewry throughout the Diaspora, is engaged in a
genocidal ethnic-cleansing onslaught against the Palestinians perpetrated
by application of terrorism,
massacres, besiegement, wanton destruction of property, imprisonment, theft,
torture and other varieties of wickedness.
Despite
the Zionists' massive exploitation of the "Holocaust" narrative —
designed
to impair the eyesight and deaden
the consciences of the peoples of "the West" —
an
increasing element of the Left, including some of those in the BBC, has been
forced to confront the reality of the genocide being perpetrated right now by
the Jews against the Palestinians.
The attitude, traditional among Lefties until about 25 years ago, that philo-Semitism (and, hence, pro-Zionism) was part-and-parcel of what it means to be Left Wing and "progressive" has withered in the face of what Israel has been doing.
Principled
anti-racist journalists in the BBC (and elsewhere, such as The Guardian
and The Independent) have increasingly felt compelled to expose Israel as
a "racist'" state pursuing policies closely resembling those of Apartheid
South Africa and even —
gasp!
—
the
German National Socialists.
It
is because the Zionists, especially the "far Right" element —
who
constitute the political mainstream in Israel and increasingly among Jews
elsewhere —
have
been waking up to their loss of a growing portion of gentile Left Wing opinion
that they have been taking an interest in the emergent "far Right" in Europe,
providing it can be induced to abandon its traditional "anti-semitism", support
Israel and campaign against the "Islamification of Europe" rather than against
Afro-Asian immigration and multi-racialism per se.
I return
now to Oborne's film and his description of the way in which the Israel Lobby
has sought to place a leash on the BBC and The Guardian. (The
Independent is obviously considered to be such small fry that it seems to
have escaped Zionism's big guns, despite the wonderfully courageous reports from
its Middle East correspondent Robert
Fisk.)
Oborne
begins by recounting the eruption of Zionist fury when in 2006 Guardian
journalist Chris McGreal
produced an
article which compared Israel's policies to South African
Apartheid. An emergency meeting was called at the Israeli ambassador's
residence with BICOM chairman Poju Zabludowicz, JBD president Henry Grunwald,
CST chairman Gerald Ronson and LFI & HET president 'Lord' Janner —
all, so far as I know, members of the JLC.
Ronson
and Grunwald were deputed to visit Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger at his
office. Without even taking off his coat, Ronson launched into a foul-mouthed
attack ("...opinions are like arse holes —
everybody's
got one!...") which concluded with the allegation that McGreal's
article had prompted violent physical assaults on Jews in
London.
That
is a very serious allegation which, had there been the slightest evidence to
support it, could have prompted an "Incitement to Racial Hatred" prosecution
which, if successful, might have landed Rusbridger in jail. Even without a
prosecution such an allegation constitutes a potentially damaging
smear.
Oborne reported that Rusbridger kept his
nerve and replied coolly:
I'd be interested in the evidence, I'm not sure how you make that causal connection between someone reading an article that is critical of the foreign policy of Israel and then thinking why don't I go out and mug Jews on the streets of London. I just can't believe that happens.
We
are left with the impression that the discussion fizzled out quite soon after
that response. Later the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in
America (CAMERA), a pro-Israel media "watchdog," was put up to stray far from
its territory to lodge a complaint with the UK's Press Complaints Commission.
This asserted that McGreal's article was "based on materially
false accusations." The complaint was not upheld.
Rusbridger went on to tell Oborne that The Guardian was not the only paper to come under such pressure, which often works. "There are a lot of newspaper and broadcasting editors who have told me that they just don't think it's worth the hassle to challenge the Israeli line. They've had enough."
But
nothing experienced by The Guardian can match the viciousness of the
campaign waged by the Israel Lobby against the BBC. Here it involved not merely
lobbying the senior management of the corporation but waging personal campaigns
against individual journalists designed to ruin their reputations and terminate
their careers.
Oborne
substantiated his claims about these Zionist vendettas against individual BBC
journalists by recounting the experiences of Middle East correspondent Orla
Guerin, Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen and multi-program presenter Jonathan
Dimbleby (currently chairman of Any Questions, Britain's best-known and
longest-running radio political forum.
He
prefaced his coverage of campaigns of persecution against particular BBC
journalists with these general observations about the British
media:
Making criticisms of Israel can give rise to accusations of anti-semitism — a charge which any decent or reasonable person would assiduously seek to avoid. Furthermore most British newspaper groups — for example News International.....[owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of Sky TV, The Sun [a tabloid], and The Times, whose editor James Harding, assistant editor Danny Finkelstein and chief political columnist David Aaronovitch are all Zionist Jews], Telegraph newspapers.....[owned by the reclusive Barclay brothers, gentile Scotsmen, who seem to favor the strongly pro-Tory, pro-Israel line of the senior editorial staff of their papers, a mixture of Roman Catholic philo-Semites and Jews], and the Express Group..... [owned by Richard Desmond, a Jew, who made himself a billionaire publishing pornographic magazines, but who then went upmarket and bought out the Daily and Sunday Express which are now vehicles for pro-Israel and anti-Muslim/Islam sentiment, and which increasingly carry articles helpful to the BNP as that party has aligned itself with far-right Zionism] — have tended to take a pro-Israel line and have not always been an hospitable environment for those taking a critical look at Israeli foreign policy and influence. Finally, media critics of Israeli foreign policy — as we will vividly demonstrate in this pamphlet — can open themselves up to coordinated campaigns and denunciation.
Some journalists we spoke to had been accused of anti-semitism, and felt inevitably it had done some damage to their careers. Others, like the BBC's Orla Guerin, against whom this very serious and damaging charge has repeatedly been made by the Israeli government, wouldn't even talk to us off the record. It is easy enough to see why. Guerin is a brave, honest and compassionate reporter. Yet the Israeli government has repeatedly complained to the BBC that Guerin is "antisemitic" and showed "total identification with the goals and methods of Palestinian terror groups."
On one
occasion, in an appalling charge, they linked her reporting from the Middle East
to the rise of antisemitic incidents in Britain. When Guerin was based in the
Middle East in 2004, she filed a report about a sixteen year-old Palestinian
would-be suicide bomber. Guerin said in the report that "this is a picture that
Israel wants the world to see," implying the Israelis were exploiting the boy
for propaganda purposes.
Natan Sharansky, a cabinet minister at the time, wrote a
formal letter to the BBC accusing her of "such a gross
double standards to the Jewish state, it is difficult to see Ms Guerin's report
as anything but antisemitic."
The following year, when Guerin was awarded with an MBE for her reporting, Sharansky said: "It is very sad that something as important as anti-semitism is not taken into consideration when issuing this award, especially in Britain where the incidents of anti-semitism are on the rise." Officially sanctioned smears like this show why so many people shy away from confronting the influence of the Israel lobby.
In
April this year, in an important success for the pro-Israel lobby, the BBC's
Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, was criticized by the BBC Trust for breaching
their rules of accuracy and impartiality in an online piece, and their rules of
accuracy in a radio piece. Bowen's critics have seized on his humiliation,
demanding that he be sacked and insisting that the episode proved the BBC's
"chronically biased reporting." The real story behind the BBC Trust's criticism
of Bowen reports is rather different: it demonstrates the pusillanimity of the
BBC Trust and the energy and opportunism of the pro-Israel lobby.
The
story begins with an essay written by Bowen to mark the 40th anniversary of the
1967 Arab-Israeli War for the BBC website. Though many people viewed Bowen's
essay as a fair and balanced account, erring if anything on the side of
conventional wisdom, this was not the reaction of two passionate members of the
Pro-Israel lobby, Jonathan Turner of the Zionist Federation and Gilead Ini, who
lobbies for CAMERA, an American pro-Israel media watchdog organization.
Turner
and Ini subjected Bowen's article to line by line scrutiny, alleging some 24
instances of bias in his online article and a further four in a later report by
Bowen from a controversial Israeli settlement called Har Homa.
Turner and Ini's complaints were rejected by the BBC's editorial complaints unit, so they duly appealed to the BBC Trust. The meeting was chaired by David Liddiment who, to quote Jonathan Dimbleby, "is admired as a TV entertainment wizard and former director of programmes at ITV but whose experience of the dilemmas posed by news and current affairs, especially in relation to the bitterly contested complexities of the Middle East is, perforce, limited."
The BBC Trust
found that Bowen had breached three accuracy and one impartiality guideline in
his online report, and one accuracy guideline in his radio piece. This was a
massive boost for the organizations to which Turner and Ini were attached. The
Zionist Federation at once called for Bowen to be sacked, calling his position
"untenable," while adding that what they called his "biased coverage of Israel"
had been a "significant contributor to the recent rise in antisemitic incidents
in the UK to record levels." Meanwhile, CAMERA claimed that the BBC Trust had
exposed Bowen's "unethical" approach to his work and insisted the BBC must now
take "concrete steps" to combat its "chronically biased reporting" of the Middle
East.
These
powerful attacks might have been justified if the BBC Trust had found Bowen
guilty of egregious bias. In fact he was condemned for what were at best matters
of opinion. In a majority of the cases, the complaints were found to have no
merit, and where changes were made they changed the meaning very little. ... The
Trust's ruling was met with dismay in BBC newsrooms. A former BBC News editor,
Charlie Beckett, told us "the BBC investigated Jeremy Bowen because they were
under such extraordinary pressure. ... It struck a chill through the actual BBC
newsroom because it signaled to them that they were under assault."
Jonathan
Dimbleby had boldly expressed criticism in a powerfully argued article for
Index on Censorship of the pressure from pro-Israel groups on the BBC,
which led to the BBC Trust's report on Jeremy Bowen, and had initially been keen
to be involved. Suddenly his interest evaporated. There simply wasn't the time,
he said. At first we felt baffled and let down. But in due course we discovered
that his comments had brought a complaint from the very same lawyer, Jonathan
Turner of the Zionist Federation, that had complained about Jeremy
Bowen.
Dimbleby
is now going through the exact same complaints process that he criticized.
Turner is arguing that Dimbleby's comments make him unfit to host the BBC's
Any Questions. The Dimbleby experience serves as a cautionary tale for
anyone approaching this subject. Others, such as Sir John Tusa, who had opposed
the BBC's refusal to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza appeal,
were overcome with modesty, feeling that they simply didn't have the expertise
to tackle the subject.
This
now brings us to one of the most disgraceful decisions ever taken by the BBC's
senior management, a decision which indicates the extent to which they are now
receptive to Zionist pressure. This receptivity may in part be due to
intimidation of the kind revealed by Oborne, but there is another factor which
he has not mentioned, which he must have known about, but which did not feature
in his otherwise excellent report. That factor will emerge shortly, but let us
deal first with the disgraceful decision.
The
BBC prides itself on its tradition of mounting at short notice major appeals for
funds from the viewing and listening public to bring aid to innocent civilian
people anywhere in the world afflicted by disasters and
catastrophes.
The
Israeli attack on the Gaza strip in December 2008/January 2009, "Operation Cast
Lead," involving massive slaughter and wanton destruction at a level which the
report (250
pages in Pdf format) of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on
the Gaza Conflict, headed by the South African Jewish Judge Richard Goldstone
was obliged to characterize as "actions amounting to war crimes, possibly
crimes against humanity" was just the kind of event which would prompt the
BBC, along with all other broadcasting networks, to support such an appeal by
the Disasters Emergency Committee.
But
that did not happen. In Oborne's words:
In
January 2009, Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, took the unprecedented
decision of breaking away from other broadcasters and refusing to broadcast the
Disasters Emergency Appeal for Gaza, claiming it would compromise the BBC's
impartiality. ITV and Channel 4 screened the Gaza appeal, but Sky [a
satellite TV network owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International]
joined the BBC in refusing.
The
BBC's decision had an undeniable impact. Brendan Gormley, Chief Executive of the
DEC, told us that the appeal raised about half of the expected total: £7.5
million. In the first 48 hours of the appeal phone calls were down by 17,000 on
the average.
Thompson
also cast doubt on the charities' ability to deliver aid on the ground despite
assurances from the DEC and his own charitable appeals advisers that this was
not the case
We asked Charlie Beckett why the BBC had refused. He replied: "If there was no pro-Israeli lobby in this country then I don't think [screening the appeal] would have been seen as politically problematic. I don't think it would be a serious political issue and concern for them if they didn't have that pressure from an extraordinarily active, sophisticated, and persuasive lobby sticking up for the Israeli viewpoint."
It would be easy to conclude, as Oborne
seems to have done, that this wicked decision to deny aid to a wretched civilian
population whose environment resembled Hiroshima after the atomic bomb blast,
was the product — solely
the product —
of the intimidation campaign against the BBC by the Israel
Lobby.
But
there is another explanation. It was given in a small item that appeared in Guy Adams' Pandora gossip
column, published in The Independent on November 29, 2005.
Under the heading "BBC chief holds peace talks in Jerusalem with Ariel
Sharon", Adams wrote [with emphases added by me]:
The
BBC is often accused of an anti-Israeli bias in its coverage of the Middle East,
and recently censured reporter Barbara Plett for saying she "started to cry"
when Yasser Arafat left Palestine shortly before his
death.
Fascinating, then, to learn that its director
general, Mark Thompson, has recently returned from Jerusalem, where
he held a face-to-face meeting with the hard line Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon.
Although
the
diplomatic visit was not publicised on these
shores, it has been seized upon in
Israel as evidence that Thompson, who took office in 2004, intends to build
bridges with the country's political
class.
Sources at the
Beeb also suspect that it heralds a "softening" to the corporation's unofficial
editorial line on the Middle East.
This
was the first visit of its kind by any serving director general, so it's clearly
a significant development, I'm told.
Not many people know this, but Mark is actually a deeply religious man. He's a Catholic, but his wife is Jewish, and he has a far greater regard for the Israeli cause than some of his predecessors.
Understandably,
an official BBC spokesman was anxious to downplay talk of an exclusively
pro-Israeli charm offensive.
Apopros this month's previously undocumented trip, he stressed that Thompson had also held talks with the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas.
Ariel
Sharon, of course, achieved Major War Criminal status when he was still serving
with the Israeli "Defense" Force. Sharon added to his reputation when he became
Israeli Prime Minister when he wallowed exultantly in Palestinian and Lebanese
blood. What is the head of our Beeb doing even being in the same room, let lone
holding meetings hidden from the British public, with such a
man?
Has
there been any other occasion when the premier of a foreign state has been able
to summon into his presence, on his territory, the Director-General of the
British Broadcasting Corporation for a harangue about the editorial policy of
the corporation via-à-vis that foreign state?
According
to the statute which established the corporation, not even a British prime
minister has the power to do any such thing. Any attempt to do so, were it to be
established, would provoke an uproar which would likely lead to the resignation
of the prime minister, if not the fall of the
government.
Quite
obviously it would be naive to assert that successive British governments have
never exerted —
or attempted to exert —
behind-the-scenes pressures on the BBC with regard to its domestic output (I
exclude the BBC World Service, which broadcasts to foreigners and which is
subsidized by the Foreign Office), but that cannot be viewed as a license for
the Israeli prime minister to do the same thing and, what is more, flaunt the
fact.
I
am surprised that Oborne did not use in his film the information published in
The Independent in 2005 and which is still available via a Google search.
As I say, he must have known about it.
Perhaps
the fact about Thompson's wife being Jewish might have been viewed as too
"personal" and open to allegations of "anti-Semitism". But if the slightest bit
of research were to be done on philo-Semitic Gentiles active on Israel's behalf
in the media and in major political parties and the number of these who have
Jewish wives, then eyebrows would be raised beyond the level of
coincidence.
Certainly
the information about Thompson going to Jerusalem to discuss BBC editorial
policy towards Israel with the Israeli prime minister was a political fact
apposite to the central theme of the Oborne's program: The influence of Zionist
Jews over leading officials of British state and national institutions to direct
their policies for the benefit of Israel, even if it harms British national
interests.
Such
influence cannot be described as mere "lobbying." It constitutes treasonous
subversion, and it must be rooted out.
The
information which Oborne produced in his Dispatches report deserved
massive coverage by the entire print and broadcasting media, but especially the
BBC, which was so strongly featured.
But
the BBC did not carry, so far as I can find, a single mention on any of its
multiple TV, radio and web platforms, not even in any of it programs or sites
which specialize in reporting what other media are
reporting.
The
Guardian
and The Independent allowed some small-scale print coverage and debate in
their web site discussion forums but these are relatively small-circulation
publications.
The
Times,
which proclaims itself as "The Paper of Record", and all other entities in
Rupert Murdoch's News International group (including The Sun and Sky TV;
Independent Television, ITV1 and Channel 5; The Daily Telegraph and all
other entities in the Telegraph Group; the Daily Mail; the Daily
Mirror) all were completely silent about the film.
The
Jewish Chronicle carried smallish, dismissive, low-key print reports and
comment, but these did not reflect the quantity and angst of
contributions on its website and on a variety of other Jewish community
sites.
The almost universal and clearly coordinated application of the "Silent Treatment" of this film is both an illustration of the oppressive power of the Zionist Lobby over the 'news' media (and therefore over the public's "right to know") — which was one of the main points of the film — but also an indication that no comprehensive rebuttal of Oborne's litany of damning facts could be found.
Martin
Webster (email him) has
been a racial-nationalist activist in Britain since he was an 18 year old in
1961. From 1969 until 1983 he was National Activities Organiser of the National
Front and a member of its National Directorate. In 1973 he was the first
nationalist in Britain (pre- or post-WW2) to "save a deposit" (then set at
12.5%) in a parliamentary election when he won 16.02% of the poll at West
Bromwich in 1973. Since 1983 he has not associated with any political
organization. He issues occasional e-bulletins to a world-wide circle of friends
(and some enemies) who subscribe to his Electronic Loose Cannon
newsletter, which comments on nationalist issues and parties, and his
Electronic Watch on Zion whose title explains its purpose.
Permanent URL:
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Webster-Oborne.html
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