UK: Illegal to Boycott Israel

The New Observer
February 16, 2016

The Jewish lobby-controlled British government has announced that it will soon implement a law which will make it illegal for all public bodies—including local authorities and universities—to organize or participate in a boycott of Israel.

According to the UK’s Jewish Chronicle, Conservative Party “Cabinet Office Minister Matt Hancock is expected to visit Israel to issue the guidance which will be applied to councils, National Health Service (NHS) trusts, universities, and other British public bodies.”

The law will be an echo of Israel’s “Law for Prevention of Damage to State of Israel through Boycott,” which was approved by the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in July 2011.

In terms of the proposed legislation, any institution which even partly relies on state financing—which includes all universities, local authorities, and student organizations—will be breaking the law if they dare oppose Israeli policies against the Palestinians.

The UK version of the law comes after the “Boycott, Disinvestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) movement in Britain has taken increasing foothold due to the racial demographic change underway there.

The BDS movement started after Israel’s flagrant and violent suppression of Palestinians during the ongoing configurations in the Gaza Strip came to the public’s consciousness thanks to the rise of the Internet, which has circumvented the controlled media’s pro-Israeli censorship.

In this way, for example, the UK’s National Union of Students’ executive committee has voted to support BDS, along with students at more than 30 universities.

They have in turn influenced academic boycotts and, in some cases (such as universities including Kings College London, Southampton, and Sheffield), even caused those institutions to cancel commercial contracts with companies doing business in Israel.

In addition, at least a dozen local town and city councils have taken steps to divest from companies engaged in Israel, with the most prominent being the majority nonwhite (Muslim) city of Leicester, which adopted an Israeli boycott policy in November 2014.

Needless to say, the British Jewish Board of Deputies welcomed the government’s new anti-boycott law, with President Jonathan Arkush telling the Jewish Chronicle that “We welcome the announcement that legislative steps are to be taken against boycotts of Israel. Boycotts are objectionable, counterproductive, and divisive on every level.”

Of course, the Jewish lobby was one of the foremost supporters of the boycott campaign against white-ruled South Africa, because then it seemed that boycotts were not “objectionable, counterproductive, and divisive” because they were directed against Europeans, not Jews. (Also, of course, comparisons between Apartheid and Israel are completely false. Apartheid South Africa never dared do to blacks what Israel regularly does to Palestinians, and in fact Israel has violated far more “human rights” than even the most extreme proponent of Apartheid could ever dream up.)

More importantly, however, is the question of how the Jewish lobby is able to manipulate the British government into making illegal all valid and justified criticism of Israel. The answer to this question is not a mystery to those who understand the power of the Jewish lobby in British politics.

As veteran Labour Party MP Gerald Kaufman—himself Jewish—said at an event organized by the Palestine Return Council (PRC), held in the UK Parliament in October 2015, Jewish money, donations, and media influence the British government into adopting a pro-Israel stance.

“I’ll tell you (why) because I can tell you in a way which perhaps nobody else in this room can tell you. It’s Jewish money, Jewish donations, to the Conservative Party as in the general election in May, support from the Jewish Chronicle, all of those things, bias the conservatives.

The Jewish Chronicle, named by Kaufman, detailed more of his speech (“Labour veteran Sir Gerald Kaufman claims ‘Jewish money’ has influenced Conservatives,” October 28, 2015):

“There is now a big group of Conservative members of parliament who are pro-Israel whatever government does and they are not interested in what Israel, in what the Israeli government does.

“They’re not interested in the fact that Palestinians are living a repressed life, and are liable to be shot at any time. In the last few days alone the Israelis have murdered 52 Palestinians and nobody pays attention and this government doesn’t care.”

It is not, however, only the Conservative Party which the Jewish lobby controls, contrary to Kaufman’s claim.

In 2009 British investigative journalist Peter Oborne produced a documentary for the Channel 4 Dispatches program exposing the influence of the Jewish lobby in British politics.

Titled “Dispatches—Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby,” Oborne used the word “Israel” instead of “Jewish” to describe the lobby, even though a viewing of the video (see below) left the viewer in no doubt about the identity of the lobbyists.

Oborne, the former political editor of the Spectator, revealed the close relationship between Britain’s Jewish lobby and both the Conservative and Labour parties—as well as its policy of stifling criticism of Israel in the press.

The show opened with an examination of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), an organization that claims that 80 percent of Tory MPs are members.

It went on to expose the scope of the Jewish lobby’s reach and the relationship between the Israeli foreign ministry, the Britain Israel Research and Communications Centre (BICOM), the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the CFI, Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), the Zionist Federation, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), HonestReporting and other fronts of Israel’s well-funded propaganda offensive.

As Dispatches reported, British MPs and journalists are regularly flown to Israel to be pampered by one or several of these organizations.

While many of these parliamentarians may have no interest whatever in the Middle East, they seem unable to resist these jaunts as the recent scandal over MPs’ expenses has shown. If they say a kind word about Israel on their return, a check ranging from £2,000 to £15,000 will shortly be in the post. Oborne also showed how journalists parrot Israeli spin doctors, without disclosing the source of their stories.

Thus it should come as no surprise to learn that the Jewish lobby now seems to be on the verge of criminalizing opposition to their homeland.