Conservative Friends of Israel

David Lammy held off the books meeting with pro-Israel lobbyist

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https://www.declassifieduk.org/david-lammy-held-off-the-books-meeting-with-pro-israel-lobbyist

Sir Trevor Chinn avoids our questions about his political donations, 9 July 2025 (Photo: Alex Morris / Declassified UK)

We asked Sir Trevor Chinn why he’s donated so much money to Labour, after he held an undisclosed meeting with Britain’s foreign secretary.

David Lammy held an off the record meeting with Sir Trevor Chinn, an influential businessman and one of Britain’s leading pro-Israel lobbyists, Declassified can reveal.

The meeting took place on 11 February 2025 but was not recorded in official transparency data published by the Foreign Office.

Lammy’s sole public appointment on that day was a meeting with the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator to discuss “humanitarian crises around the globe” including the situation in Gaza.

The Foreign Office only released details about Lammy’s meeting with Chinn in response to a Freedom of Information request issued by Declassified. 

It said this was a “political meeting” and no minutes from the discussion were taken.

The Foreign Office also disclosed that Middle East minister Hamish Falconer met with Chinn on 18 March 2025 in another rendezvous that was not recorded in transparency data.

Lammy, Falconer and Chinn did not respond to questions about whether the meetings focussed on Israel.

Chinn said in 2013: “I’ve spent my entire life working for Israel”. Since the 1980s, he has funded Labour Friends of Israel and Conservative Friends of Israel.

He has played a leading role in Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), previously described by the Guardian as “Britain’s most active pro-Israel lobbying organisation”.

We confronted top Israel lobbyist about Labour donations

Doorstepping Chinn

Declassified recently revealed that Chinn – now 90 – met with a top British diplomat to discuss arms exports to Israel despite the government initially claiming the purpose of the meeting was “to discuss geopolitics”.

Chinn did not respond to Declassified’s request for comment on that story. So when we saw him disembarking a taxi outside the Chatham House think-tank in London last month, we quickly asked him for an interview.

Chinn, gripping a copy of the Financial Times, declined our request.

“You’re a very generous benefactor to the Labour Party,” we said as he was ushered inside. “What do you think about the situation in Gaza at the moment? Why do you donate so much money to the Labour Party?”

He ignored our questions, which related to his £50,000 donation towards Keir Starmer’s Labour leadership campaign in 2020.

Chinn’s donation was not disclosed until after the election had taken place.

He has also donated to key members of Starmer’s cabinet including chancellor Rachel Reeves, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, health secretary Wes Streeting, education secretary Bridget Phillipson, culture secretary Lisa Nandy, and Lammy.

Chinn entered the building on the heels of Israeli opposition politician Yair Golan, who was in the capital for meetings with politicians, including Falconer, and local Zionist organisations.

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Article continues at https://www.declassifieduk.org/david-lammy-held-off-the-books-meeting-with-pro-israel-lobbyist

Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel's Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don't do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Vote Labour for Genocide.
Vote Labour for Genocide.
Continue ReadingDavid Lammy held off the books meeting with pro-Israel lobbyist

Tory leadership hopeful wants Star of David on every point of entry to UK

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Image of Tory idiot Boris Johnson
Former Tory party leader idiot Boris Johnson

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241001-tory-leadership-hopeful-wants-star-of-david-on-every-point-of-entry-to-uk

Two front-runners in the Conservative Party leadership race have attempted to ingratiate themselves with pro-Israel supporters by making statements critics have slammed as demand for a loyalty test on immigrants to support the apartheid state.

Robert Jenrick, speaking at a Conservative Friends of Israel reception, suggested displaying the Star of David at UK border entry points to show support for Israel. He said that “at every airport and point of entry to our great country there is the Star of David.” Jenrick, who last month called for jailing anyone who say “Allahu Akbar,” also pledged to move the British embassy to Jerusalem if he became Prime Minister, adding: “If the Foreign Office or the civil servants don’t want to do it, I will build it myself.”

In a similar vein, Kemi Badenoch, in an article for The Telegraph, raised concerns about the attitudes of immigrants towards Israel. “We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not,” wrote Badenoch. “I am struck, for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here.”

When questioned about these comments by Trevor Phillips on Sky News if she meant Muslims, Badenoch clarified: “It is not all Muslim immigrants […] but there are some, those who buy into Islamist ideology, political Islam; they do not like Israel and we need to be able to distinguish between the two,” she added.

Badenoch’s comments have been criticised as dog-whistle racism by some observers. Opposition to Israel is not exclusively a Muslim issue, as she seemed to suggest. Many non-Muslim figures, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope, have spoken out against Israel’s actions in recent weeks.

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https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241001-tory-leadership-hopeful-wants-star-of-david-on-every-point-of-entry-to-uk

Lettuce complains about being compared to Liz Truss.
Another one – lettuce complains about being compared to Liz Truss.
Continue ReadingTory leadership hopeful wants Star of David on every point of entry to UK

ISRAEL LOBBY FUNDED A THIRD OF CONSERVATIVE MPS

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https://www.declassifieduk.org/israel-lobby-funded-a-third-of-conservative-mps/

Lobby groups funded trips to Israel for Sue-Ellen ‘Suella’ Braverman. (Photo: Imageplotter / Alamy)

Exclusive: Tory politicians have accepted over £430,000 from Israel lobby groups and made 187 trips to the country.

  • Suella Braverman received largest contribution for her visit to Israel this year

Some 126 of the Tory party’s 344 MPs have accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups, Declassified has found. 

The revelation comes as Rishi Sunak calls a general election in which his unequivocal backing of Israel could cost the party votes.

The value of the donations or hospitality amounts to over £430,000, with the organisations paying for sitting Conservative MPs to visit Israel on 187 occasions.

Some of those trips also involved visits to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and a small number were co-sponsored by groups which do not form part of the Israel lobby.

The main funder is Conservative Friends of Israel, a parliamentary group which does not disclose its own sources of funding. 

Other notable donors include the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange, and the European Leadership Network.

Thirteen Tory politicians have accepted over £50,000 in total to travel to Israel since 7 October, including for “solidarity” missions.

Friends of Israel

Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) is a pro-Israel lobby group set up in 1974 by Michael Fidler, a Tory politician described in one biography as having political views “reminiscent of the philosophy of Enoch Powell”.

The organisation has long standing links with the Israeli state, and is “beginning to resemble the Westminster outpost for Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud coalition”, according to veteran journalist Peter Oborne.

Around 80 percent of Tory MPs are members of CFI. Over the past decade, it has taken more MPs on overseas trips than any other political donor in Britain.

Publicly available data reviewed by Declassified shows that CFI has funded 118 sitting Tory MPs to travel to Israel on 160 occasions, providing over £330,000 towards the visits.

Those MPs include deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden, home secretary James Cleverly, and justice secretary Alex Chalk, prior to their appointment to the cabinet.

Some 22 of those CFI-led visits have been subsidised by the Israeli foreign ministry to the tune of over £8,000 in total.

…

Article continues at https://www.declassifieduk.org/israel-lobby-funded-a-third-of-conservative-mps/

Continue ReadingISRAEL LOBBY FUNDED A THIRD OF CONSERVATIVE MPS

Tory MPs jet off to Israel on lobby-funded ‘solidarity trips’ during Gaza bloodshed

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tory-mps-jet-off-to-israel-lobby-funded-solidarity-trips-during-gaza-bloodshed

Israeli soldiers overlook the Gaza Strip from a tank, as seen from southern Israel, January 19, 2024

NINE Tory MPs have jetted off on “solidarity trips” to Israel since the country began its war on Gaza in October, Declassified UK revealed today.

The MPs received £19,857 in donations from Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and the European Leadership Network (Elnet), according to the investigative site.

MPs eagerly accepted Israel’s handouts, using the donations to fund “solidarity visits” — while Gaza’s death toll soars past 26,000.

…

Six other visits, paid for by the CFI, were made by MPs Stephen Crabb, Michael Ellis, Nicola Richards, Greg Smith, Theresa Villiers and former immigration minister Robert Jenrick.

The group was hosted by Israeli president Isaac Herzog — the man who said that the “entire nation” of Gaza was responsible for Hamas’s attack on Israel. His statement was cited by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as plausible evidence of incitement to genocide.

Mike Cushman from Jewish Voice for Labour said the main purpose of the trips was to “try to bolster support for Israeli genocide.”

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tory-mps-jet-off-to-israel-lobby-funded-solidarity-trips-during-gaza-bloodshed

Continue ReadingTory MPs jet off to Israel on lobby-funded ‘solidarity trips’ during Gaza bloodshed