Wes Streeting, Peter Kyle and Jonathan Reynolds leave Starmer’s first cabinet meeting. (Photo: Alamy)
Declassified Exclusive: Labour’s top team has accepted over £600,000 from pro-Israel funders.
Pro-Israel lobbyists have donated to 13 out of Labour’s 25 cabinet members since they were first elected to parliament, Declassified can reveal.
The list of recipients includes prime minister Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, chancellor Rachel Reeves, foreign secretary David Lammy and home secretary Yvette Cooper.
Jonathan Reynolds, who will oversee arms exports to Israel as UK trade secretary, is another beneficiary, alongside Labour’s election mastermind Pat McFadden, whose responsibilities now include national security.
Some of the donations were provided by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a lobby group which takes MPs on “fact-finding” missions to the region.
Reeves, McFadden, Reynolds and technology secretary Peter Kyle were recently listed as vice-chairs of LFI.
Other major funders include pro-Israel businessmen Gary Lubner, Trevor Chinn, and Stuart Roden.
The total value of the donations amounts to over £600,000.
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Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Labour’sdeputy leader, Angela Rayner, has been criticised after saying she wants police to “shoot your terrorists and ask questions second.”
Speaking to Matt Forde’s Political Party podcast, Rayner said she was “quite hardline” on law and order and suggested police should “antagonise” criminals.
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Among those criticising Rayner was the former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, who said: “Is Angela suggesting a mandatory death sentence for suspected (but not convicted) “terrorists” ?” she tweeted.
Rayner was also criticised by the leftwing grassroots group Momentum. Sonali Bhattacharyya, of Momentum’s national coordinating group, said: “These remarks are deeply concerning. It was this approach that led to the assassination of Jean Charles de Menezes.
“You can’t kneel for racial justice one day, then praise shoot-to-kill powers for the police the next.
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Zionist Labour Friends of Israel supporter Rayner is calling on police to kill and harass innocent people. She’ll be pleased with Israel’s continuing genocide – Gazans are called terrorists after being murdered just like Jean Charles de Menezes. Fascists who disregard basic human rights should not be elected to political office.
11/06/24 I found this article useful to research this further ;)
DECLASSIFIED Exclusive: Declassified is publishing the full list of British MPs who received funding from pro-Israel lobbyists.
David Lammy, Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and Rachel Reeves have all been funded by Israel lobbyists. (Photo: Stefan Rousseau / Alamy)
Some 180 of Britain’s 650 MPs in the last parliament accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups or individuals during their political career, Declassified can reveal.
That includes 130 Conservative MPs, 41 Labour MPs and three Liberal Democrats.
Three members of the DUP, two independents and Reform’s only MP complete the list.
The total value of the donations from pro-Israel groups, individuals, and Israeli state institutions amounts to over one million pounds.
Between them, the politicians made over 240 paid-for trips to Israel, at a cost of over half a million pounds.
Some of those trips 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.
Remarkably, fifteen MPs have accepted funding to travel to Israel amid the Gaza genocide.
Huda Ammori, the co-founder of the direct action network Palestine Action, told Declassified: “Accepting funding from a lobby group on behalf of the perpetrators of a genocide should immediately bar anyone from standing as an MP.
“To see how politicians continue to travel to Israel and engage with the genocide lobby explains why our government continues to defy international law by facilitating Israel’s war crimes”.
The full list of MPs can be accessed at the foot of this article. Around 47 of them are not standing for re-election.
No MPs from the Scottish National Party, Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, Alba, Greens, Alliance or Workers Party received hospitality or funding from the lobby.
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Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), another opaquely funded parliamentary group, counts some 75 MPs as supporters or officers.
The organisation recently removed the list of its parliamentary backers from its website, but this can be viewed here.
LFI has paid for 32 of Labour’s sitting MPs to travel to Israel since they were first elected, contributing over £64,000 to the visits.
In Al Jazeera’s 2017 documentary, The Lobby, LFI’s Michael Rubin privately acknowledged the group’s ties to the state of Israel.
“We do work really closely together,” he said. “It’s just publicly we just try to keep LFI as a separate identity to the [Israeli] embassy”.
David Mencer, a former director of LFI and David Lammy’s unsuccessful campaign to become London mayor, is now a spokesman for the Israeli government.
Further trips to Israel have been funded by the Liberal Democrats Friends of Israel and Northern Ireland Friends of Israel.
Many of these delegations are jointly funded by the Israeli foreign ministry, indicating a close level of cooperation with the Israeli state. Over 40 MPs have accepted funding from Israeli state institutions.
Other pro-Israel lobby organisations that have funded MPs’ trips to Israel include the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange, Elnet UK, the Jewish National Fund and the National Jewish Assembly.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
VOTING for Labour MPs who have failed to back a ceasefire in Gaza is supporting complicity in genocide, a British-Palestinian independent candidate says.
Tanushka Marah, who is standing in Hove and Portslade, told the Morning Star that Labour MPs who abstained in last year’s ceasefire vote in the Commons have blood on their hands.
She was selected by pro-Palestine and socialist groups to challenge Peter Kyle, a member of Sir Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet who has held the constituency for nine years.
The shadow science, innovation and technology secretary is a vice-chairman of Labour Friends for Israel and has consistently defended the pariah state.
He was named in a Declassified UK investigation this week as among the quarter of MPs who have accepted funds from pro-Israel lobbyists.
Wes Streeting faces a backlash over his support for Israel. (Photo: Imageplotter / Alamy)
Labour’s shadow health secretary has a long history of supporting Israel going back to his days at the National Union of Students—and has been rewarded handsomely for it.
Streeting was Keir Starmer’s first shadow minister to visit Israel
His visit in 2022 was paid for by Labour Friends of Israel, which “works really closely” with Israeli embassy in London
He has taken over £20,000 from Israel lobbyists Sir Trevor Chinn, Lord Mendelsohn and David Menton, with donations as recently as April
Pro-Israel newspaper said Streeting’s “track-record on Israel is clear” and called him “our friend at the NUS”
Streeting is being challenged by British-Palestinian independent Leanne Mohamad
Wes Streeting has received nearly £30,000 from Britain’s powerful pro-Israel lobby, Declassified has found.
Two years ago, Streeting became the first member of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet to visit Israel, in a move designed to signal a break with Jeremy Corbyn’s pro-Palestine position.
The trip was paid for by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and cost £4,700. LFI also paid for Sarah Harrison, one of Streeting’s staffers, to visit Israel with him.
Another Streeting staffer, Anna Wilson, was paid an undisclosed amount to visit Israel last July.
Her trip was funded by the European Leadership Network, a group whose UK branch is run by Joan Ryan, former chair of LFI.
LFI is a secretive organisation that does not disclose its funders, although undercover reporting revealed Ryan, then a Labour MP, discussing a £1 million payment from Israel with Shai Masot, an Israeli diplomat, in 2016.
In another covertly filmed conversation outside a London pub, LFI’s Michael Rubin said that he and Masot “work really closely together…but a lot of it is behind the scenes”.
Masot was eventually forced to quit his job at the Israeli embassy and return home after he was caught on camera plotting to “take down” British MPs.
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Israel is a serial violator of international law, and is judged to be practising apartheid against the Palestinians by both the US and UK’s top human rights groups, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Leading Israeli group B’Tselem has also reached the same conclusion.
It is currently being investigated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocide, while the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza.
Streeting described the ICJ case as a “distraction”.
