Francesca Albanese (international lawyer) briefs the media ahead of the 23rd Nelson Mandela annual lecture at the Nelson Mandela Foundation on October 22, 2025, in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Luba Lesolle/Gallo Images via Getty Images)
Francesca Albanese wrote that states that supported Israel financially and militarily “could and should be held liable for aiding, assisting, or jointly participating in internationally wrongful acts.”
A report by one of the United Nations’ leading expertson Israel-Palestine describes the more than two years of genocide in Gaza as a “collective crime,” for which all nations with financial, diplomatic, and military ties with Israel are culpable.
The draft report, published Monday, was written by Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, who is expected to speak at length on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza this weekend as part of the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s lecture series in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Her report names more than 60 countries, without which she says the systematic destruction of Gaza—which has killed or injured more than 10% of the strip’s population and displaced nearly everyone there—would not have been possible.
“Framed by colonial narratives that dehumanize the Palestinians, this livestreamed atrocity has been facilitated through third states’ direct support, material aid, diplomatic protection, and, in some cases, active participation,” Albanese wrote. “The world now stands on a knife-edge between the collapse of the international rule of law and hope for renewal. Renewal is only possible if complicity is confronted, responsibilities are met, and justice is upheld.”
🚩My new report is out. With their actions and omissions, third states have enabled the oppression of the Palestinian people and their genocide.
Those states have an obligation to stop their complicity and deliver justice.
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) October 22, 2025
Her report says that the states most responsible are “primarily Western ones,” the United States being chief among them.
The US accounts for two-thirds of Israel’s annual arms imports. And according to a report out this week from the Center for International Policy, it has spent over $38 billion since October 2023, both directly arming Israel through military grant programs and waging war against its enemies in Iran, Lebanon, and other nations across the Middle East.
Under both a Democratic and Republican administration, the US has also provided critical diplomatic cover for Israel, proposing temporary “pauses” and “truces” to the conflict before international bodies, “sidestepping a permanent ceasefire and ensuring a continuation of the violence.”
On several occasions, the US has used its veto power to block unanimous votes in favor of a binding ceasefire resolution by the UN Security Council. In September, it did so for the fifth time, vetoing a 14-1 resolution that would have required both parties to halt the violence and release all hostages.
American non-governmental organizations supported by US President Donald Trump were also directly involved with the creation and administration of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which administered aid sites after humanitarian organizations like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were pushed out. In just over three months, more than 1,000 Palestinian aid seekers were killed in routine massacres by Israeli troops, who have described the GHF sites as “killing fields.”
Many senior US politicians, Albanese said, have helped to prolong the genocide through rhetoric that frames Israeli lives as more important and worthy of protection than Palestinian ones.
“Israelis were depicted as ‘civilians’ and ’hostages,‘ and Palestinians as ’Hamas terrorists,‘ ’legitimate’ or ‘collateral’ targets,’ ‘human shields’ or lawfully detained ’prisoners,‘” she wrote.
Albanese also singled out many European nations as particularly culpable. These include Germany, which provided Israel with over $565 million worth of weapons, making it the second-largest exporter behind the US; and the United Kingdom, which has participated in hundreds of surveillance missions over Gaza and whose prime minister, Keir Starmer, defended Israel’s right to cut off water and power to civilians at the war’s outset.
She also called out others that increased trade with Israel during the two years of genocide—Germany, Poland, Greece, Italy, Denmark, and France—as well as Arab countries like the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. She said their continued economic support not only “legitimizes and sustains the Israeli apartheid regime” but “countered the trade decline Israel might otherwise have faced” as a result of its increasing global isolation.
Albanese wrote that for helping Israel, which she described as a “genocidal apartheid state,” these nations “could and should be held liable for aiding, assisting, or jointly participating in internationally wrongful acts.”
Though a ceasefire is now in effect between Israel and Gaza, Albanese said on Wednesday that the plan, which currently has Israel occupying more than half the Gaza Strip, was “absolutely inadequate and it doesn’t comply with international law.”
She said that the recognition of a Palestinian state by several Western nations in recent months has “been a pretense of doing something while the emergency was to discuss… how we stop the genocide.”
Albanese said that the states “who still have ties with Israel, diplomatic, but especially economic, political, and military ties, are all responsible in some measure.”
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
The United Kingdom has “almost certainly” had its hottest summer on record, according to provisional statistics from the Met Office.
The mean temperature across the country – which includes overnight lows as well as daytime highs – currently stands at 16.13C (61.03F) with less than a week of the season left to run.
This is well ahead of 2018, the previous warmest summer, which had a mean temperature of 15.76C (60.37F).
Temperatures during the rest of August would need to be four degrees below normal to prevent the record being broken – and this does not seem likely.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Starmer and Macron agree on ‘one in, one out’ deal during the first French state visit to the UK since Brexit | Ludovic Marin/POOL/AFP/Getty Images. All rights reserved
Don’t be fooled by Labour’s show of providing safe migration routes. It’s justifying a cruel trade in people
Yesterday afternoon, British Prime Minister Kier Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron announced a new migration deal to respond to Channel crossings.
After three days of discussions between the two leaders, Starmer promised “hard-headed, aggressive action on all fronts” to “smash the gangs” who he says are responsible for people crossing the Channel on dinghies.
The deal? A “one in, one out” system, which will return to France some of the people who cross the Channel irregularly. In exchange, France will send people to the UK who, for example, are seeking to reunite with family members here.
Since then, however, Labour has done what they said they wouldn’t – introduce performative gimmicks to convince voters they’re in ‘control’ of migration. They announced plans to invest £75m in a new ‘Border Security Command’, which was quickly criticised as a simple rebranding of what came before. And in a move straight out of Trump’s playbook, they also began televising deportation flights.
Starmer and Macron say the scheme will help deter people from making the crossing by reducing their chances of settling in the UK. But there is no evidence to support this. Time and time again, successive British governments have increased their cruelty towards people arriving on ‘small boats’. Yet people have continued to make the journey.
“New deterrents” are not the solution. This new deal will cause considerable further harm, resulting in the forcible transfer of people back to France. Labour are falling into the same trap that contributed to the Conservatives’ last general election defeat.
‘Safe routes’ used to justify hostility
While details are not yet available, the new deal proposes a ‘safe route’ for some people trying to reach the UK from France. It’s been reported that the ‘one in’ element would target those with family in the UK, enabling them to reach the country without having to risk their lives.
The problem is, for nearly everybody else waiting to cross the Channel, no other route exists for them to seek safety in the UK. This agreement will not, in any meaningful way, solve this issue. People will continue to cross in dinghies in the absence of other, safer routes. If anything, it may fuel demand for crossing the Channel, as those forcibly returned by the ‘one out’ element could try again to reach the UK.
Piecemeal ‘safe and legal routes’ like this should not replace people’s ability to claim asylum if they arrive on UK soil. Yet this is exactly what is happening. The UK is replacing its legal and moral obligations to people seeking asylum with a discretionary ‘pick-your-own’ approach based on national self-interest. Then, they use these ‘safe routes’ to justify hostility towards asylum seekers who do arrive irregularly.
This agreement will result in the punitive trade in human beings across Europe
We don’t yet know what will happen to people after they’ve been returned to France. It’s possible that those returned would then be transferred onwards across Europe. An EU law called the Dublin Regulation means that France could return them back to the first country in Europe they entered. Five of those states – Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain – have written to the European Commission warning that the deal could increase pressure on them. They argue it sets a dangerous precedent for migration governance across the bloc.
Above all else, this agreement will result in the punitive trade in human beings across Europe.
The deterrence delusion
The proposed ‘one-for-one’ pilot scheme continues a 30-year pattern of UK-France agreements to ‘deter’ irregular crossings by increasingly hostility. Deterrence is the convenient, common-sense logic used to justify increasingly cruel policies. It possesses a dangerous self-reinforcing quality: when harsh policies fail to reduce arrivals, this is always attributed to the insufficient severity of the deterrent. Rather than questioning the logic itself, the much easier conclusion to reach is that even more severe measures are necessary.
Yet, even according to the Home Office’s own analysts, there is no evidence that harsh measures deter people from trying to reach the UK to seek asylum. And while some don’t know about the UK’s ever-changing policies, many are aware and still judge the journey to be worth the risk, because there is no other option available.
The government refuses to acknowledge this, so we find ourselves caught in a cycle with no end in sight.
‘Deterrence’ has been used to justify a series of rights-eroding legislation in recent years. The Nationality and Borders Act changed the meaning of ‘refugee’ in British law, making it a harder definition to qualify for. It also introduced powers which enabled the home secretary to deem the asylum claims of irregular arrivals to the UK inadmissible.
The 2022 law also introduced the new crime of ‘illegal arrival’, which criminalised seeking asylum for the first time in the UK. The move was criticised by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), who said it breached the UK’s obligations under the Refugee Convention: refugees should not be penalised for the way they arrive in a country to seek asylum. In spite of this, at least 500 people have been convicted for ‘illegal arrival’ since June 2022, including refugees, victims of trafficking and torture, and children wrongly assessed to be adults.
‘Deterrence’ does not work. This is not because the policies are not ‘tough enough’, but because people will continue to move when it is not safe for them to stay still
Then in 2023, the Illegal Migration Act rolled back refugee rights even further. It legislated that people whose asylum claims are rejected could never have a future claim assessed in the UK and could not be granted any form of leave. It also created a mandatory duty for the home secretary to remove people deemed inadmissible for asylum – either to their own country, or to a ‘safe third country’. However, post-Brexit, the UK had very few agreements regarding removals. In desperation, the previous government hatched its ill-fated Rwanda plan – which ultimately proved to be a costly, unlawful disaster.
Despite these punitive efforts, people have continued to make the difficult journey across the Channel. Almost 20,000 people crossed in the first half of 2025, a significant increase from the same period in both 2024 and 2023. It’s clear that ‘deterrence’ does not work. This is not because the policies are not tough enough, but because people will continue to move when it is not safe for them to stay still.
Following the money: what happens in France?
While often justified as necessary to prevent the loss of life at sea, evidence strongly suggests that British spending in northern France has in fact increased the risks for people crossing.
Restrictions to the supply of dinghies has forced more people onto fewer crafts, resulting in deadly overcrowding. Footage released by the Guardian and the BBC has shown French police using violent tactics both on land and in the water, including creating waves to flood dinghies, threatening people with pepper spray, and using knives to slash boats in the water. Men, women and children have died in northern France, on land and in the shallows, as a direct result of these tactics.
Alongside the “one in, one out” deal, Macron argued that new tactics were needed on French beaches to respond to people smugglers. It has been rumoured that new powers are being considered which would enable French officers to intervene with dinghies up to 300m from the coastline. However, police unions are resisting, with concerns that this might breach laws regulating the treatment of boats in distress at sea. These are the same concerns which ultimately ended the previous UK government’s plans to ‘push-back’ dinghies at sea.
If passed, this measure will clearly endanger people further. British-funded policing efforts have resulted in record numbers of people drowning in the French shallows – 82 people died last year, including at least 14 children. While the government scapegoats young asylum seekers for these deaths, we must continue to call the UK and France to account for how money is being spent on the beaches.
No more gimmicks?
Starmer’s promise to end the “gimmicks and gestures” has proven hollow. Despite the promise of something new, his plans represent a direct continuation of the Conservative’s cruel approach.
In a dangerous escalation in rhetoric, Labour have argued that Channel crossings must be treated using “counter-terror style powers”. Its new Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill – currently in the parliamentary committee stage – proposes several new immigration offences, modelled on terrorism offences. These include the possession of information or objects that could be used for “immigration crime”.
Performative measures will not bring an end to death and despair in the Channel. These are policies not based on evidence or concerns for human life, but rather on a desire to appear “tough” on migration.
As people have continued to cross the Channel, both Labour and Conservative governments have resorted to increasingly cruel, often violent policies in their attempts to “stop the boats”. As continued cycles of policies have shown, they will not work. Instead, they will bring further harm to people seeking a better life in the UK. We must resist the state-supported trade in human beings and break the cruel cycle of deterrence.
Keir Starmer chases Nigel Farage’s racist bigot vote.Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect 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.
Genocide is the most evil of crimes – it’s a mass-murder, a wholesale slaughter of an identifiable group. Israel is engaged in genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, with the United Kingdom supporting Israel as an active participant providing air force and army support as well as providing arms and more that we have yet to learn.
Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.
Genocide cannot be tolerated in today’s World. It belongs in the far distant past, we should have moved on to respect all peoples’ right to life in dignity rather than being treated as worthless, less than animals.
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.
I hold Keir Starmer, UK’s prime minister as ultimately responsible for UK’s active participation in Israel’s genocides. He couldn’t get away with it alone of course. His cabinet ministers, the UK government, his party advisors, Labour MPs are also guilty, supporting Starmer’s active participation in Israel’s genocides. Then there are the armed forces – they cannot escape that they are participating in genocide. We must hold them to account for this most serious of crimes.
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
TBC, likely to be altered and expanded.
4 July:
Keir Starmer warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog.
4 July 2025 1.20pm
It appears that Jeremy Corbyn has yet to comment regarding Zarah Sultana’s announcement. I don’t know what’s going on and can only speculate.
There have been been false starts of a new left party before, the announcement itself is a political event signalling that there is an extent of opposition organising against shameless genocidalist Keir Starmer. I would expect the old school Socialist like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell would prefer to stay in the Labour Party. That’s where they’ve always been, after all. Is there a plan or is it just testing the waters?
He likes to keep a low profile. But Sir Trevor Chinn is one of the most powerful men in British politics.
The retired businessman has donated millions to politicians, facilitated Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s rise to power, helped destroy the movement around Jeremy Corbyn, and, above all, has made sure that both major parties support Israel and its expansionist project in the Middle East.
MintPress News profiles perhaps the most influential man in the pro-Israel lobby and lifts the veil of anonymity he hides behind.
Israel’s Man
In November, President Isaac Herzog personally awarded Chinn the Israeli Medal of Honor for his “service to the state [of Israel] and the Jewish people.” The past year, President Herzog said in his presentation speech, was “the most difficult since the founding of the state.” However, he noted, his country was extremely fortunate to have “great friends and supporters in the world who fight alongside us against antisemitism, defend Israel’s name in the media, and have long fought for Israel’s place among the nations.”
Chinn has a decades-long history of promoting Israeli interests in the United Kingdom and beyond. In 2005, as co-chairman of the Israel-Britain Business Council, he led a delegation to Israel to participate in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Conference for Export and International Cooperation. The conference was an attempt to bring back economic growth to Israel after three years of stagnation as a result of the Second Palestinian intifada.
In 2018, he co-hosted a high-profile celebration of former Israeli President Chaim Herzog attended by some of the most powerful figures in British politics, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Held at the exclusive Spencer House in London, the event celebrated the British-born president, honoring him as a “warrior and statesman.” Herzog was an officer in the Israeli military during the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of around 750,000 Palestinians in order to establish the State of Israel.
As the longstanding president of United Jewish Israel Appeal, a group that aims to increase British Jews’ connections to Israel, Chinn has helped to raise millions to fund free birthright-style trips to the Middle East. One 2023 event at London’s Kensington Palace alone raised £1 million (U.S. $1.36 million). The function was attended by former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who praised his work profusely.
Chinn’s ties to Israel go far beyond economics and culture. Last October, at the height of the Israeli attack on Gaza, the 89-year-old tycoon quietly met with the U.K. Foreign Office to advise them on arms exports to Israel. Officially, the British government claimed they were merely “discussing geopolitics with [a] businessman.” Documents obtained by investigative journalist John McEvoy, however, revealed the real purpose of the meeting was far less innocent.
Bankrolling the British Cabinet
Chinn, McEvoy told MintPress, plays an “important but overlooked role in British politics.” Since the 1980s, he noted, Chinn has funded both Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), pressure groups within the U.K.’s two largest political parties. He was also a member of the executive committee of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), the most influential pro-Israel lobbying organization in the United Kingdom.
“Quantitative analyses of these groups’ activities are instructive,” McEvoy said, adding:
Eighty percent of Tory MPs are members of CFI and, between 2012 and 2022, the organization paid for elected members to go on more overseas trips than any other donor. Last year, LFI counted some 75 MPs as supporters, while 32 sitting Labour members had accepted funding from the group. For its part, BICOM has flown scores of journalists to Tel Aviv since the turn of the century.”
As such, Chinn sits at the head of a massive influence operation aiming to make sure that Great Britain continues to support Israeli interests. The scope of this operation is staggering; pro-Israel lobby groups have funded the majority of the British cabinet. In total, 13 out of 25 sitting cabinet members have accepted money directly from Chinn, or pro-Israel groups, according to McEvoy’s investigation.
This includes many extremely powerful figures, such as Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Chinn himself has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to these individuals.
Without a doubt, though, the most important recipient of his largesse is Prime Minister Keir Starmer himself. In 2020, Chinn donated £50,000 (approximately $68,000) to Starmer, bankrolling his campaign to become leader of the Labour Party. The donation was not registered until five days after the election.
It was around this time that Starmer very publicly began to shift his position on Israel. Until 2019, he had been a member of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East, and promised to “put human rights at the heart of foreign policy.” Yet just a few weeks after he received Chinn’s money, he publicly stated, “I support Zionism without qualification.”
His administration has vocally supported Israel, sending weapons to the country and providing other military assistance from U.K. military bases in Cyprus. It has also cracked down on pro-Palestine protests at home and defended Israel in international bodies such as the United Nations. In 2021, Starmer’s office even went so far as to hire Assaf Kaplan, a former Israeli spy, to conduct what it calls “social listening” within the party.
Lowkey, a rapper, activist, and host of “The Watchdog” on MintPress, has tracked Chinn’s activities closely, stating that:
Trevor Chinn is a key officer of the Zionist movement in this country. He is a vehicle through which the Israel lobby is able to fund key political figures, like Keir Starmer and David Lammy, and thus extend Israeli influence over what happens in British politics.”
Shaping the Labour Party
Tony Blair was the driving force behind Labour’s move away from social democracy and its embrace of big business, and Chinn’s cash helped make it possible. According to a 1996 report in The Independent, Chinn was one of several Labour megadonors who each contributed around £500,000 to bankroll Blairism and ensure its success.
Along with its economic approach, Labour’s traditional foreign policy positions also shifted. As former chairman of LFI, Baron Mendelsohn approvingly noted at the time,
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.”
To this day, Blair maintains a close relationship with Israel. He is a patron of the Jewish National Fund, the largest builder of illegal settlements in the West Bank. His wife, Cherie, meanwhile, worked as an adviser to NSO Group, the controversial Israeli software firm behind the Pegasus spying software.
Chinn (left) looks at British Prime Minister David Cameron during a Jewish Leadership Council meeting at 10 Downing Street, Jan. 16, 2012. Kirsty Wigglesworth | AP
Since Blair, Chinn has continued to fund senior Labour figures. The one notable exception was during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure, from 2015 to 2020. Corbyn, a lifelong socialist, anti-imperialist, and advocate for Palestinian statehood, was unexpectedly elected leader of the party in a landslide.
Almost immediately, senior figures in the Labour establishment began organizing against him. And they were helped by Chinn’s money and connections.
Chinn provided the financial backing for Labour Together, a think tank of right-wing figures with the stated goal of “defeat[ing] Corbynism,” and “win[ning] Labour back from the left.” He also financed the political ambitions of Corbyn opponents, including Owen Smith, Ruth Smeeth, and Deputy Leader Tom Watson. Corbyn was relentlessly attacked from all sides and suffered constant accusations of antisemitism designed to undermine public support for his project.
Also in Labour Together’s crosshairs were Corbyn-supporting media outlets, such as The Canary. A left-wing alternative media site, The Canary rapidly expanded its reach to 8.5 million monthly viewers. Labour Together devised a plan to, in their own words, “Kill The Canary.” To that end, they launched a sham “stop funding fake news” drive, claiming the outlet was spreading antisemitic content, and putting pressure on advertisers to pull their commercials from the site. Like the campaign against Corbyn, the antisemitism claims were false, but effective, and The Canary’s finances and reach were dealt a serious blow.
Equal Opportunities Oligarch
Chinn, however, is far from a strictly partisan donor. The elderly business magnate has also funded the Conservative Friends of Israel, the Tory equivalent of Labour Friends of Israel. CFI is, if anything, more influential than its Labour counterpart. Publicly available data shows that the organization has funded at least 118 Conservative members of parliament to travel to Israel on 160 occasions, providing over £330,000 (U.S. $450,000) towards the visits. Around 80% of Conservative MPs are members of CFI.
CFI wields significant influence within the halls of power, enough to force Prime Minister Boris Johnson to drop his plans to appoint Alan Duncan as his Middle East Minister. In his memoirs, Duncan noted that their opposition was “for no other reason than that I believe in the rights of the Palestinians.” Johnson was reportedly indignant. “They [the Israelis] shouldn’t behave like this,” he said. “The CFI and the Israelis think they control the Foreign Office. And they do!’” Duncan said, adding that Israeli penetration into British politics amounts to what he called “entrenched espionage” and a national security threat.
Going further back, Chinn repeatedly lobbied the administration of John Major (1990-1997) on its Middle East policy. “He can be quite a tough protagonist of the Israeli cause and is by no means a dove… My own feeling is that he is not very subtly tuned into the Israeli political scene,” one Foreign Office official wrote about Chinn in 1991.
The overall goal of his activities—the political donations, private meetings, funded trips and media work—McEvoy told MintPress, is to “persuade politicians and journalists that supporting Israel is in their interests.” Chinn and the wider pro-Israel lobby employ a “carrot and stick approach,” whereby good behavior is rewarded with free trips, favorable media coverage and political donations, and bad behavior is punished with a loss of funding, political flak, and pressure campaigns. Thus, McEvoy concludes:
While many legislators in Britain are already avowed Zionists and need little persuading, the carrot and stick approach can achieve an important disciplining effect on politicians who are either equivocal or easily shunned into silence, which accounts for a significant proportion given the extent of careerism and cowardice present in Westminster.”
You Can Cut Down the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring
Sir Trevor Chinn is far from a self-made man. He inherited his substantial wealth and power from his father, Rosser, who owned the automotive giant, Lex Services, now called the Royal Automobile Club (RAC). In addition to his business interests, Rosser was also the president of the Jewish National Fund, helping Israel dispossess Palestinians of their land.
Trevor served as chief executive of the RAC and later became chairman of its chief competitors, the Automobile Association (AA) and Kwik Fit. Since 1973, he has served as president of the United Jewish Israel Appeal and holds or has held a number of other significant positions of influence. These include serving as a governor of Tel Aviv University, and his positions on the executive committees of the Jewish Leadership Council and BICOM.
In 2023, BICOM participated in an attempt to remove the music of MintPress’ Lowkey from the streaming service Spotify. Their plan failed, thanks to massive public pushback and widespread resistance from top names in the entertainment industry.
“I was, at that time, identified as a key target. But we defeated them, thanks to MintPress, The Electronic Intifada, and all the amazing people who supported me,” Lowkey said. “It really does go to show that these lobby groups are really only powerful when they are not confronted.”
One successful cancellation operation Chinn did participate in, however, was the 2014 campaign against a north London arts venue. After finding out that the event was sponsored by the Israeli Embassy, the Tricycle Theater refused to host the U.K. Jewish Film Festival.
Israel, at the time, had just launched Operation Protective Edge, a bombardment of Gaza that killed over 2,000 people. Chinn sprang into action, threatening to pull his funding from the theater unless they reversed their decision. “We are as a community under pressure from the boycott movement. We can’t accept boycotts and whenever one comes along we have to fight it,” he said.
Tricycle was eventually forced to concede after Culture Minister Sajid Javid—himself a member of Conservative Friends of Israel—“made it absolutely clear what might happen to their funding if they, or if anyone, tries that kind of thing again.”
For all his work, though, Chinn has not been able to stem the tide of pro-Palestinian sentiment across the United Kingdom and beyond. In November 2023, an estimated one million people attended a London demonstration calling for a ceasefire.
Since then, polling shows that public attitudes towards Israel have only hardened.
A recent YouGov survey found that more than twice as many Britons support Palestine (32%) as Israel (14%). Only 17% of the country holds positive views of Israel (including 4% that are very positive), compared to 63% negative (including 39% that are highly negative). And the vast majority of the country supports an arms embargo, with only 13% opposing an end to weapons sales to Tel Aviv. Worse still for Israel, these are among the best numbers in Europe for their cause.
In response, both Conservative and Labour governments have cracked down on public support for Palestine, suppressing demonstrations, arresting protesters, and harassing and intimidating pro-Palestine journalists.
How much, if any, influence Chinn had on these responses is a matter of debate. But what is incontrovertible is that he and his network of pro-Israel organizations are not an omnipotent force. This is especially true when they and their activities are exposed to the wider public.
Feature photo | Sir Trevor Chinn (left), pictured alongside Jacob Rothschild (center) and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (right) | Editing by MintPress News
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army 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.Keir Starmer warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog.
