The tangled web of information shared by Lowkey and John McEvoy of Declassified UK in the following discussion regarding the extent of the Israeli lobby’s influence upon the most recent UK elections and British politics as a whole, is quite mind boggling. The situation has been and continues to be a seemingly bottomless pit of manipulation and corruption.
Published on July 19th, I highly recommend listening to these two incredibly knowledgeable investigative researchers who always dig deeply. I will post below the two primary articles referenced during their in-depth discussion.
The following is John McEvoy’s excellent article as referenced during the discussion.
Aides to Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting took Israel lobby funding. (Photo: Stefan Rousseau via Alamy)
Israel has paid for at least a dozen UK parliamentary staff to visit the country on special delegations in the last five years.
A further 18 staffers have accepted funding or hospitality from pro-Israel lobby organisations in Britain such as Labour Friends of Israel and We Believe in Israel.
Several worked for MPs in Keir Starmer’s front bench team, including shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting and shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson.
Our investigation found how the Israeli embassy in London, its ministry of foreign affairs and associated lobby groups seek to influence not only MPs but also their assistants.
Declassified previously revealed that one in four British MPs in the last parliament accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups or individuals.
Direct funding from Israel
The Israeli embassy in London funded ten staff members of Tory MPs to visit Israel on a Young Conservative Political Leaders delegation in 2022.
They worked for such MPs as Stephen Crabb, Nicola Richards and Bob Blackman – all of whom are closely associated with Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI).
One of the staffers, Simon Phipps, is now a Conservative candidate for Birmingham Selly Oak.
The trip involved meeting with “government officials and businesses in Israel as part of UK delegation”.
The visit was declared in an obscure parliamentary database called the Register of Interests of Members’ Secretaries and Research Assistants.
It contains little information about what the staffers did in Israel or who they met. All data prior to 2018 has been destroyed in line with official regulations.
Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs also paid for the parliamentary staff of two Labour politicians to visit the region in 2018.
They worked for Labour’s then deputy leader Tom Watson and shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith.
Israel lobby funding
A further 13 Labour parliamentary staff went on a trip to Israel last July.
They visited Israel’s foreign ministry and received a briefing from the Israeli military “on the country’s security challenges”.
Delegates included Streeting’s staffer Anna Wilson and Phillipson’s aide Thomas Crick.
Streeting is facing a strong challenge in his constituency of Ilford North from independent candidate Leanne Mohamad over his Israel lobby links.
The delegation was “the first of its kind” and designed to “strengthen relations between the UK Labour Party and Israel”.
The trip was organised by the European Leadership Network (ELNET), which was created to “counter the widespread criticism of Israel in Europe”.
Its British branch is led by former Labour MP Joan Ryan who chaired Labour Friends of Israel (LFI).
An undercover investigation revealed Ryan discussing a £1 million payment from Israel with an Israeli diplomat.
ELNET also funded Dov Forman, a staffer for Tory MP Robert Jenrick, to go on a “solidarity trip” to Israel amid the genocidal war on Gaza.
Another funder is We Believe in Israel, which was until recently directed by arch Israel lobbyist Luke Akehurst.
His organisation co-funded Eda Cazimoglu, one of Reeves’ staffers, to visit Israel on “an educational trip” in 2022 alongside LFI.
There are even connections between staffers and the lobby groups.
Thomas Murray, who worked under former Labour MP Steve McCabe, moonlighted as LFI’s parliamentary affairs manager.
And CFI’s executive director, James Gurd, worked for former Tory MP Andrew Percy.
Special advisers
Israel lobby organisations have also sought to gain backdoor influence by funding, meeting, and providing hospitality to ministers’ special advisers, known as SPADs.
Special advisers are exempt from the Civil Service Code’s requirement of political impartiality.
Governmental departments are therefore required to publish the gifts and hospitality that they receive.
Deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden accepted funding from CFI when he was David Cameron’s SPAD in 2014.
Dowden was a prospective parliamentary candidate for Hertsmere at that time.
CFI paid for a special adviser to Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude to travel to Israel that same year, while in 2015 another four Downing Street special advisers received hospitality from CFI.
The group has continued to lobby SPADs in the prime minister’s and deputy PM’s office, as well as the leader of the House of Lords.
Former British ambassador Craig Murray, who is the Workers party candidate for Blackburn, told Declassified that if elected his first speech in parliament would “call out the power of the Israeli lobby”.
He vowed to name “every single member of that parliament who has received money from the Israeli lobby”.
John McEvoy is an independent journalist who has written for International History Review, The Canary, Tribune Magazine, Jacobin and Brasil Wire.
The following is the article by Martin Williams as published by Open Democracy which was mentioned during Lowkey and John McEvoy’s discussion. It provides more details of what the British MPs were and are doing during their all expenses paid trips to Israel.
You will note that in addition, there are funds being directed to British MPs by American billionaires who have also provided financial backing to Trump’s election campaigns.
Labour peer Peter Mandelson is also mentioned. You may well be familiar with “Mandy” as a friend of Ghislaine Maxwell who is said to have introduced Lord Mandelson to Jeffrey Epstein.
Bruce Bennett/Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images/ composition by James Battershill
hen a delegation of Labour Party advisers flew to Israel last year, it was meant to be an opportunity to improve dialogue and understanding in the Middle East.
The trip was planned and paid for by a little-known organisation called the European Leadership Network (ELNET), which claims to be “independent” and “impartial”. But one adviser told openDemocracy that its real purpose quickly became apparent.
“It was marketed as a bringing together of minds from different sides,” he said. “But there was a clear and obvious agenda to make sure people had a pro-Israel stance going into government.”
The advisers were taken to see the Iron Dome defence system, briefed by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), and introduced to a series of Israeli politicians and diplomats. According to one of the advisers, one of the Israeli politicians told the delegation: “What the Arabs need to understand is that we’re here now and they need to get over it.”
The adviser, who spoke to openDemocracy on the condition of anonymity, added: “We were all sitting there thinking ‘what the fuck?’.”
After returning to London, some advisers began to wonder who was funding ELNET. But ELNET’s finances are a mystery; it refuses to declare its major donors, and its UK branch – headed by former Labour MP Joan Ryan – has repeatedly ignored questions from openDemocracy.
ELNET, which was founded in 2007, has branches across Europe and Israel and describes itself as “the most influential pro-Israel advocacy organisation in Europe”. It even counts the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs as one of its “partners”. It has also promoted highly controversial views – including recently telling supporters that there is “no starvation in Gaza” and saying the IDF should not worry about killing innocent civilians who live near Hamas terrorists.
Despite this, ELNET has managed to secure access to the highest levels of British politics. Rishi Sunak and David Cameron have both attended its events; Sunak went to the group’s reception to mark the anniversary of the Abraham Accords less than two weeks after he became prime minister in 2022, while Cameron was interviewed as part of its online discussion about Islamist radicalisation. Labour grandee Peter Mandelson [and the government’s adviser on political violence and disruption, John Woodcock, have each also joined at least one of ELNET’s online briefings about the ongoing atrocities in Gaza.
The organisation also takes delegations of MPs, peers and parliamentary staff on trips to Israel, some of which were registered with the UK’s Electoral Commission in accordance with the rules. It has boasted in meetings that these trips are so influential that they have “literally turned [politicians] around as pro-Israeli”. The group also promises to “fight” the “damaging statements by Western leaders” who criticise the IDF.
Although ELNET has remained silent about its funders, an investigation by openDemocracy can reveal that it has accepted money from American billionaires – including some who have previously supported Donald Trump and poured money into his election campaigns. They include Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, who has pledged to do “everything” he can to get Trump re-elected later this year.
Marcus was one of the largest donors in the 2020 US election, giving millions to Trump’s campaign. He has said his donations for this year’s elections will be “in line” with this, adding that he will likely continue to support Trump despite his criminal conviction. In November 2016, the billionaire also defended Steve Bannon, the former executive chairman of alt-right website Breitbart News, whose appointment as Trump’s chief strategist had sparked a backlash. Marcus claimed Bannon had been “demonised” in the media and was a “passionate Zionist and supporter of Israel”.
Between 2020 and 2022, Marcus’s philanthropic foundation gave some $300,000 to ELNET’s American fundraising arm, known as Friends of ELNET. On its website, ELNET explains: “Every dollar of your contribution goes directly to funding our European efforts to broaden and deepen relationships between Israel and Europe.”
Another family foundation, chaired by billionaire homebuilder Larry Mizel, has given at least $30,000 to Friends of ELNET between 2019 and 2022. Mizel previously donated to Trump’s 2016 election campaign and served as his finance chairman in Colorado.
Other donors to Friends of ELNET have included the Lisa And Michael Leffell Foundation, which gave $50,000 in 2017 to promote “foreign policy development”. Michael Leffell is a billionaire investor who has funded Republican politicians and donated $1m to the United Democracy Project, the independent expenditure arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
According to the latest financial filings, Friends of ELNET brought in more than $7m of revenue in 2022. This was up by almost a million dollars from the year before. Speaking to supporters in December, the group’s chief development officer, Jay Haberman, described 2023 as “a year of record-breaking achievement for ELNET, largely driven by the war” and called on wealthy supporters to donate or transfer stocks to meet its $9m target.
It is unclear exactly how much of this money is earmarked for the UK. A new London office was set up in 2021 and, so far, it has only been required to publish one year of its accounts on Companies House, which are made up to 30 November 2022. This document shows it had £88,585 in members’ funds, but few further details are provided.
openDemocracy was able to identify certain donations made to Friends of ELNET only due to the US’s stricter finance rules, which require charitable foundations to declare who they have donated money to. There is no obligation for ELNET to declare other sources of income.
UK laws are also lax on political donations. Although foreign donors are banned from giving cash to MPs or political parties, funding for overseas visits can come from any source, meaning ELNET’s trips are fully within the rules.
Since the Hamas terror attacks of 7 October, ELNET has positioned itself at the centre of the PR battle over Gaza. In a series of briefings over Zoom, it has promoted controversial claims that undermine international peacekeeping efforts and defend Israeli action.
The head of ELNET’s branch in Israel, Emmanuel Navon, described the UN as “a lost cause” that has been “hijacked” by autocratic regimes. He also said: “Trying to say that the civilian population [of Gaza] has absolutely nothing to do with Hamas is factually wrong.”
Another ELNET spokesperson raised the possibility of making “humanitarian aid limited unless you liberate hostages”. And, amid widespread concern about famine in Gaza, the president of Friends of ELNET, David Siegel, recently told an audience: “There is no starvation in Gaza.”
In 2021, the organisation appointed the former head of the Israeli Defense Intelligence, Amos Yadlin, as chair of its Forum of Strategic Dialogue. Yadlin has given numerous briefings to ELNET supporters, which have included claims that international law permitted the IDF “to target Hamas and not be too much worried about who is around them”. He added: “They of course will cry that they are dying of hunger, but don’t take it too seriously.”
During one briefing, supporters and Western politicians were invited to talk directly with an IDF spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner. Labour peer Peter Mandelson, who was on the call, raised a question about humanitarian aid and afterwards concluded: “The [Israeli] government might be better off if it listened more to the IDF… If you can pass on that one.”
Since 7 October, ELNET has continued its efforts to bring international politicians to Israel. A recent briefing by the organisation states that “close to 300 parliamentarians and leaders” visited Israel in the first seven months after Israel’s attacks on Gaza began. Attendees have included a cross-party delegation from the House of Lords, including Mandelson, former Conservative leader Michael Howard and the former chair of the Vote Leave campaign, Gisela Stuart.
Six Conservative MPs have also been on ELNET trips to Israel since October 7. Andrew Percy, Lisa Cameron and Antony Higginbotham declared these to the Electoral Commission as donations, while Shaun Bailey, Tom Hunt and Matthew Offord recorded them in Parliament’s register of interests because they did not reach the value threshold for the Electoral Commission. DUP MP Jim Shannon and two members of the Welsh Senedd also attended trips, with each fully declaring these.
Last year, before the current war, a delegation of Labour Party advisers went on an ELNET trip to Israel. The parliamentary register of staff interests reveals that attendees included an adviser for shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson, and shadow trade minister Gareth Thomas. Sources who went on the trip told openDemocracy they were accompanied by Luke Akehurst, a professional pro-Israel advocate who sits on Labour’s National Executive Committee and is an election candidate for the party.
Labour’s leader, Keir Starmer, has previously taken a strong stance on the risks of British politics being influenced by funding from overseas. In 2022, he promised to “protect our democracy from the flood of foreign money drowning our politics”.
Yet ELNET UK is part of an international organisation that has been directly funded by American billionaires.
One Labour staffer who went on an ELNET trip, who did not want to be named, said: “I can’t imagine people would be happy knowing that ELNET had taken money from supporters of Trump.”
The staffer claims that, shortly after they returned from the trip, a senior figure at the Israeli Embassy asked them: “Did you enjoy the trip we sent you on?” It was not clear what the embassy figure meant by this, but the staffer told openDemocracy: “My assumption was that it had been paid for by the embassy.”
According to ELNET’s Navon, parliamentary delegations directly impact the level of support that Israel gets from Western countries. In May, he told supporters online: “A few months ago the European Parliament passed a resolution with a very large majority that conditioned any ceasefire on the release – the immediate and unconditional release – of all Israeli hostages and on the defeat of Hamas.
“Now this resolution would never have been passed without the many years of work done by ELNET. All those parliamentarians that have literally turned them around as pro-Israeli, as being pro-Israel, after visiting Israel.”
ELNET UK did not respond to openDemocracy’s request for comment.
Lowkey and John McEvoy also discussed the fact that Israeli lobbyist, Luke Akehurst, who had been parachuted in to stand in a North Durham constituency by Keir Starmer during the recent UK elections, somehow won his seat.
I previously shared John McEvoy’s pre-election article about Akehurst which is linked below.
An absolutely fantastic piece of work. Thank you. It's always an education, and in turn I use what I learn to try and educate others with the facts.
that's the honey moon over then.:)