The following is information I have compiled with regard to arch Israel lobbyist, Luke Akehurst whom Keir Starmer has parachuted into a safe Labour Party seat for the current UK elections scheduled for the 4th of July.
Luke Akehurst (far right) on a trip to Israel last year. (Photo: LFI)
Keir Starmer’s Labour party has parachuted a professional lobbyist for Israel into the safe seat of North Durham for the UK general election.
Luke Akehurst, the director of We Believe in Israel, has spent over a decade working as a campaigner for that country’s interests and has close ties to the Israeli embassy in London.
An Israeli diplomat was secretly recorded praising Akehurst as “a great campaigner” who was “one of the best in the inside” of the Labour party.
Akehurst, who is not Jewish, was once described by a fellow Israel lobbyist as “outrageously pro-Zionist”.
His selection comes just weeks after the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor applied for warrants to arrest Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Akehurst, who has deleted over 1,000 tweets in recent days, has repeatedly defended Israel’s assault on Gaza in his social media posts.
He also sits on Labour’s National Executive Committee, which currently has emergency powers to pick candidates. Akehurst apparently lives in Oxfordshire, about 250 miles away from North Durham.
Labour has held the constituency by a large majority since its creation in 1983.
On the same day his candidacy was announced, Faiza Shaheen was suddenly deselected as a Labour candidate for Chingford over liking posts on social media.
One of the posts described how “professional organisations” mobilise pressure on people who are “even mildly critical of Israel”.
‘Dream job’
Akehurst is the director of We Believe in Israel, a pro-Israel lobby organisation which aims to “provide a united front that brings together all the existing supporters of Israel in the UK”.
He took up the directorship in 2011, after spending years working as a “defence” specialist at Weber Shandwick.
The public relations giant has represented clients from some of the world’s most repressive regimes.
“It was almost my dream job to run a pro-Israel campaigning organisation”, he told one journalist.
Since then, Akehurst has been among the most vociferous supporters of Israel in British public life.
He has fought strongly against the Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and consistently defended Israel’s military onslaughts against Palestinians.
Akehurst has particularly close ties with the Israeli embassy in London.
He has spoken at conferences alongside Israeli officials, and travelled with embassy staff to campaign events across the country.
In 2017, Al Jazeera’s ground-breaking documentary The Lobbyshowed Israeli embassy official and suspected intelligence officer Shai Masot discussing Akehurst in glowing terms.
“He’s a great campaigner”, Masot said. “He’s one of the best in the inside… in all the party. Seriously, there is not a lot of people like him”.
The documentary further revealed how Akehurst had planned to attend a Labour Friends of Palestine event to secretly “take notes” for BICOM’s “internal” usage.
We Believe in Israel said that “while it was not controlled financially or otherwise by Israel, it worked with a range of stakeholders including the Israeli Embassy”.
Akehurst has deleted over 1,000 potentially damning posts from his Twitter account in recent days.
One of those posts, on 31 October 2022, shows Akehurst accusing the United Nations of antisemitism.
In another tweet, from November 2023, he argued against international law and Britain’s official policy on Israel.
Akehurst wrote: “I’m in favour of major West Bank settlement blocks becoming part of Israel, and a new Palestinian state getting compensatory land swaps from pre-1967 Israeli territory. I want the Golan Heights to remain part of Israel”.
Israel has illegally occupied much of Syria’s Golan Heights region since 1967.
We Believe in Israel
We Believe in Israel grew out of a 2011 conference organised by the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), described by the Guardian as “Britain’s most active pro-Israeli lobbying organisation”.
BICOM owes its existence to Poju Zabludowicz, whose wealth stems from his father Shlomo – “an arms dealer who made a fortune out of his close relations with the Israeli state, and some of the world’s most repressive regimes”.
The We Believe in Israel conference was supported by the Israeli embassy in London.
Attendees heard speeches from Israeli diplomats and an education minister, as well as Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland and the now shadow health minister Wes Streeting.
A plenary talk was delivered by Colonel Richard Kemp, a British army veteran who now runs a charity funded by Israel’s military.
Kemp received a standing ovation shortly after declaring that “a favourite vehicle for the anti-Israel conspiracy is the United Nations Human Rights Council”.
Dining for Israel
The conference was supplemented with a 75-page “toolkit” on how to effectively lobby for Israel, emphasising methods such as “dining for Israel” and “lobbying MPs”.
“One of the most effective ways to engage people in a discussion about Israel is to invite them into your own home for dinner… People are very flattered to be invited to dinner”, the document advised.
“If your local MP supports Israel in a crisis, they need the political cover of being able to demonstrate public support from their constituents for their stance”, it continued.
To prepare for these lobbying exercises, the toolkit encouraged campaigners to consult such “authoritative sources” as the Israeli embassy in London.
It also provided briefing material, some of which was prepared by retired Israeli brigadier general Michael Herzog.
In 2009, Herzog was indicted by Spain’s national court over his involvement in the bombing of a residential area in Gaza.
‘Entrenched espionage’
Kareem Dennis, the political activist and musician also known as Lowkey, told Declassified: “Luke Akehurst and his Israel lobby group tried very hard to get my music removed from Spotify, claiming it incited violence.
“His campaign manager was Rachel Blain. Today, she is the Director of Public Affairs at the Conservative Friends of Israel”.
The complaint related to Lowkey’s 2010 track Long Live Palestine – Part 2. Akehurst told the Jewish News: “The presence of Lowkey’s music is particularly offensive”.
Dennis continued: “It now seems Blain was also employed by the Israeli embassy before working for We Believe in Israel. Rachel Blain notes on her LinkedIn account that she worked as a press assistant at an unnamed ‘International Embassy’ in London, where she ‘researched various media groups and platforms’.
“Before that, Blain worked for the Zionist Federation, where she ‘created dossiers to counter anti-Israel campaigns’. I think it is very likely that the embassy where Blain worked as a press assistant was the Israeli embassy.
“Just to point out how incestuous this all is, We Believe in Israel and the Board of Deputies where Blain interned actually lobbied the Minister of Culture and Sports, Lucy Frazer, on this issue. It turns out Frazer herself interned at the Israeli Ministry of Justice.
“Just another day in a system dominated by what Alan Duncan refers to as ‘entrenched espionage’.”
Classified UK’s Phil Miller discussed with John McEvoy his article above, on May 30th 2024:
Keir Starmer's Labour party has selected controversial Israel lobbyist Luke Akehurst for a safe seat hundreds of miles from where he lives (Image: PA/X)
The Oxford-based Labour executive, who has been selected to stand in North Durham, told The Metro newspaper that he was “happy” to call the UN antisemitic amid criticism over his past comments.
It comes as Akehurst faced controversy for his comments on Israel and Palestine after Labour announced his candidacy – which was approved by the national executive committee (NEC) on which he sits.
Akehurst deleted more than 2000 social media posts before his candidacy was announced. However, controversial tweets – in which he supports Israel’s right to keep settlements deemed illegal under international law, claims that injured people in a video of the aftermath of an attack on a Palestinian hospital are crisis actors, and calls the UN antisemitic – remain live.
Another controversial post, in which Akehurst suggested that Jewish people are “politically black” was deleted on Thursday.
Asked by Metro about his social media activity, Akehurst stood by his comments.
On calling the UN antisemitic, he said it was not unusual “to believe that the United Nations is very, very biased against Israel and that some of that bias could be motivated by antisemitism from some member states … because there’s countries that express antisemitic sentiments towards Israel. Like, Iran will bring motions against it".
He added: “That’s not a position that everyone in the Labour Party would share, but it is one that I expressed in my previous job and I’m happy to articulate it.”
Akehurst has also claimed that the charities Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are "both incredibly biased against Israel".
Akehurst had been the director of the lobby group We Believe in Israel since 2011, but he told Metro he had now resigned his position to focus on his candidacy to be an MP.
He told Metro that he had deleted so many tweets because he had set out to erase all “62,000 tweets that I’ve ever made”, but realised it would take too long.
He added: “I didn’t target particular ones to delete. It just did them in chronological order.”
However, the post about Jewish people being “politically black”, which has been deleted, is from 2018. Other, more recent, posts remain live.
In the case of his tweets claiming a video filmed in Gaza and shown on Sky News had been “staged”, the lead post from November 2023 has been deleted, but his replies – which were made on the same day – remain live.
Akehurst defended his comments to the Metro, saying that suggesting Jewish people are “politically black” was “quite common as a position that people would take in discourse about race”.
“When I was an activist in student politics, people of Chinese origin or Jewish origin or Gypsy or Irish origin would describe themselves as politically black,” he added.
Akehurst further insisted that he was sympathetic towards the plight of the Palestinian people.
“The idea that I’m not sympathetic to people suffering on both sides in a really horrific conflict is terrible,” he said.
“That’s an accusation that I refute. I want the war to end and I want a two-state solution the same as everyone in the Labour Party does.”
Labour did not respond to The National’s request for comment.
On June 3rd, KernowDamo reported on his YouTube channel, that Akehurst’s campaign launch for the allegedly safe seat in Durham North didn’t get off to a very good star: Israel Lobbyist Luke Akehurst’s election launch descends into chaos!
On Jun 10, 2024, Crispin of Not The Andrew Marr Show spoke with Chris Bradburn who is campaigning for George Galloway’s, Workers Party in the North Durham constituency.
“Chris Bradburn speaks about his campaign and how he represents a different set of values to parachuted-in Labour candidate Luke Akehurst. You can donate to Chris's campaign via this crowdfunder here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/chris-bradburn-for-north-13-9e/backers#start
There are seven candidates standing in the North Durham constituency: https://voteforpolicies.org.uk/constituencies/north-durham
For previous information about Luke Akehurst I also recommend listening to this discussion from Oct 14, 2022 recorded by Crispin of the Not The Andrew Marrs Show on YouTube: Oct 14, 2022:
Al Jazeera's shocking documentary 'Labour Files', which reveals corruption and racism in Labour ranks has been largely ignored by the media and senior party figures. However, the evidence provided in the documentary about Luke Akehurst helping Luke Stanger has led Akehurst to drop his guard. Discussing this and other aspects of the documentary are Greg Hadfield, Becky Massey, Asa Winstanley and Steve Walker.
As Labour refuses to join calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, Declassified reveals the extent to which the shadow cabinet, including Starmer himself, has been financed by a pro-Israel lobby group and an individual funder.
If you haven’t previously, I highly recommend watching Al Jazeera’s four part series published in September 2022, The Labour Files.
An investigation based on the largest leak of documents in British political history. The Labour Files examines thousands of internal documents, emails and social media messages to reveal how senior officials in one of the two parties of government in the UK ran a coup by stealth against the elected leader of the party. The program will show how officials set about silencing, excluding and expelling its own members in a ruthless campaign to destroy the chances of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Britain’s prime minister. Candidates for key political roles were blocked and constituency groups suspended as the party’s central office sought to control the elected leadership.
The Labour Files – Episode 1 – The Purge I Al Jazeera Investigations
The Labour Files – Episode 2 – The Crisis I Al Jazeera Investigations
The Labour Files – Episode 3 – The Hierarchy I Al Jazeera Investigations
The Labour Files – Episode 4 – The Spying Game I Al Jazeera Investigations
Infuriating!