Once Upon A Time
Britain’s Survival Instinct Was In Tune With Reality
Introduction by
Gilad Atzmon:
The following
is an extract from a recent Haaretz article written by an ultra Zionist, Dave
Rich Deputy Director of Communications of the dubious * Community Security Trust, a pro Israel
extremist group concerned with the security of one people only. Unwisely,
Rich reveals that in the 1970s the Brits understood what they were up against.
They were concerned about Jewish power and the Jewish Lobby and for a good
reason. Back in the 1970s, British survival instincts were on full alert.
Reading
this may make a few of you nostalgic.
Revealed The U.K.
Foreign Office’s Secret Survey to 'Measure Zionist Influence'
Late in 1971 the British
embassies in Washington D.C., Paris, Bonn, The Hague, Rome and Brussels received
a request from Whitehall, to provide information about the activities of
Zionist organizations in their respective countries. The embassy in Tel Aviv
was also asked for its view and diplomats in Whitehall gave their own opinion
of British Zionist lobbying.
FCO(Foreign Commonwealth
Office) officials were well aware of “the sensitive nature of the paper”, as
Richard Evans, head of the Near East Department, put it, and were keen that
Israel should not find out.
British diplomats in
Paris, Rome, Bonn and the other West European capitals were baffled by the
project. The reality of Jewish life in post-Holocaust Europe seems not to have
reached the mandarins of Whitehall. “There is really no Jewish life as such in
the Federal Republic, and nor do the Jews form any kind of unified pressure
group”, the Bonn embassy wrote poignantly when asked for an assessment of
Zionist influence in West Germany.
At the heart of the
FCO’s research project was a fascination with the power and influence of
American Jewry. One Washington-based diplomat wrote of the “enormous influence
(which can scarcely be exaggerated) of the Jewish intellectuals… It follows that much of the intellectual
thought and discussion, certainly on the East Coast, is dominated by Jewish
savants.” No evidence is offered of these intellectuals’ Zionist inclinations
or writings, which was taken as read.
'Why has the American
Jewish community become so rich and powerful?'
The D.C. embassy’s 19
page response was written by Ramsay Melhuish, a future U.K. ambassador to
Kuwait and Thailand. Despite offering a definition of Zionism as “active
support for Israel and her policies”, it included two pages of demographic
statistics about American Jews, including population size and distribution,
birth rate, education, occupation, income and religious observance. Melhuish
segued easily to comment on Zionist influence on Congress (Political); Zionist
influence on Congress (Financial); Influence on the Election; Influence on the
President; and Fund Raising Activity.
The confluence of
Zionist activity with basic Jewish demography highlights how easily an
investigation into Zionist influence – however that is defined – slipped into a
more general suspicion of Jewish communal life and politics.
The impression
given was of a well-organized, well-financed lobbying machine. It may have lacked the power to force any
President to act against what he considered to be American national interests,
Melhuish cautioned, but given the “universal appeal” of support for Israel this
rarely mattered: Zionism in America was “quite distinct from the lobbying
efforts of other ethnic minorities.”
The political use of
“Jewish money” was of particular interest. One FCO official asked if “we might
try and explain why the American Jewish Community has become so rich and
powerful.” Melhuish wrote a second paper about “the battle for the
Jewish vote and Jewish money” between Democratic Presidential nominees in 1972.
The British embassy in Tel Aviv suggested examining “the alleged link between
the financial contributions of American Jews to Israel and the profits of crime
syndicates.”
The financial contributions of British Jews were the
subject of a remarkable account in late 1972 by Sir Bernard Ledwidge, the
British ambassador to Israel, of a fundraising dinner for 200 visiting British
Jews at which Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was guest of honor. Donations
were pledged in an atmosphere that Ledwidge compared to “a revivalist meeting
when the confessions start to fly.” “After such an evening,” Ledwidge
wrote to British Foreign Secretary Sir Alex Douglas-Home, “a professional
diplomat is apt to feel that he understands less about life than he thought. To
a functionary who has worked for a salary all his life, it is an eye-opener to
discover that so much money is still in so few hands in our society.” Sadly,
the response of the aristocratic Foreign Secretary to this particular
observation is not recorded.
The 'inhibiting effect'
of the Zionist lobby
Frustratingly, all the
actual drafts of the research paper itself are missing from the relevant files
in the U.K. National Archives, even though the paper clearly went through
several drafts. The first draft suggested that Zionist lobbying had “a
negligible effect” in Western Europe, and that, “while an important factor in
U.S. politics, it could be over-ridden by the Administration if the American
national interest demanded it.”
David Gore-Booth, a
future U.K. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, felt that this underestimated Zionist
influence in the U.S. and the U.K. For the former, he argued that neither party
in the U.S. could run a Presidential campaign without “Jewish money”. And for
the latter, while he acknowledged that Zionist influence in the U.K. was “less
great” than in the U.S., he felt it was still able to have an “inhibiting
effect” on policy.
His view of the ruling U.K. Labour Party was that “65
MPs in one party is a substantial body of men” that would place a Labour
government under considerable pressure. This was probably an estimate of the
Parliamentary membership of Labour Friends of Israel, as there were not 65
Jewish Labour MPs at that time. “Although the Jewish Lobby in the Tory party is
much smaller,” he went on, “it can still not be ignored and Ministers are very
sensitive to it.”
Gore-Booth’s candid fear
that neither Labour nor Conservative governments could withstand “the Jewish
Lobby” was shared by Ted Orchard, the FCO’s Director of Research. “I do not
think it can be denied that under a Labour Government the pressures to adopt a
less evenhanded approach to the Middle East are considerable”, Orchard wrote,
adding that the “Jewish lobby” in the Conservative Party could also apply
pressure to ministers.
To read the entire
article: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.697926?v=2A91115FE31D978C4744F12E8D540005?date=1453280241298
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