Channel 4’s Dispatches programme on Monday said that at least half of the Conservative shadow cabinet are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), one of a number of pro-Israel lobby organisations.

The prorgramme, entitled ‘Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby’, said that such organisations make up “one of the most powerful and influential political lobbies in Britain”, but that “little is known” about these groups and their associated individuals.

CFI members and their businesses are alleged to have donated more than $16.8m to the Conservative Party over the past eight years.

The alleged donations include tens of thousands of pounds to William Hague, after he was appointed shadow foreign secretary in 2005.

The documentary alleged that Lord Kalm, a CFI member and significant donor to the Conservatives, threatened to remove Hague’s funding after he said that Israel had used “disproportionate” force during its war in Lebanon in 2006.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, is alleged to have promised not to repeat the conjecture.

‘Transparent’

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The Ulster Volunteer Force has removed its flags from a County Down housing estate.

The move is being viewed in line with the UVF’s commitment last month to “assume a non-military, civilianised, role”.

Gary McCready, a community representative in the West Winds estate in Newtownards, said it was a step in the right direction.

“We decided within the estate to try and move forward, get the estate improved, and move away from the name that it had received,” he said.

“They’ve flown there for years and the police have always wanted them down.

“People have complained about them, but they’ve never been taken down.

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Should Gordon Brown replace Tony Blair as Prime Minister, British Jewry will have another sympathetic ear, according to wideranging inquiries by the JC.

The latest example of the Chancellor’s communal co-operation is a contribution to a social-action booklet being distributed to United synagogues for Rosh Hashanah.

In the publication, based on the book by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, “To Heal a Fractured World,” Mr Brown wrote: “I have been impressed by the sheer scale, breadth and strength of initiatives in our Jewish communities.”

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LONDON — As Israel wages war against Hezbollah “terrorists” in Lebanon, Britain has protested about the celebration by Israelis of a Jewish “act of terrorism” against British rule 60 years ago this week.

The Israelis, including Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British out of Palestine.

They have erected a plaque outside the restored building, and are holding a two-day seminar with speeches and a tour of the hotel by one of the Jewish resistance fighters involved in the attack.

Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, have written to the municipality, stating: “We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of
many lives, to be commemorated.”

In particular they demanded the removal of the plaque that pays tribute to the Irgun, the Jewish resistance branch headed by Menachem Begin, the future Prime Minister, which carried out the attack on July 22, 1946.

The plaque presents as fact the Irgun’s claim that people died because the British ignored warning calls. “For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated,” it states.

Mr. McDonald and Dr. Jenkins denied that the British had been warned, adding that even if they had “this does not absolve those who planted the bomb from responsibility for the deaths”. On Monday city officials agreed to
remove the language deemed offensive from the blue sign hanging on the hotel’s gates, though that had not been done shortly before it was unveiled last night.

The controversy over the plaque and the two-day celebration of the bombing, sponsored by Irgun veterans and the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, goes to the heart of the debate over the use of political violence in the Middle East. Yesterday Mr. Netanyahu argued in a speech celebrating the attack that the Irgun were governed by morals, unlike fighters from groups such as Hamas.

“It’s very important to make the distinction between terror groups and freedom fighters, and between terror action and legitimate military action,” he said. “Imagine that Hamas or Hezbollah would call the military headquarters in Tel Aviv and say, ‘We have placed a bomb and we are asking you to evacuate the area’.”

But the view of the attack was very different in 1946 when The Times branded the Irgun “terrorists in disguise”. Decades later, Irgun veterans are unrepentant. Sarah Agassi, 80, remembers spying in the King David Hotel.

She and a fellow agent posed as a couple. They danced tangos and waltzes, sipped whisky and wine while they cased out the hotel.

On the day her brother and his fellow fighters posed as Arabs delivering milk and brought seven milk churns, each containing 50kg of explosives, into the building. Ms. Agassi waited across the street until her brother rushed out.
She said that she then made the warning call to the British command in the hotel.

Sitting in the luxurious hotel lobby, she expressed no regret. “We fought for our independence. We thought it was the right way … If I had to fight for Israel, I swear even now I would do anything.”

A British cameraman shot dead in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli soldier was murdered, an inquest jury has decided.

James Miller, 34, from Devon, was shot by a soldier from the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) while making a film in a Palestinian refugee camp in 2003.

An Israeli investigation in April 2005 cleared a soldier of misusing firearms.

Coroner Andrew Reid had told the jury at St Pancras Coroner’s Court, London, on Thursday to return a verdict of unlawful killing.

He said they had to decide in the context of the case whether he had been murdered or was a victim of manslaughter.

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A unique photographic exhibition celebrating the work of two giants of Israeli photojournalism is being held in London. Eretz Yisrael: Birth of a Nation captures the work of photographers David Rubinger and Paul Goldman.

The exhibition, at the Sony Ericsson sponsored Proud Gallery in Camden, north-west London, illustrates both joyful and tragic moments in Jewish history from Holocaust survivors to the declaration of the State of Israel.

It includes more than 150 iconic pictures that mark decisive moments and the key personalities from Israel’s history.

Over the years, the two photographers earned the trust of key figures in Israel’s history such as Golda Meir, David Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Yitzchak Rabin, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon.

Rubinger, who was awarded the Israel Prize in 1997, the highest civilian honour given by the State of Israel, in recognition of his dedication to telling the story of a nation, for his contribution to journalism, attended last week’s launch along with deputy Israeli Ambassador Zvi Ravner and a host of Jewish community leaders.

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Britain supplied Israel with a small amount of plutonium in 1966, which officials said could have aided a nuclear arms programme, according to the BBC.

The report, revealed last week on the BBC’s current affairs news programme Newsnight, said that in the 1960’s Britain also made hundreds of shipments of restricted materials to Israel despite a warning from intelligence officials that it could help in the development of a nuclear bomb.

The report was based on secret documents that have been made public under freedom and information laws. According to the BBC, the Labour government, under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, sold Israel lithium compounds which could have enabled Israel to make weapons 10 times as powerful as the atom bomb dropped by the Americans on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

Although Israel would have needed almost 5kg of plutonium for an atom bomb, British officials were warned the amount had “significant military value” and could be used in experiments to speed up the development of nuclear arms, according to the BBC report.

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Ken Livingstone attacked David and Simon Reuben for their role in an ongoing dispute about the Stratford City development in east London.

He suggested the brothers “go back (to their own country) and see if they can do better under the ayatollahs”.

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Lampeter University’s Dan Cohn-Sherbok controversially argues that anti-Semitism provides a paradox for the Jewish community – and its demise has left today’s Jews in chaos.

Rabbi Professor Cohn-Sherbok says that hatred of Jews has kept Judaism alive for thousands of years.

But he argues that state of affairs is being threatened by the fact that anti-Semitism has gradually disappeared and in the last two centuries – with the exception of Nazi Germany – Jews have integrated into society.

His book The Paradox Of Anti-Semitism will infuriate many members of the Jewish community across the world.

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