How the Israel Lobby has Bought British Politics
With increased political and media coverage of comments made by Kneecap and Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, it is clear that Israel and their lobbyists have a stranglehold on UK Politicians & the Media.
With increased political and media coverage of comments made by Kneecap and Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, it is clear that Israel and their lobbyists have a stranglehold on the Political and Media elite within the UK. Many of you will have already known a lot about Israeli lobbyist groups and political donations, but some may not and in my first article for The Citizen section of my website, I take a look at the strangehold they have on British Politics.
The Money Pipeline
The first thing you need to understand about political influence is that it always leaves a paper trail. In the case of the Israel lobby's grip on Westminster, that trail is paved with millions of pounds flowing through opaque networks of donations, shell companies, and undeclared benefits.
Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) operates as the most powerful pro-Israel network in British politics. Since 2010, their donor rolls read like a who's who of City financiers and property magnates with ties to the Israeli right. Ehud Sheleg, a former CFI treasurer who made his fortune selling Russian art in London, has funnelled over £500,000 to Tory MPs since 2015. His most notable beneficiary? Priti Patel, who accepted £100,000 from Sheleg just months before her infamous private holiday to Israel in 2017 where she held twelve undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials.
But the real sophistication lies in the hidden economy of influence. Take the dining club circuit - exclusive £1,000-a-plate CFI fundraisers at The Savoy where MPs are wined and dined by donors who later appear in their parliamentary registers. Or the think tank pipeline, where organisations like Policy Exchange pay MPs like Michael Gove £75,000 for research fellowships while he blocks legislation against illegal settlements.
Perhaps most insidious are the family kickbacks. At least six MPs have relatives quietly employed by pro-Israel groups or associated businesses. When Priti Patel's aide received £45,000 from a pro-Israel PR firm during her scandal, it was dismissed as coincidence. But pattern recognition tells a different story.
A leaked 2021 CFI strategy memo obtained by Al Jazeera laid bare the operation: "We have unprecedented access at the highest levels of government after our £1.2 million donation drive." The document outlined plans to "embed support for Israel in Conservative Party DNA" through sustained financial investment.
The return on that investment is measurable. MPs who accept CFI donations are 23 times more likely to vote against Palestinian rights motions. They dominate key foreign policy committees. They reliably "talk out" private members' bills challenging the UK-Israel arms trade. This isn't democracy. It's a marketplace where Middle East policy is auctioned to the highest bidder.
The Propaganda Tours
Money opens doors, but the real indoctrination happens on the ground. Since 2010, at least 80 MPs have visited Israel on all-expenses-paid trips bankrolled by lobbying groups - returning not as impartial observers, but as de facto ambassadors for a foreign government.
Leaked itineraries reveal these are not fact-finding missions, but meticulously crafted propaganda tours. Day one begins with MPs being greeted at Ben Gurion Airport by security consultants with ties to Mossad, followed by dinners with Israeli officials who frame regional conflicts as existential threats. The psychological conditioning starts immediately.
Day two features the innovation deception - visits to Israeli tech startups (many developing surveillance tools used in occupied territories) and tours of illegal settlements, rebranded as pioneering communities. The message is clear: this isn't colonialism, it's progress.
The emotional manipulation peaks on day three. MPs are taken to Sderot near Gaza, where they're shown bomb shelters and told harrowing stories of rocket attacks - with no mention of the siege conditions in Gaza just miles away. Then comes the masterstroke: a visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, deliberately scheduled before any Palestine discussions to deliberately misidentify criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
By day four, the transformation is complete. Meetings with far-right ministers like Bezalel Smotrich are followed by CFI coaching sessions on defending Israel back home. The MPs return not as representatives of British constituents, but as assets of a foreign power.
The numbers don't lie. A Declassified UK analysis found 94% of MPs who take these trips later vote against Gaza ceasefires. 88% oppose bans on settlement goods. 72% sign pro-Israel motions within a month of returning.
Priti Patel's 2017 scandal - where she secretly met Israeli officials and proposed diverting UK aid to the IDF - wasn't an aberration. It was the system working exactly as designed.
The Silencing Machine
Criticism of Israel in Britain (and across the Western world) doesn't just face financial pressure - it meets systematic annihilation. The playbook is simple: redefine antisemitism, manufacture crises, and destroy careers.
It begins with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, adopted by the UK in 2016. By including clauses like denying Jewish self-determination ( in other words opposing Zionism) as antisemitism, it creates a legalistic weapon to silence dissent. Under Starmer, Labour used this definition to expel over 50 members - not for actual racism, but for Palestinian solidarity - including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The 2015-2020 Labour antisemitism crisis revealed the machinery in action. Lobby groups like the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) inflated statistics, claiming "1000 cases/year" - later debunked by the EHRC. BBC Panorama aired edited footage from lobby-linked whistleblowers. The result? Not a purge of actual antisemites, but the elimination of the Labour left.
A leaked Board of Deputies email summed up the strategy: "We don't need evidence, we need headlines. Make MPs feel the heat."
The casualties mounted. Chris Williamson MP suspended for saying Labour was too apologetic. Professor David Miller fired after a Campaign Against Antisemitism pressure campaign. Marc Lamont Hill dropped by CNN for a pro-Palestine UN speech. The message is clear: criticise Israel, and the lobby will end you.
Meanwhile, the media plays its part. The BBC omits occupation in 89% of Gaza reports. The Guardian fired pro-Palestine columnists while hiring pro-Israel editors. Murdoch outlets promote lobbyists as experts and kill investigations into Israeli war crimes.
This isn't debate. It's a silencing machine with one purpose: to make British democracy safe for apartheid.
The Dark Money Web
Behind every public donation lies a shadow economy of hidden financial flows. The pro-Israel lobby's influence operation extends far beyond declared contributions, snaking through offshore accounts, shell companies, and creative accounting tricks designed to obscure its true scale.
Gibraltar-based Marlborough Holdings serves as ground zero for this financial obfuscation. Leaked documents reveal the shell company has funneled at least £3.8 million to pro-Israel MPs and advocacy groups since 2015. The money moves through layers of consultancy fees and property investments before surfacing in British political accounts, laundered clean of its original intent. In 2019 alone, £450,000 from Marlborough was routed through a UK research institute that conveniently employed three Conservative MPs as senior advisors - all reliable Israel defenders when votes came to Parliament.
Closer to home, Cheshire Property Holdings operates as a more discreet laundering machine. The company, linked to CFI treasurer Ehud Sheleg, specializes in purchasing London real estate and leasing it to pro-Israel groups at suspiciously low rates - effectively converting illegal campaign contributions into perfectly legal below-market rents. The Jewish National Fund UK completes the trifecta, using its charitable status to funnel £12 million in education grants that somehow always find their way to MPs supporting Israel's settlement projects.
The revolving door spins both ways. Former CFI chair Eric Pickles now collects £120,000 annually from pro-Israel think tanks, while ex-Labour MP Ivan Lewis landed a £250,000 consultancy with Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group - the makers of Pegasus spyware used against Palestinian activists. Sitting MPs get creative too, with at least six funneling lobby money through family members' consultancy contracts and dozens more collecting £5,000-£10,000 speaking fees at pro-Israel events that mysteriously vanish from disclosure forms.
The arms trade provides the financial bedrock. Twenty-two MPs have held shares in Elbit Systems, Israel's largest weapons manufacturer, while voting to approve UK arms exports. Poju Zabludowicz, a top CFI donor, owns Tamares Group - which profits directly from Israeli surveillance tech deployed in occupied territories. This isn't just influence peddling; it's a self-perpetuating machine where political support generates financial rewards that guarantee more political support.
The Scottish Anomaly
Something peculiar happened to the Scottish National Party after 2014. Once vocal critics of Israeli apartheid, key SNP figures began an inexplicable pivot toward the pro-Israel camp - a transformation that traces back to a series of discreet dinners, sudden funding streams, and uncharacteristic policy reversals.
The shift began in earnest at Glasgow's Malmaison Hotel in 2016, where SNP heavyweights like Ian Blackford and Joanna Cherry broke bread with CFI representatives and Israeli diplomats. Attendees described the evening as informational, but within months, the SNP began abstaining on votes critical of Israel. More curious still was the emergence of the Edinburgh Zionist Fund, a previously obscure entity that pumped £250,000 into SNP-linked think tanks like Progress Scotland - founded by former SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson.
Money flowed to individual MPs too. Former Defense spokesman Stewart McDonald received £18,000 from Cheshire Security Consultancy, a firm staffed by ex-Mossad operatives, while former foreign affairs chair Alyn Smith took £10,000 from the Jewish Leadership Council. The payments coincided with a party-wide chilling effect on Palestine solidarity. When MP Chris Law proposed a motion condemning Israeli annexation in 2020, SNP whips quietly strangled it. When activists pushed for BDS measures, previously supportive MSPs developed sudden amnesia.
The culmination came in 2021 when the SNP-led Scottish Parliament became the first devolved legislature to adopt the IHRA antisemitism definition - the same weapon used to purge Labour's left wing. The move shocked grassroots supporters, especially as leaked emails revealed heavy lobbying from the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities and UKLFI, an organization that specialises in legal harassment of Palestine activists.
Perhaps most disturbing are Police Scotland's ties to Israeli security forces. 2023 FOI requests confirmed joint training exercises with units implicated in extrajudicial killings, while the SNP government refuses all inquiries. The party that once positioned itself as the progressive alternative now replicates Westminster's worst tendencies - a transformation that reeks of coercion or corruption at the highest levels.
The Media Enablers
Britain's press corps didn't just fail to expose this influence machine - they became its most effective component. From the BBC's skewed terminology to The Guardian's editorial purges, the media landscape has been systematically shaped to legitimise Israeli apartheid and marginalize Palestinian voices.
The rot starts at the top. Rupert Murdoch's News UK empire maintains an explicit pro-Israel editorial stance across The Sun, Times, and Sky News. A leaked 2015 memo from a Sun editor instructed reporters: "Palestinian casualties are 'militants' until proven otherwise. Avoid 'occupied territories' - use 'disputed' instead." Investigations into Israeli war crimes get spiked routinely; one shelved Sunday Times piece on Gaza bombing casualties later appeared in redacted form after "legal concerns" were raised by Murdoch's in-house lawyers.
The BBC institutionalises this bias through more subtle means. A 2023 Media Reform Coalition study found 89% of BBC reports on Israel-Palestine omit the word occupation, while 72% exclusively quote Israeli government sources in lead segments. When the broadcaster did air a critical documentary - Al Jazeera's The Lobby in 2017 - it was quietly buried in the schedule after Israeli embassy complaints. The pattern repeats endlessly: during the 2021 Sheikh Jarrah evictions, BBC editors cut Palestinian voices from a pre-recorded Newsnight segment, leaving only Israeli settlers' perspectives.
The Guardian's betrayal cuts deeper than the rest. Once home to fearless Middle East reporting, the paper now spikes op-eds by Noam Chomsky on BDS while publishing endless hand-wringing pieces by Jonathan Freedland - a Board of Deputies member who doubled as the paper's opinion editor. Former contributors like Nathan Robinson describe being blacklisted after criticising Israel, while the paper refuses to run ads for books like "The Palestine Laboratory," deeming them "too polemical."
The smear industry completes the ecosystem. Pro-Palestine voices like Ken Loach get branded controversial while actual extremists like CFI-linked Tory donor & former British Army Colonel Richard Kemp (and who regularly raises funds for the IDF) - who called for Gaza to be flattened - get platformed as security experts. Novara Media and The Canary face demonetisation and parliamentary access bans, while the racist pseudoscience of pro-Israel think tanks like the Henry Jackson Society gets treated as respectable commentary.
Breaking the Spell
The good news? This system isn't invincible - just well-funded. With coordinated pressure on key vulnerabilities, the lobby's grip can be loosened.
Start with transparency. A Foreign Influence Registration Act, modelled on the U.S. version, would force groups like CFI to disclose funding sources and meetings. Pair this with real-time donation tracking and a ban on lobby-funded travel, and suddenly the backchannels dry up. The National Crime Agency already has authority to investigate the Gibraltar and Cheshire networks; public pressure can force their hand.
Parliamentary reform matters too. Banning MPs from paid consultancies and second jobs would sever the financial tentacles that bind them to lobbyists. Mandating Palestinian inclusion in foreign policy delegations would break the propaganda tour monopoly. And revoking the IHRA definition's political role would remove the primary weapon used to silence critics.
Grassroots mobilisation remains the most potent tool. The BDS movement continues scoring wins, from Leicester City Council divesting pension funds to cultural boycotts of Israel-linked festivals. Consumer pressure forced Puma to drop its Israel Football Association sponsorship, while student campaigns have ended dozens of university partnerships with Israeli arms firms. However, given Labour’s attempts at proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist group - I suspect they will also turn their attentions to other Pro-Palestinian groups and try to ban them sooner rather than later.
Media accountability is trickier but vital. Supporting independent outlets like Declassified UK, Byline Times, The Canary, The Electronic Intifada, and the Morning Star [who I previously wrote for] starves the corporate media of its monopoly. FOI requests can expose BBC editorial interference, while shareholder activism might finally curb Murdoch's worst excesses.
The path won't be easy. The lobby will smear, threaten, and buy its way back in - it always does. But each MP forced to disclose hidden funding, each university that cuts ties with the apartheid state, each journalist who refuses to parrot propaganda makes the next victory easier. British politics should not be a marketplace where Palestinian lives are traded for donor cash. The keys to liberation are already in the hands of the people.
The Road to Genocide Runs Through Westminster
The evidence is undeniable. What we are witnessing is not just a foreign policy disagreement, but the wholesale capture of British democracy by an extremist foreign state - one that has blood on its hands.
If this system remains unchallenged, the consequences will be measured in Palestinian lives. Israel will continue its genocide in Gaza, its ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, its siege and starvation of millions - all with the full support of a British political class bought and paid for by lobbyists. Our taxes will keep funding the bombs. Our arms factories will keep supplying the bullets. Our media will keep sanitising the slaughter. And our politicians - including Prime Minister Keir Starmer - will keep lining up to give Israel the diplomatic cover it needs to finish the job.
This isn’t just complicity. It’s active participation in crimes against humanity.
Yet while Palestinians are buried under rubble, our political discourse remains grotesquely distorted. Musicians and students are hounded for chanting slogans. Social media users are arrested for offensive tweets. Meanwhile, the real criminals - the MPs taking lobbyist cash, the ministers approving arms sales, the media bosses running cover for genocide - face zero scrutiny.
Let’s be clear: If a British politician had taken Russian money to shape policy during the Cold War, or even to block arms sales to Ukraine currently, they’d have been branded traitors. Today, doing the same for a foreign regime actively engaged in ethnic cleansing is not just tolerated - it’s rewarded with promotions, knighthoods, and lucrative post-political careers.
The Hypocrisy Is the Point
The manufactured outrage over antisemitism while turning a blind eye to actual genocide isn’t an accident. It’s a deliberate strategy to:
Protect the lobby’s financial interests (arms deals, settlements, surveillance tech)
Silence dissent by equating moral outrage with hate speech
Distract the public from the real corruption at the heart of power
This Ends When We Say It Ends
There are no shortcuts, but there are leverage points:
Follow the money: Every MP who took CFI/LFI donations, every minister who approved arms sales—name them, shame them, vote them out.
Cut the funding: Push councils, universities, and pension funds to divest from Israel-linked firms.
Break the media monopoly: Support independent journalism that exposes these networks.
Demand consequences: Lobbying for an apartheid state should carry the same stigma as lobbying for Putin.
The genocide in Gaza didn’t start after the Hamas attacks on October 7th. It started with decades of Western impunity - impunity guaranteed by the very politicians now pretending to be neutral peacemakers.
They want us to believe this is all too complex to change. It isn’t. It’s simple:
Stop the arms sales
Expel the lobbyists
Jail the enablers
Or admit Britain is no longer a democracy - just a paid-up accomplice to mass murder.
The choice is ours.
Sources
The Electoral Commission: This official body in the UK maintains a public register of donations to political parties and elected politicians.
The UK Parliament's Register of Members' Financial Interests: This register details financial interests, gifts, and paid-for trips received by Members of Parliament.
Declassified UK: An investigative journalism organization that has published extensive reports on the influence of pro-Israel lobby groups in the UK, drawing heavily on the official registers.
Morning Star: A newspaper that has also reported on Declassified UK's findings regarding pro-Israel lobby funding and trips.
Absolutely stunning writing Andy - thank you.