Alan Duncan comes out fighting against false accusations of antisemitism
JVL Introduction
This post requires a rather longer introduction than usual in the interests of not being misrepresented. These comments are those of the JVL web editor, not a considered JVL statement on the issue at hand.
The complaint against former Foreign Minister Sir Alan Duncan, pursued by the Conservative Party, needs to be judged with caution.
He said strong things about the Conservative Friends of Israel as lobby group and about some named individuals in particular.
Duncan’s statements were found uncomfortable by the sizable and powerful pro-Israel lobby in the Tory Party but that is not a sufficient basis for judging them antisemitic.
Cries of antisemitism have proved so often to be a vindictive attempt to silence critics of Israel or supporters of Palestinian causes.
The complaint against former Foreign Minister Sir Alan Duncan, on vague and unstated charges and pursued by the Conservative Party, bears all the hallmarks of the latter.
There was a target on Duncan’s head and some people in the Tory party were clearly out to get him.
His history in speaking out for Palestinian rights had long made him a target of the Israel lobby and of Conservative Friends of Israel in particular.
We have it on record that in 2017 Israeli spy Shai Masot who worked closely with Labour Friends of Israel at the time, wanted to topple him, with large funds at his disposal, as Al Jazeera revealed in its series on the Israel Lobby.
But just as Shai Masot was deported swiftly and the issues raised in his case buried, so too the furore around what Duncan said had been used to bury the real issues of possible corruption in British politics and the Tory Party so clearly raised by his allegations.
In the event, Tory party investigation exonerated him – which didn’t stop a Tory spokesman from saying “Sir Alan’s claims about the Conservative party and its links are entirely false and unfounded”; and the Antisemitism Policy Trust continues to bay for blood.
Duncan’s speech to the press after his exoneration is linked to below, after Kiran Stacey’s Guardian report.
Duncan said of the investigation he had been subjected to that:
“At its heart is the perverse – and I would argue corrupt – relationship between the Conservative Friends of Israel and the top of the Conservative Party. This has gone on for far too long. Money, improper influence and the promotion of Israeli interests above our own have contributed to the destruction of the UK’s independent foreign policy. They have also undermined UNWRA, the UN, and international law. And it all comes at the expense of innocent Palestinians. You need no greater evidence of this than the total silence we saw about Gaza during the election campaign.”
RK
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Tue 16 Jul 2024. Read the original here.
Alan Duncan attacks Tory party after being cleared over antisemitism claims
Former minister exonerated after ‘political decision’ led to investigation despite there being no formal complaint
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I just did a search on the CAAs website re Alan Duncan and four results came up, the last of which was entitled CONSERVATIVE AND UNIONIST PARTY and dated 06.12.2019, and if you click on it, it takes you to a page headed ANTISEMITISM IN POLITICAL PARTIES where a number of MPs from different parties are listed, including Alan Duncan, each with the number of alleged incidents of A/S they are accused of by the CAA…. in Duncan’s case, 2. And if you then click on his name it takes you to another page where it relates said incidents.
Anyway, I’m 99% certain that a couple of years or so after the A/S smear campaign against Jeremy and the left kicked off, I did a search on the CAAs website re Alan Duncan and, as such, there was nothing, and the above – given that it’s dated the 6th of December 2019 just six days before the GE – appears to confirm that was the case, and that the CAA only got round to accusing him of A/S then, and obviously felt obliged to do so given that it was listing a number of MPs in respect of A/S prior to the election.
The third one is entitled SIX MONTHS and dated 08.04.2024, and is of course about the six months since the Hamas attack on October 7th. I actually read the piece a couple of months or so ago, but I obviously didn’t read right down to the end of that section, because at the end of it, the first thing it says (in a sub-headline) is: It is time for Sir Alan Duncan to be expelled, and then goes on to relate the LBC interview.
The second of the four results is entitled WHAT DOES THIS ELECTION RESULT MEAN FOR BRITISH JEWS?, and was posted three days ago, and the first one was posted on 08.06.2024 (??) and is merely entitled Sir Alan Duncan and takes you to a page which is exactly the same piece the CAA posted in 2019 (when you clicked on his name in the list of MPs)
Anyway, here’s a link to the four search results:
https://antisemitism.org/?s=alan+duncan
PS I wonder if the CAA will be posting shortly about the Tory Party investigation? Strange though, isn’t it, that they didn’t report Duncan to the police YEARS ago, as with………..
When the foreign policies of both the Conservative and Labour parties are geared in the interests of Israel, a State committing genocide, how on earth can Britain be a democracy? It makes no difference which of our main parties is in government, Israeli interests take precedence. Alan Duncan is one of the few politicians in either Party to speak out against the corruption.
Congratulations, Alan. It is appalling how reactions to relevant criticism are twisted so as to falsely make out that some sort of ethnic hatred is involved. Shoddy tactics have become associated with defence of aggressive zionism.
To accuse Conservative Friends of Israel (or Labour Friends of Israel for that matter) of “doing the bidding of Netanyahu, bypassing all proper processes of government to exercise undue influence at the top of government” seems to me to be a clear accusation rather than a trope
The real question we should be asking is not whether the accusation is anti-semitic but whether it is true or false.
Having just been reading Sir Stephen Sedley’s thoughts on the crime of treason in English law,* maybe we should all be looking more closely at the implications of the oath of allegiance which peers (such as Lord Polak) and MPs (such as Kier Starmer) swear when entering Parliament. What is the value of such an oath if the person swearing it can simply turn round and declare that “I am a Zionist without qualification” – as our new prime minister boasted in February 2020.
Sir Alan Duncan did not mention treason, but when peers and MPs put the interests of another state above the interests and authority of the state to which they swear allegiance, then what is the right word?
* LRB, 18 July 2024
This is courageous and relatively decent personal response from an old-fashioned Tory driven to fury by his harassment at the behest of fanatic ethnonationalist cult leaders posing as representatives of British Jewry, though the final trigger for his outburst may perhaps have been caused by more opportunist moves by his enemies within the Conservative party.
Nevertheless Alan Duncan’s naively favourable remarks about Starmer either betray an astonishing failure to pay attention to the incomparably greater extent of persecution of Labour Party members falsely accused of antisemitism, or else indicate shamefully partisan limits to his concern for justice. This is all the more strange since the targetting of Duncan featured in the Al Jazeera series “The Lobby”, a documentary which was largely devoted to Zionist influence on Labour rather than on the Tories.
Still – never look a gifthorse in the mouth….