By Gilad Atzmon

9 February 2010

Gilad Atzmon views the role of Israel lobbyists in Britain’s Iraq Inquiry as a microcosm of the stranglehold of these lobbyists over British politics in general, and warns that the British public had better wake up to this before it is too late.

”One may wonder whether we still need an election in this country. At the end of the day, the vast majority of the British political elite are practically bought by the Israeli lobby.”

The more I read about the Chilcot [Iraq] inquiry the more disturbed I am. The fallacy imbued in the heart of British “democracy” is staggering. While some commentators are concerned with questions to do with the legality of the war, the most crucial issue here is actually the disappearance of ethical judgment from our public and political life. Rather than being concerned with morality and ethics, British politicians are concerned with legalism. In other words, if someone would manage to prove that the war was “legal”, then the murdering of a million and a half Iraqis would be well justified. Let’s face it, our politicians are corrupt to the bone.

The Israel lobby dominates Labour and owns most Conservative MPs and other politicians

In fact, the Chilcot inquiry is in itself a pretty disturbing concept. As George Monbiot pointed out a few days ago in the Guardian’s Comment is Free, in the world of British “official inquiries” it is the government that appoints the inquiry’s members and sets its terms of reference. “It's the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge his case and who should sit on the jury.” As if this were not enough, none of the inquiry members is an attorney. None of its member is qualified in the art of questioning. Consequently, the inquiry doesn’t have any legal ability, capacity or teeth. It is a farce. It is there to release some public steam. It is there to convey a false image of openness. I believe that the most pathetic statement was pronounced last week by Tony Blair. “People didn’t think that al-Qaeda and Iran would play the role that they did,” announced the unchallenged genocidal man in front of inquiry. Basically, we are now blaming the so-called “enemy” for not performing according to “our plans”. I guess that even an illiterate burglar would refrain from using such an argument in the court. Blair obviously got away with it.

But there is one positive side to all this. As sad as this Chilcot inquiry seems to be, the choice of its team members is also revealing. The selection of the panel suggests who the government is inclined to appoint when it needs a whitewash.

On 22 November 2009, as the Chilcot inquiry was preparing to convene, a former British ambassador, Sir Oliver Miles, expressed concerns over the fact that two out of the five members of the inquiry’s committee (40 per cent), Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman, were “strong supporters of Tony Blair and/or the Iraq war”. He also mentioned that both Gilbert and Freedman were Jewish and that Gilbert is a devout Zionist”. 
Richard Ingrams wondered a week later in the Independent whether the Zionist links to the Iraq invasion would be brushed aside.

At the time Britain was taken to the Iraq war, the chief fundraiser of its governing party was the devout Zionist Lord Michael Levy, who managed to gather a number of wealthy Zionists around him. The inquiry should investigate closely the case of the Zionist parliamentary lobby called “Labour Friends of Israel”.

In the days leading up to the war, it was reported  in the Guardian that the forged information about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction originated in an Israeli intelligence agency. It was later revealed that references to Israel in Britain’s Iraq weapons dossier were hushed up. It is crucial that the inquiry establishes whether this was indeed the case. If it was, it would support the contention that Britain was led into a war by people in the service of a foreign country and on behalf of foreign interests.

However, it would seem that the unique amalgam of the inquiry panel, the lack of an attorney and the presence of two pro-Blair, pro-war enthusiasts, one of them a Zionist by admission, is there to stop the inquiry from hitting the truth.

On 28 January 2010, BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme reported that Martin Gilbert had expressed “deep unease” at the articles by Sir Oliver Miles and Richard Ingrams. 
Gilbert gave an interview to the Israel National Radio, a radio station run by Jewish settlers operating from an illegal settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories.

As expected, MacShane repeats Gilbert’s embarrassing trick; he either pretends to be stupid or spins the Zionist mantra. “Religion,” he quotes Thomas Jefferson, “should play no part in appointment to pubic office.” MacShane, who wrote a book about anti-Semitism, must know that it is not Gilbert’s faith or even ethnicity that concerns a growing number of Britons. It is the Jewish nationalist ideology, i.e. Zionism, that alarms Oliver Miles and the rest of us. It is this ideology that Gilbert, a Zionist by admission, succumbs to and that should be enough to stop him from partaking in an official British official into a Zionist war. In legal terms, this is commonly referred to as a conflict of interests.

The clumsiness of Gordon Brown’s cabinet appointing such a farce of an official inquiry is mind blowing. It also reveals that the British political system is failing all the way through. It wasn’t just Blair and his acolytes. It continued with Brown and won’t stop with the coming Tory government that, as mentioned above, is largely bought by the same Israel lobby.

Thinking about Karl Popper’s The open society and its enemies, we are probably entitled to conclude that we are very far from being an “open society”. However, at least we know who our enemies are. We may admit that for a few decades Israel and its supporters enjoyed a carte blanche in academia and politics, probably because of Western guilt. However, as Israeli crimes are exposed and neo-con intervention is realized, our patience with Israel, its Zionist lobbies and its Sabbath Goys is running out. Britain, you had better wake up before it is too late.

Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born musician, writer and anti-racism campaigner. His latest jazz album, "In loving memory of America", was released on 1 March 2009 and can be purchased here.

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