By Redress Information & Analysis

11 June 2009

Britain’s prime minister has put a notorious pro-Israel lobbyist in charge of policy in the Middle East, Iraq and Iran, reaffirming his determination to continue with his Zionist policies even as his administration approaches the end of its life.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has appointed an Israeli agent of influence and proponent of genocide in Gaza to a key position at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Britain’s foreign ministry.

On 9 June, Ivan Lewis was given a major promotion in Mr Brown’s government when he was appointed Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with responsibility for Middle East policy, Iraq, Iran, counterterrorism and Anglo-American relations. According to one source, he is now “just one step away from the cabinet”.

Speaking after his promotion, Mr Lewis said: “My responsibility for the Middle East peace process is particularly poignant. I have never hidden my pride at being Jewish or my support for the State of Israel”.

According to the Independent newspaper, Mr Lewis’s appointment has “raised eyebrows in the Foreign Office”. It said:

Lewis has a long history of interest in the region as vice-chair of the Labour Friends of Israel. Earlier this year, he became – not without controversy – one of the most outspoken political supporters of Israel's military assault on Gaza. Critics can't help but wonder how objective Lewis is likely to be in his new post.

Mr Lewis is also a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust, a body founded in 1988 by British pro-Israel lobbyists Greville Janner and Merlyn Rees with the aim of maintaining a culture of gentile guilt and Jewish victimhood in British schools.

Ivan Lewis’s support for the racist state of Israel and for the genocide in Gaza is not the only example of his questionable morality.

In 2007, when he was junior health minister, he was forced to apologise to a civil servant, Susan Mason, after she told managers she was unhappy with the nature of their relationship.

It emerged that Mr Lewis, who at the time was 40 years old, had been sexually harassing Ms Mason, aged 23, with numerous smutty text messages. After complaining to her bosses, Mr Lewis’s victim was moved to a different job before resigning from the Civil Service. Speaking of her former boss, she said: "He wasn't the nicest man to work for."

A year earlier, Mr Lewis had walked out on his wife of 16 years, Juliette, and their two sons, aged nine and 11, in order to have an affair with a 50-year-old married woman, local government councillor Margaret Gibb.