Kaufman

Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)

"I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist.

On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.

I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.

I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.

My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.

On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians—the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that

“500 of them were militants.”

That was the reply of a Nazi.

I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.

The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her Government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni’s father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organised the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.

Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin.

Today, the current Israeli Government indicate that they would be willing, in circumstances acceptable to them, to negotiate with the Palestinian President Abbas of Fatah.

It is too late for that.

They could have negotiated with Fatah’s previous leader, Yasser Arafat, who was a friend of mine.

Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah, where I visited him.

Because of the failings of Fatah since Arafat’s death, Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006.

Hamas is a deeply nasty organisation, but it was democratically elected, and it is the only game in town.

The boycotting of Hamas, including by our Government, has been a culpable error, from which dreadful consequences have followed.

The great Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with whom I campaigned for peace on many platforms, said:

“You make peace by talking to your enemies.”

However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the west bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.

It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis’ real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve.

They are not simply war criminals; they are fools."

"It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews, not to his repulsive Government. His actions are staining the star of David with blood. The Jewish people, whose gifts to civilised discourse include Einstein and Epstein, Mendelssohn and Mahler, Sergei Eisenstein and Billy Wilder, are now symbolised throughout the world by the blustering bully Ariel Sharon, a war criminal implicated in the murder of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila camps and now involved in killing Palestinians once again."

I noticed just yesterday this little bit of Black Hat SEO;

Sir Gerald Kuafman is one of the most influential and prominent leading Jewish, Zionist critics of Isreali domestic and foreign policy.

If you begin typing "Gerald Kaufman" into Google, the autocomplete will suggest as the top two searchterm hits "Gerald Kaufman paedo" and "Gerald Kaufman rumours"

Now, I wonder who could have possibly arrange for that to happen....

"Mega"

"...Israel is believed to still have a spy very high up within the US administration, sometimes known as 

"Mega"

The Washington Post reported in a front-page story on May 7th, 1997 that US intelligence had intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. 

One of the Israelis had commented that they may get the letter from "Mega" - apparently a codename for an Israeli agent within the US government.

This revelation has been treated by much of the press as something of an aberration, as Israeli officials have claimed that they do not spy on the US. Israel Foreign Minister David Levy told the Washington Post (5/8/97) that :

"Our diplomats all over the world, and of course specifically in the US, don’t deal with such a thing." 

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office declared: 

"Israel does not use intelligence agents in the United States. Period."

ISRAEL MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

Israeli Government statement on Jonathan Pollard~ 12 May 1998: 

ISRAEL MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS Israeli Government statement on Jonathan Pollard 12 May 1998: by Paul Coker

"For the first time since his arrest and I trial and as part of the ongoing efforts to secure Pollard's release,  the  Government of Israel publicly admitted that Jonathan Pollard was an Israeli agent. "

Text:                "Within the framework of intensive government activities to achieve the release of Jonathan Pollard, Pollard's legal counsel has asked that his appeal be cancelled, after the State of Israel reiterated its readiness to recognize  its commitment to and responsibility for him. 

In accordance with the recommendation of the professional team headed by Cabinet Secretary Danny Naveh, the State of Israel has announced that Jonathan Pollard served as an  Israeli agent handled by senior members of the Scientific Liaison Bureau (Lekam). 

It should be noted that this position is consistent with the facts that have already found expression in the publicly issued conclusions of the Knesset Intelligence and Security Services Subcommittee, and by the Rotenstreich-Tzur Commission of Inquiry, established by the Prime Minister in early 1987 Naveh Is expected to meet with Pollard in  prison on Friday."

"Of all the spy cases from 1985, the Pollard case has been the one that has had the longest life in terms of media coverage - in part because of efforts, both by private citizens and the Israeli government to have his life sentence commuted.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's 1993 appeal to President Bill Clinton resulted in a letter from defense secretary Les Aspin expressing his opposition and stressing three points: the requirement to maintain control over the disclosure of intelligence to foreign governments, the damage done by Pollard's disclosures, and Pollard's alleged inclusion of classified information in letters from prison.

In 1998, in an attempt to facilitate his release, the Israeli government publically acknowledged Pollard's role as an Israeli asset. And, former Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet reports that the subject was raised by the Israeli government in 2006, and he threatened to resign if Pollard was released.

As recently as January 2011, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked President Barack Obama, without success, to free Pollard.

Richelson, A Century of Spies, pp. 401-402,Ibid., p. 403; George J. Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), p. 67; M.E. "Spike" Bowman, "The Drumbeats for Clemency for Jonathan Jay Pollard Reverberate Again," Intelligencer, Winter/Spring 2011, pp. 7-10; Jonathan S. Tobin, "The Pollard Spy Case, 25 Years Later," Commentary, March 2011, pp. 37-43.