Conservative Friends of Israel is "committed to the Conservative Party and to the welfare of the State of Israel and dedicated to establishing close links between Great Britain and Israel.
The Conservative Friends of Israel is an independent, self-financing and autonomous organization. The CFI aims to foster greater understanding about and sympathy for Israel within the Conservative Party.
At the time of the iraq war vote over 80% of Conservative MPs (who carried the vote in the Commons) were in Conservative Friends of Israel.
Dr Liam Fox made the group's case for them. He is quoted on the CFoI website as saying: "...We must remember that in the battle for the values that we stand for, for democracy against theocracy, for democratic liberal values against repression - Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together or we will all fall divided.”
They run six deputations to Israel a year – paid for by the organisation. They engage in intensive lobbying – (including providing briefing notes to Gordon Brown), They maintain constant contact with the Israeli embassy.
Their website is stridently anti Hezbollah and they maintain a careful vetting of all new Parliamentary candidates. “Within the Conservative Party, we actively support candidates, especially in marginal constituencies. Our programme for prospective parliamentary candidates provides weekly briefings, events with speakers, and a chance to participate in delegations to Israel. Our members give financial support and campaigning help where it matters.”
Rt Hon David Cameron MP, Leader of the Conservative Party has stated “I am proud not just to be a Conservative, but a Conservative Friend of Israel; and I am proud of the key role CFI plays within our Party.” His recent tour of Israel began with a two hour Black Hawk helicopter flight with the Israeli defence minister to see the country's borders.
He is a member of Conservative Friends of Israel as well as Anglicans for Israel. Cameron calls himself a “Zionist” (in an age in which that is not particularly popular.) David Cameron is also an unapologetic admirer of Senator McCain and he was the first Conservative Party leader in years to visit President Bush.
"There is something deep in our Party’s DNA that believes in Israel" - David Cameron
Boris Johnson:
Boris has said about a Palestinian suicide bomber: “What made him leave the Askar refugee camp near Nablus, pass through the Hawara checkpoint, and kill himself and three blameless Israelis, including Leah Levine, a Holocaust survivor? How could anyone persuade a child to do this?”
As Mayor, Johnson has said “I am delighted that one of my first acts as Mayor of London is to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel…I will do whatever I can to extend the hand of friendship to Israel, a nation I believe in, support and admire.”
This is a sea change in the attitude of the London mayoral position.
A finnish billionaire who inherited a fortune from the arms trade and has extensive gambling interests in Las Vegas emerged as one of David Cameron’s major financial backers.
Poju Zabludowicz, who lives in London, has donated £70,000 to the Conservative party over the past three years. He is also one of the financial supporters of the Conservative Friends of Israel, which has also given to the party.
Zabludowicz, 55, heads the Tamares Group, which has its headquarters in Liechtenstein and has an international property portfolio, which includes a number of hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. Zabludowicz is calculated by The Sunday Times Rich List to be worth more than £2 billion. Conservative Friends of Israel has given to a number of Conservative constituency associations, particularly in the run-up to the last election. The organisation, which has given £29,000 to the Tories between 2003-06, is not required to reveal its financial backers. It has targeted constituencies where sitting Labour MPs have been senior figures in Labour Friends of Israel.-link
The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) are a successful force, claiming a large majority of Tory MPs as members. It is frankly perverse for Charles Moore to complain in the Daily Telegraph that the Conservatives have gone awry since the good old days, when the natural Tory outlook included "a greater sympathy for Israel than for those who were trying to destroy her", since if anything the change has been the other way round.
When does he think that greater sympathy for Israel was ever a distinctively Conservative position?
In the days when I attended Tory conferences, you could be entertained one evening by the CFI, with the late Duke of Devonshire in the chair, but on the next by the Council for Arab-British Understanding and such luminaries as Ian Gilmour and Dennis Walters.
Going further back, AJ Balfour was the Tory premier and then foreign secretary who signed the eponymous declaration in 1917 favouring a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and came to favour a Jewish state (as with many gentile Zionists, his attitude to Jews was highly ambiguous; he described privately how uneasy he once felt at a dinner party where "Hebrews were in an actual majority").
And yet his successor as foreign secretary took the opposite view. That highest of high Tories Lord Curzon deplored the Balfour declaration. He thought that a Jewish homeland could only mean a grave injustice to the inhabitants of Palestine. It would inflame hundreds of millions of Muslim subjects of the British empire. And as to the Jewish people themselves and the idea of transporting them to the Levant, "I cannot think of a worse fate for an advanced and intellectual community," Curzon said.
In his day Curzon might have seemed the truer Tory than Balfour, and it's only recently that his spirit has been stifled in his old party. That is all the more so with the arrival of MPs such as Crabb, Carswell, and the egregious Michael Gove, the Times columnist and MP for Surrey Heath, a copy of whose Muslim-bashing diatribe Celsius 7/7 is given to every lucky person who joins the CFI.-link
Cameron faces revolt over Israel
link
* Stuart Polak, Director
* Robert Halfon, Political Director
* Stephanie Leven, Projects Director
* Nathalie Tamam, Research Manager
* Julie Tamir, Secretary
* Charlotte Polak, Membership Secretary
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Parliamentary Group
* Chairman: Rt Hon James Arbuthnot MP
* Vice Chairmen: Sir John Butterfill; James Clappison MP
* Secretary: David Amess MP
* Officers: Alistair Burt MP; Lee Scott MP; Theresa Villiers MP
* Chairman of CFI Europe: Timothy Kirkhope MEP
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Honorary Officers
* President: Rt Hon Baroness Shephard of Northwold
* Vice Chairmen: Jeremy Galbraith; Betty Geller; Lord Taylor of Holbeach CBE; Stanley Cohen OBE; Michael Heller
* Vice Presidents: Rt Hon Sir Timothy Sainsbury; Lord Lane of Horsell; Sir Michael Latham DL; Lord Sanderson of Bowden; The Lord Steinberg; Lord Thomas of Gwydir QC
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Executive Board
* Richard Harrington (Chairman)
* Lance Anisfeld; Lorraine da Costa; Jonathan Gough; Andrew Heller (Hon. Treasurer); Steven Kaye; Edward Lee; Howard Leigh; Stephen Massey; David Meller; Jonathan Metliss; Gary Mond; Stephan Shakespeare; Barry Welck; Hilda Worth
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2 Comments:
Hi Wendy,
I wonder if you would be able to point me in the direction of the source from which you got the info that 80% of Tory MPs are in the CFI group? I have mentioned to this to the prospective parliamentary candidates for the Tory party in my region and they have all hotly denied this fact. I saw it quoted in an article in the Palestine Chronicle and despite having tried via the editor to contact the writer, I still am no clearer to finding out. Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.
it was originally from their website, figures are for 2005 where they stated two thirds were members and in 2006 80%.
you can find an alternative reference here:
http://en.allexperts.com/e/c/co/conservative_friends_of_israel.htm
also quote:
Q) Conservative Friends of Israel is one of the biggest affiliated groups to the Conservative Party with over 80% of MPs as members and over 2000 registered supporters (most of whom are Party members). How do you see CFI's role in promoting Conservatism and helping the Conservative Party to win the next election?
A) I want all the groups within the Conservative Party to have one common purpose. Working to convince our fellow Britons that we need a modern compassionate Conservative Government which will create new opportunities, empower those neglected by Labor, fight for freedom abroad and defend liberty at home.
David Cameron MP - November 24th 2005
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