UK: Labour Jewish veteran Gerald Kaufman claims 'Jewish money' has influenced Conservatives

The Jewish Chronicle reports:

Veteran Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman has accused Israel of fabricating the recent knife attacks in the country and claimed the Conservative Party has been influenced by “Jewish money”.  Speaking at a Palestine Return Centre event in Parliament on Tuesday, Sir Gerald said that the British government had become more pro-Israel in recent years.

He said: “It’s Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative Party – as in the general election in May – support from the Jewish Chronicle, all of those things, bias the Conservatives.

“There is now a big group of Conservative members of parliament who are pro-Israel whatever government does and they are not interested in what Israel, in what the Israeli government does.

“They’re not interested in the fact that Palestinians are living a repressed life, and are liable to be shot at any time. In the last few days alone the Israelis have murdered 52 Palestinians and nobody pays attention and this government doesn’t care.”

Sir Gerald, Father of the House of Commons, then told the audience of 45 people that the Israeli government had made up the recent spate of violent attacks in order to allow it to “execute Palestinians”.
The Manchester Gorton MP said “a friend of mine who lives in East Jerusalem” had emailed him with the accusations about Israel fabricating the attacks.  Sir Gerald then read from the letter: “More than half the stabbing claims were definitely fabricated. The other half, some were true, the others there was no way to tell since they executed Palestinians and no one asked questions. 

“Not only that, they got to the point of executing Arab-looking people and in the past few days they killed two Jewish Israelis and an Eritrean just because they looked Arab.

“They fabricated a stabbing story to justify the killings before they found out they were not Palestinians.”

Sir Gerald has not responded to a JC request for a comment on his remarks.  The comments were recorded by blogger David Collier.

Mr Collier said of the experience: “What was it like? It took a while to digest. Yes, you pick up straight away on the 'Jewish money' comment, but as he rolls into the influence this has on the Conservative Party and how this plays out on foreign policy, you start questioning as to whether you are really hearing this.

"Is someone really pushing this, in Westminster, in 2015? And nobody in the room raised a protest. How did I feel? It was sickening.”  Read more.