Report: Pro-Israel groups fund one-third of UK Conservative MPs

Declassified reported that 126 of the party’s 344 Members of Parliament (MPs) have accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups.

The funds amount to over £430,000 ($547,000) in donations and hospitality. The lobby groups have paid for Conservative MPs to visit Israel on 187 occasions, some of which included trips to the occupied Palestinian territories.

Thirteen of those MPs have visited Israel during its ongoing war on Gaza. In January, six MPs went on a “solidarity visit” hosted by Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

The lobby groups include, most prominently, the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a parliamentary group that claims around 80 percent of Conservative MPs as its members and has paid over £330,000 towards MP visits to Israel.

CFI delegations included tours of factories run by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer.

In early April, it emerged that the Conservative Party is investigating former Foreign Office Minister Alan Duncan after he said it was time to “flush out” senior CFI leaders.

Duncan has previously accused CFI of “actively lobbying” against him and stopping him from getting the post of Middle East minister in 2016 because of his pro-Palestinian sympathies.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and the National Jewish Assembly (NJA) have also funded Conservative MPs.

Communities secretary Michael Gove accepted £3,086 from Aipac to speak at its conference in Washington in 2017, Declassified reported.

Another MP, Matthew Offord, took £2,799 from JNF UK to travel to Israel twice. The JNF has for years authorised the purchase of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and supported the expansion of illegal settlements.

Since the start of Gaza war, the UK’s Conservative government has backed Israel’s siege and bombardment of the besieged enclave.

Under former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the government has also tried to censor pro-Palestinian slogans at demonstrations held in the country.

The International Centre for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) has submitted a complaint about five senior ministers to the British police, alleging their complicity in war crimes committed by Israel in blockaded territory.

Israel’s war on Gaza has drawn widespread condemnation, and it is the subject of an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Nearly 36,000 Palestinians have been killed since October, the vast majority of them women and children.