Swept under the carpet

Swept under
the carpet

HOW can a story affecting Britain’s national security be
relegated from newspaper front pages one day to a
non-event the next?
How can an opposition front-bench demand for an
inquiry be simply ignored and left to lie without protest?
Labour shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry
demanded an immediate inquiry on Sunday into the
scandal of an Israeli embassy official discussing with a
civil servant the “need” to “take down” MPs sympathetic
to Palestine.
It was an open-and-shut case. Senior political adviser
Shai Masot was caught on video in conversation
with former Tory ministerial aide Maria Strizzolo, who
resigned yesterday from her subsequent position at the
Skills Funding Agency. They were the victims of a classic
media sting carried out by an undercover Al-Jazeera
journalist, but, unlike previous operations, this is being
smothered.


The Foreign Office wasted no time in accepting Israeli
ambassador Mark Regev’s apology and assurance
that Masot was not acting on behalf of the embassy or
his government before considering the matter closed.
Israeli daily Haaretz weighed in yesterday with knocking
copy from Anshel Pfeffer, belittling Masot as a Walter
Mitty type, a silly young man showing off in front of
a woman by pretending that his influence and powers
are greater than they are.
Pfeffer gave a potted biography of “a persuasive
young man who could wear a suit and hold a glass of
wine at receptions” and was then appointed a “senior
political adviser” to then deputy ambassador Eitan Naeh,
which amounted to “a grand title for an embassy dogsbody.”
He asserted that Masot would never have been allowed
access to MPs but for chronic understaffing at
the embassy and Naeh’s bad judgement.
“Whatever cloak and dagger operations might exist
against anti-Israel activists in Britain do not target junior
Tory ministers and do not operate from official embassies,”
the Haaretz journalist boomed. He didn’t
disclose, however, where they do operate from or how
he knows.
Well, that’s the line from Tel Aviv, but Britain’s hardnosed
media, well versed in the Mandy Rice-Davies
attitude to official denials, wouldn’t fall for that. Right?


Wrong. The usually rigorous Daily Politics on BBC TV
gathered Labour backbencher Lucy Powell, Tory MP
Nadhim Zahawi, Jewish Chronicle political editor Marcus
Dysch together with presenter Jo Coburn to agree
that there was nothing more to be said.
Powell suggested that Thornberry’s inquiry call could
be dispensed with because her demand had been for
an “informal inquiry,” which rings strangely in light of
the shadow foreign secretary’s reference to a “national
security issue.”
For Labour, there is also the issue of the relationship
between Masot and Labour Friends of Israel chairwoman
Joan Ryan, who played a prominent role in the
assiduously stoked non-story smearing Jeremy Corbyn
with alleged tolerance of anti-semitism.
What lies behind Masot’s claim to have a £1 million
fund to send Labour MPs off on “fact-finding” jollies to
Israel? The Israeli government has long been irate over
growing support for the BDS (boycott, disinvestment,
sanctions) campaign in support of Palestinian national
rights. Is it so unbelievable that a state that previously
secreted assassins in its embassies to liquidate perceived
enemies would stoop to dirty tricks to undermine BDS
backers? Or that it would rely on friends and supporters
in the media to discredit a convincing case that the embassy
in London is behind such tricks?
Questions persist over the role played by Israeli officials
in Britain that must not be swept under the carpet.
MPs should show some political backbone and demand
answers to those questions.