Among the British Jewish community, there is much anxiety about the potential ramifications of “donor-gate”, the Labour Party funding scandal that has already damaged the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Many Jews are worried that the affair, which has led to the second police investigation of the Labour Party’s funding practices in the space of a year, is fueling a fresh outbreak of anti-Semitism.
Certainly, it is hard not to notice that the scandal’s protagonists are Jews. The businessman at the center of the row, the property developer, David Abrahams, who gave over 600,000 sterling pounds to the Labour Party, using other people as proxy donors, is Jewish. So, too, is Jon Mendelson, the Labour Party fund-raiser who claims that he was entirely unaware that Abrahams was making donations on this curious, not to say strictly illegal, basis. What is more, Abrahams and Mendelson met through the Labour Party’s Friends of Israel campaign group, where both were familiar with Lord Levy, the Jewish magnate and fund-raiser for then Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was caught up in the so-called “cash for honors” imbroglio.
The Jewish Chronicle fears “donor-gate” will be seen by the British public as a second “Jewish scandal”. There is no denying that the secretiveness of David Abrahams and the indications that Jon Mendelson has been less than frank about his knowledge of Abrahams’ modus operandi have created an unfortunate impression. Indeed, the whole affair may be said to have played straight into the hands of anti-Semites with a natural disposition to think in terms of Jewish cabals and the pursuit by Jews of covert influence in high places. To such people, the revelation that the men in question were much involved with Labour’s Friends of Israel has inevitably strengthened suspicions that Jewish money was being given to the Labour Party specifically in order to benefit the Zionist cause. Mendelson is an ardent Zionist and Abrahams nurses a strong attachment to the Jewish state.
One British newspaper, the right-wing Daily Telegraph, has made much of the scandal’s Jewish complexion. The Telegraph insinuated that Abrahams is a front for Israeli money, publishing a photograph of the businessman shaking hands with the former Israeli ambassador to Britain, Zvi Heifetz (who before becoming Tony Blair’s adviser on the Middle East faced money-laundering allegations) and posing the question: Who is the real donor?
In truth, matters may be quite different from what the Daily Telegraph seemed to be implying. It appears, for instance, that Abrahams and Mendelson fell out over Friends of Israel strategy, with Abrahams having apparently been keen to approach a certain Palestinian group, a proposal to which Jon Mendelson violently objected. As it happens, little about David Abrahams appears straightforward. The other day he attacked the Jewish Chronicle for reporting that his secretiveness was motivated by anxiety not to attract the attention of anti-Semites. His true concern, he stressed, was to preserve his privacy, though photographs circulate of him keeping company with public figures like Ehud Olmert and Tony Blair. He also likes to stress that he has given money to the Labour Party purely because he is a long-time party loyalist. The question of the rationale behind his beneficence to the Labour Party remains the most enigmatic feature of the whole episode.
Some Jews feel that it is a mistake for them to be charitable at all, since whenever they donate money they are liable to be suspected of ulterior motives. Yet it is well to remember that the current scandal would never have arisen in the first place had not David Abrahams’ contributions to the Labour Party taken such a bizarrely clandestine form. Nor would there be cause to query his connection with Labour Friends of Israel were that body to observe democratic protocol and publish records of its deliberations. All that is generally known about LFI is that it is a venerable Labour Party lobbying group with wealthy Jews such as Lord Levy among its leading patrons.
Deploring its lack of openness, the Independent columnist, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, wrote last week that LFI’s raison d’etre is to champion official Israeli policy and alleged that Tony Blair’s unconditional support for the 2006 Israel assault on Lebanon was partly the result of its influence. She argued that the current scandal could only convince Islamist fanatics that there really is a worldwide Zionist conspiracy. The former Labour minister, David Blunkett, has challenged her assertion.
Few will take seriously the Jewish Chronicle’s portrayal of “donor-gate” as an instance of resurgent anti-Semitism. The questions that have been raised about David Abrahams’ money and his Israeli connections are perfectly legitimate. Still, Jewish donors to the Labour Party and friends of Israel who are appalled by noxious talk of Jewish intrigue have a quick remedy at their disposal: It is called transparency.
