RNA - In secret conversations filmed by an undercover reporter, Shai Masot, a senior political officer at the Israeli embassy in London, described his plans to set up a youth wing of the Labor Friends of Israel organization and revealed that he had set up other organisations in the past, Middle East Eye reported.
Masot described taking delegations of Labor members on trips to Israel and told Joan Ryan, the chair of LFI, that he had he had been approved £1m ($1.2m) to fund further visits.
He also said he had set up a group called “The City Friends of Israel” in collaboration with AIPAC, an influential pro-Israel lobbying organization in the US.
Describing Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn as “crazy”, Masot said he had set up a youth wing of the Conservative Friends of Israel in 2015 and wanted to do the same inside the Labor Party, but had been unsuccessful because of the “crisis” surrounding Corbyn's election as leader.
Masot also described Corbyn's supporters as being "weirdos" and "extremists".
Corbyn is considered supportive of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which Masot elsewhere in the recordings said he had been tasked with discrediting and undermining.
Corbyn's tenure in power has seen a parliamentary revolt by MPs against his leadership and the party's fortunes slide in the polls. He has also presided over a row within the party over the alleged presence, and toleration, of anti-Semitic views among members.
The conversations were covertly filmed by an undercover Al Jazeera reporter posing as a pro-Israel Labor activist who gained Masot's trust and infiltrated his circle so effectively that he was himself tasked with the job of establishing Young Labor Friends of Israel.
In a subsequent conversation, Masot stressed that the organization should remain independent, but reiterated that the Israeli embassy could help.
Asked whether he had set up other groups in the UK, he said: “Nothing I can share, but… because there are things that, you know, happen, but it’s good to leave those organizations independent. But we help them, actually.”
The undercover reporter also caught pro-Israel Labor activists on film describing financial support that they had received from the Israeli embassy.
In one conversation filmed outside a London pub, Michael Rubin, the parliamentary officer for LFI and a former leader of Labor Students, said: “Shai spoke to me and said the Israeli embassy will be able to get a bit of money as well, which is good... he said he’s happy to sort of help fund a couple of events so it makes it easier, so I don’t think money should be a problem really.”
Rubin also said that he and Masot “work really closely together... but a lot of it is behind the scenes”.
The latest revelations come as the UK government on Sunday faced mounting calls for an inquiry into the activities of Masot, a senior political officer based in Israel's embassy in London who was secretly filmed plotting to “take down” government ministers and MPs considered to be causing “problems” for Israel.
They included Alan Duncan, a foreign office minister who has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel's illegal West Bank settlement program, and Crispin Blunt, the influential chairman of the parliamentary foreign affairs select committee.
The tapes also exposed the extent of Israeli influence within the ruling Conservative Party, with one assistant to Robert Halfon, a junior education minister, boasting about how she had planted parliamentary questions, and describing how “pretty much” every Conservative MP was a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel.
Masot complained that the Labor Party under Corbyn, who in a meeting with activists in 2009 referred to the Palestinian group Hamas and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah as “friends”, had proved harder to influence, despite its historic links with Israel.
“Not a lot of people want to be affiliated,” says Masot in the video recording. “Obviously when they become MPs they won’t be affiliated and then that’s it, the chain is done. Because for years, every MP that joined the parliament, the first thing that he used to do is go to join the LFI.”
In footage filmed at last September's Labor conference in Liverpool, Masot is seen discussing plans with Joan Ryan, the MP for Enfield North in London, for a forthcoming visit by LFU members to Israel.
The exchange prompted a call from Hugo Swires, a Conservative MP who chairs the Conservative Middle East Council, for the Friends of Israel organisations linked to all of the UK's main parties to disclose their funding arrangements.
“There are serious questions to be asked,” Swires told MEE. “This raises a whole lot of issues on a whole lot of different levels. The Conservative Middle East Council is a properly affiliated organization within the Conservative Party. Therefore we have to fall within the parameters of corporate donations and individual donations as does the party itself.
“If you compare that to the CFI, the LFI, the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, we’ve always thought that’s been shrouded in mystery as they’re not officially accredited to their respective parties. I do think the time has come for these organizations to come out public and reveal how they are funded and where they are funded from.”
Labour on Sunday called for a full investigation into Masot's activities, after the government on Saturday said it considered the matter closed following an apology to Duncan from Mark Regev, the Israeli ambassador.
Emily Thornberry, Labour's shadow foreign minister, said: “The exposure of an Israeli embassy official discussing how to bring down or discredit a government minister and other MPs because of their views on the Middle East is extremely disturbing.
“Improper interference in our democratic politics by other states is unacceptable whichever country is involved. It is simply not good enough for the Foreign Office to say the matter is closed. This is a national security issue.
“The embassy official involved should be withdrawn, and the government should launch an immediate inquiry into the extent of this improper interference and demand from the Israeli government that it be brought to an end.”
Labour has been backed in its call for an inquiry by the Scottish National Party and several senior Conservative MPs.
Crispin Blunt told MEE: "What we cannot have is Israel acting in the UK with the same impunity it enjoys in Palestine.
"This is clearly interference in another country's politics of the murkiest and most discreditable kind."
Nicholas Soames, another Conservative MP, told MEE's Peter Oborne: “This ranks as the equivalent of Soviet intelligence in what they are doing to suborn democracy and interfere in due process.”
Writing anonymously in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, a former minister in former prime minister David Cameron's government, said that British foreign policy was “in hock to Israeli influence at the heart of our politics.
“For years the CFI and LFI have worked with – even for – the Israeli embassy to promote Israeli policy and thwart UK government policy and the actions of ministers who try to defend Palestinian rights.”
The Israeli embassy has sought to play down Masot's seniority describing him as a “junior embassy employee” whose remarks had been “completely unacceptable”.
It said he would be “ending his term of employment at the embassy very shortly”.
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