How Zionist lobby groups infiltrate politics: The case of BICOM

David Miller 

Source: Al Mayadeen English

Make no mistake, the wider Zionist movement is pursuing a deliberate strategy to colonize key elements of British public life with Zionist extremists.

The Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, or Bicom for short, has been in existence nearly a quarter of a century. It is dedicated to misleading the media about the Zionist entity.

One of the key developments Bicom introduced was We Believe in Israel, which began as a conference called the Big Tent for Israel. It was closely coordinated with the Zionist regime and featured many speakers from the Zionist colony.

Another key venture launched in 2012 is the journal Fathom, which publishes a wide range of Zionist propaganda essays including from many individuals directly sponsored by the Zionist regime, including supporters of illegal settlements such as the foreign press spokesperson of the extremist Yesha council.

Bicom today is still run as a core part of the "Israel" lobby with two directors:

David Green, the low profile businessman whose family runs Greenbrook industries, is reportedly a key supporter. The family made their money through tobacco in colonial India and one of Green's uncles went to become a founder of the "Israel" Occupation Forces.

As if to emphasize the connection to occupied Palestine, the other director, David Cohen, gives a home address in the occupied colony, and is also a director of a charity sending money to a so-called “Israeli” organization.

The most high-profile person behind Bicom is founder Poju Zabludowicz, a Finnish business man who is a perennial feature of the rich list in both "Israel" and the UK. Zabludowicz is a leading figure in the Zionist firmament in the UK. He has advised the Community Security Trust, the United Jewish Israel Appeal (which is the main Zionist fundraiser), and has been a trustee of the pro-"Israel" Jewish Leadership Council (JLC).

The lobby watchdog Spinwatch produced a pathbreaking report on Bicom a decade ago, of which I was a co-author.

In its 2013 report was a diagram summarizing some of the links between Bicom and the rest of the Zionist scene. This has been regularly denounced as somehow sinister and as tarring innocent Jewish communal organizations with the brush of conspiracy.

But it was clear then that the Zionist movement is closely coordinated. The JLC boasts of this in its 2017 annual report under the heading, “Celebrating Israel's Centrality in our Jewish existence”. It says it will “coordinate appropriate communal responses and action” with the Board of Deputies, UJIA, the Zionist Federation, and BICOM.

This demonstrates that the leadership of the UK Zionist movement co-ordinates its actions. The BoD, the JLC, and the Zionist Federation have over 250 members between them. So, this is no small boast.

Over the more than two decades, BICOM has become increasingly directly linked to the Zionist regime. In addition to the fact that one of the two directors gives an address in the colony at Companies House, there are the following connections:

• Richard Pater the current Director joined BICOM from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, working as a propagandist with the foreign press. He was in the Israel Occupation Forces armoured brigade contributing to the murderous Second Lebanon War. He continues to serve in the reserves of the occupation forces at the same time as working for BICOM.
  
• Calev Ben Dor, Deputy Editor of Fathom, BICOM’s quarterly propaganda journal, is actually based in the settler colony. Before joining BICOM he worked for several years in the Policy Planning Division of Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as in the Reut Institute, a regime linked think tank. Prior to becoming a settler colonist in the Zionist entity in 2005, he worked in propaganda at the Israeli Embassy in London.
  
• Ruth Fisher - Donor Relations & Events Manager previously worked in the entity at The Jewish Agency, one of the four “national Institutions” of the Zionist movement and with the Jerusalem Foundation which is actively engaged in ethnic cleansing in East Al Quds. She also worked at APAX partners a venture capital firm run by Sir Ronald Cohen a well connected Zionist philanthropist.
  

There has also been a revolving door between Bicom and a range of British political institutions. Here are some examples:

• Kira Lewis, worked in communications and Digital at the Labour Party, as well as in a right wing Labour faction of Labour First. Labour First is a hardline Zionist group - in fact Luke Akehurst of BICOM project We Believe in Israel is one of three directors. She has been a Labour councillor and simultaneously a communications associate at BICOM since 2022.
• Meanwhile Alan Johnson, the Editor of Fathom, is a former member of the Alliance for Workers Liberty, the most Zionist Trotskyist group in the UK. He has also worked with various pro-Zionist groups including being the editor of Democratiya, a founder member of Labour Friends of Iraq, a co-author of Unite Against Terror and the Euston Manifesto, and an advisory editor of Engage. He acted as a consultant for a British intelligence agency prior to joining Bicom. This is listed opaquely as “Alan worked with the UK Home Office from 2008-2010”. In fact, he was a consultant with the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism a part of the British intelligence apparatus working with its covert propaganda arm the Research Information and Communications Unit. while there he “wrote a 150,000 word internal report, ‘The Islamist Detour: Journeys in and out of Extremism’ based on life history interviews with 25 ex-extremists.” In other words Johnson was involved in a British intelligence operation.
• Another staffer Sam Nurding had previously been a ghost writer to the war criminal Alastair Campbell, the former spokesperson for Prime Minister Tony Blair.

These revolving door connections are evidence of Zionist infiltration of British politics. But they are not the only ones:

• Chloe Gould, a senior enforcement manager at Ofcom Britain’s broadcasting and telecoms regulator previously interned at Bicom.
• Elliot Keck worked at bicom then later joined the Taxpayers Alliance.
• John Timothy, Chief Operating Officer at the Independent Schools Inspectorate was a former Bicom employee.
• Jack Agnew, a desk officer at the British Foreign Office previously interned at Bicom. 

Perhaps the clearest indication of the harms that can come from these myriad infiltrations by former BICOM associates are the examples of Luke Akehurst and Ruth Smeeth.

Smeeth is a fanatical Zionist who worked at BICOM from 2005-2007, and after an interlude as a lobbyist for Nestle, joined the Zionist “antifascist” group Hope Not Hate, where she remains a director.

She was a Labour MP between 2015 and 2019 and was then kicked upstairs to the Lords in 2022, taking the name Baroness Anderson. In 2020 she was appointed CEO of Index on Censorship, the “free speech” magazine with a history of CIA subventions which continues to this day via the CIA “sidekick” the National Endowment for Democracy. Smeeth is a supporter, and recipient of largesse, from Labour Friends of Israel and a Vice Chair of the formally Zionist Jewish Labour Movement.

In late 2023 she was appointed Shadow Defence Minister by Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, an indication that the Zionist entity may have one of its assets well placed in an incoming Labour government.

Perhaps rivalling Smeeth for fanaticism is the non-Jewish career Zionist Luke Akehurst, who continues to work full time for Bicom at its We Believe in Israel project. In May 2024 in the so-called “night of the long knives,” pro-Palestine candidates were ruthlessly removed and pro-"Israel" candidates parachuted-in to potentially safe seats. Akehurst, who was already in a powerful position marshalling Zionist forces on the Labour National Executive Committee, was anointed as Labour candidate in North Durham.

Make no mistake, the wider Zionist movement is pursuing a deliberate strategy to colonize key elements of British public life with Zionist extremists. Some are “career Zionists” like Luke Akehurst, who are not Jewish but who have made a career out of promoting the genocidal ideology. Some are recruited with inducements, including trips to “Israel”, whereas others are so ideologically onside - like Akehurst - that such inducements can be beside the point.

More commonly, those sent to colonize British public life are Jewish Zionists who have been indoctrinated and radicalized since very early in childhood. The purpose is to make it more difficult to take meaningful action against the settler colony.