On many an occasion Boris Johnson has tried to play to the Muslim voters in London, by playing his trump card of my great-grandfather was Turkish and a Muslim. So would it surprise you that the Henley MP has just found time to make a full disclosure of a trip he made to Israel. By law all MP’s are required to declare in the House of Commons Register of Members Interests, the sources of any extra income or gifts which they receive so that there can be no suspicion that their behaviour in Parliament is unduly influenced by outside interests.

The deadline for registering such matters is one month, but the latest edition of the Register , published by the Commons authorities on March 25, states that Boris Johnson’s trip to the occupied territories was between 1 and 4 November 2004. Not only did he miss the deadline by THREE AND A HALF YEARS, the cost of this hospitality was shared between the Conservative Friends of Israel Group and the Israeli Government.

Even with all the freedoms of the press we have in this country, I think it would be pushing the button a little too far to ask exactly what the purpose of Boris’s visit to the occupied territories was for, or for that matter, why it took him three and a half years to declare his trip, and the motivation for declaring it when he did.

On the 12th of March, Boris Johnson helped to raise £15,000 at a fund raising dinner for the JNF. The Jewish National Fund were celebrating the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel and with Boris Johnson its star attraction. The prime reason to raise these funds was to build homes, schools and other infrastructure.

Nothing wrong with that you say?

Well, the JNF was established in 1901 as the land settlement wing of the World Zionist Organisation. It became one of the primary instruments involved in planning for the dispossession and expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian population.

I can never recollect a time where Boris has been involved in any fund raising activities for the orphaned Palestinian children whose parents have been butchered by the Israeli Defence Forces.

Boris Johnson’s pathetic attempt to enlist his ancestors in his campaign has unearthed some ethnic diversity. When interviewed by the Jewish Chronicle he didn’t highlight the Turkish ancestor, but instead talked about a Jewish great-grandfather, Elias Avery Lowe, the Moscow-born son of a shmutter merchant.

It is not Boris Johnson’s Jewish or Muslim ancestors who are standing for the position of Mayor of London – and it is his policies, not his ethnic origins, that matter. On matters of policy it is quite clear where he stands.

A trenchant supporter of Israel, and an avowed enemy of politically-correct anti-Zionism, Boris has previously stated that he sympathised with Israel to the extent that, “I would be astounded that any member of the British Government or Opposition felt able to criticise Israel at all” .

When William Hague broke ranks and called the Israeli bombing of Lebanese civilians and infrastructure “disproportionate” (a point for which he was castigated) Boris was livid. Mind you, you shouldn’t be surprised ”Israel does have a right and a duty to protect its own citizens .”

Not that Boris’s view was prejudiced of course, after all in Boris’s mind it was the Israeli F-16s who were in a defensive position, and not invading another sovereign country’s airspace, and it was the Israeli’s who were being defensive when they deliberately killed UN observers , and it was definitely the civilian population of Lebanon who were being the aggressors to a defenceless Israel. The deaths of Lebanese civilians are the foreseeable consequence of deliberate acts.

While we all felt the hurt of 7/7 and emotions were indeed running high, it did not need the fires being stoked further, but yet again Boris was at it again, “If we were Israelis ….we would dispatch an American-built ground-assault helicopter and blow the place to bits. Then we would send in bulldozers to scrape over the remains, and we would do the same to all the other houses in the area ”. And it didn’t end there either, his diatribe continued “accepting that the problem is Islam. Islam is the problem ”. 

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