Tories investigate Duncan over comments criticising Israel
A FORMER Foreign Office minister is being investigated by the Conservative Party after claiming there were pro-israel “extremists” at the “very top of government”.
Sir Alan Duncan, who stood down as a Tory MP at the 2019 election, was accused by Jewish groups of invoking “classic anti-semitic tropes” by alleging that certain parliamentarians are “doing the bidding” of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Speaking to LBC, Sir Alan said there are “a lot of people at the top of our own politics” who “refuse to condemn” Israeli settlements, and are therefore “not supporters of international law”.
He added: “I think the time has come to flush out those extremists in our own parliamentary politics and around it, some of whom are at the very top of government, or have been, and they have never been called to account by journalists in the press to say well, do you agree with your own party’s policy? Do you condemn illegal settlements?”
A Tory spokesman confirmed Sir Alan is under investigation by the party.
However, the former MP said he had heard “nothing” about it, and insisted
he had merely been “defending the principles of international law”.
Sir Alan served as a minister in the Foreign Office between 2016 and 2019.
In the interview, he named senior Tory figures, including Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, who he said “should be sacked”, Oliver Dowden and Michael Gove. Mr Tugendhat’s team declined to comment.
Sir Alan also claimed the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a group of parliamentarians affiliated with the Tory Party, has been “doing the bidding of Netanyahu ... to exercise undue influence at the top of government”.
He said the organisation’s honorary president, Lord Polak, should be removed from the House of Lords because he is “exercising the interests of another country”.
In response to Sir Alan’s comments, the Jewish Leadership Council said: “Calling into question the loyalty of a Jewish peer was just one example of the anti-semitic tropes shared by Sir Alan Duncan this morning on LBC.
“We have raised this matter with the Conservative Party.”
A spokesman for the CFI said it is “not affiliated to any political party in Israel”, according to Politico.