Top Tory warns Israel over ‘take down’ plot
FORMER Tory Minister Sir Nicholas Soames last night launched a blistering attack on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his country’s threat to ‘take down’ Boris Johnson’s deputy.
Sir Nicholas warned Mr Netanyahu’s government not to repeat the ‘outrageous’ threat by Israeli diplomat Shai Masot against Sir Alan Duncan, which was exposed by The Mail on Sunday last week.
Masot and an aide to pro-Israeli Minister Robert Halfon were fired after a secretly recorded film showed them discussing ‘taking down’ pro-Palestinian Sir Alan with ‘a little scandal’ and putting another senior Tory MP, Crispin Blunt, on a ‘hit list’.
Sir Nicholas said: ‘Israel has not heard the last of this. We must make it very clear indeed to Mr Netanyahu and his government that we will not tolerate this kind of outrageous behaviour. For a diplomat at Israel’s London embassy to talk of taking down Sir Alan is disgraceful. Israel cannot behave like this.
‘Mr Netanyahu would not tolerate a British diplomat acting like that in Israel for a second and he has to be made to understand he cannot do it here either. It is the equivalent of the way Russians use intelligence to suborn democracy in other nations.’
Our disclosure of the secret film involving Masot, who has close links to Israeli intelligence, and Maria Strizzolo, an aide to Mr Halfon, made headlines around the world. Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev, made a grovelling apology to Mr Johnson and Sir Alan. Masot was sent home to Israel in disgrace and then fired by his government.
A furious Theresa May intervened to order the dismissal of Strizzolo, who, unusually, worked as a civil servant in Mr Halfon’s ‘Skills’ section of the Department for Education, paid by the taxpayer, as well as his Commons assistant, paid by Tory HQ.
Strizzolo revealed in the leaked tape that Mr Halfon and Sir Alan had clashed in the past over the Middle East. In a Commons debate last week, former Foreign Office Minister Sir Hugo Swire called on Mr Johnson to investigate the ‘serious issues’ raised by the MoS report. The ‘take down Duncan’ scandal is to be investigated by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, chaired by Mr Blunt, who was targeted by Masot and Strizzolo in the film. Mr Blunt said: ‘I hope to include this matter in the committee’s wider inquiry into the Middle East peace process.’ Mr Blunt described the scandal, revealed in an undercover ‘sting’ by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV station, as ‘interference in British politics of the murkiest kind’.