Former Foreign Minister Cleared of Antisemitism Claims After Calling Out Israel Lobbying

Former foreign minister Sir Alan Duncan has been exonerated from an antisemitism complaint that never really existed, in what he called a “McCarthyite witch hunt”.

Duncan, who was a foreign office minister 2016-19 and has long supported the Palestinian cause, was investigated by the Conservative party after comments he made to Nick Ferrari’s LBC radio show on 4 April.

Duncan told Ferrari that ministers who do not condemn illegal Israeli settlements – which are officially opposed by the British government – should be sacked. “The trouble is there are a lot of people at the top of our own politics who refuse to condemn settlements and therefore are not supporters of international law,” he said. “And I think the time has come to flush out those extremists in our own parliamentary politics.”

At the time, the death toll in Gaza had reached 30,000. A few days before the interview, an Israeli airstrike had killed seven aid workers.

Duncan added to Ferrari: “The Conservative Friends of Israel has been doing the bidding of Netanyahu, bypassing all proper processes of government to exercise undue influence at the top of government.” He said that Lord Polak, former director of CFI, and Lord Pickles, CFI chairman in the House of Lords, are “the sort of Laurel and Hardy who should be pushed out together”. Polak is Jewish, Pickles is not.

Following allegations of antisemitism, the Conservative party launched an internal investigation into Duncan. The investigation found that the comments “did not go beyond political debate” and “were not antisemitic and could not properly be regarded as such”.

The panel noted that “Lord Polak was named only in relation to his role with the CFI” and “was not identified as being Jewish, nor was anyone else”.

Duncan told a press conference organised by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians in London on Tuesday: “I have thus been totally exonerated.”

In an intriguing detail, nobody had actually made a complaint in the first place. Duncan said: “What in fact happened was that in response to the flurry of press activity the party itself converted public comments into a complaint which the party itself levelled against me and treated as if it were a formal complaint, even though none such even existed.

“So I have been put through a complaints procedure which was potentially highly damaging to my reputation, when there hadn’t ever been a complaint. It was in fact a political decision by invisible actors who have not come forward. It was the product of precisely the sort of corrupt collusion I had identified and criticised.”

While criticising those “invisible” actors, he also said that it was “inevitable that CFI did their utmost to persuade the party to put me into a complaints procedure.”

Duncan said that the episode was “a political scandal which discredits the Conservative party, and which amounts to a McCarthyite witch hunt which is nothing less than despicable.”

Duncan used the press conference to criticise his party’s opaque complaints process. He said that after the radio appearance, “I was contacted by the press who had been told I was accused of being antisemitic and was to be put into the party’s complaints procedure under threat of expulsion. Nobody at that stage from the party had contacted me.

“The party refused to tell me who had complained or what precisely the complaint was. All I had to go on were some comments to the press by the likes of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and the Campaign Against Antisemitism. They accused me of peddling antisemitic tropes.

“This merely followed the regular pattern of comments from such organisations in which anyone who criticises Israel is more often than not viciously accused of being antisemitic.”

Duncan said he had to offer a defence even though the party did not supply him with a copy of the complaint.

Duncan’s memoir of his time as a junior minister in the foreign office, In the Thick of It, details how Israel tried to “destroy” his career because it perceived him as too pro-Palestinian. An undercover investigation by Al Jazeera showed that Israeli officials were concerned that should anything happen to the foreign secretary – then Boris Johnson – Duncan would replace him. In his memoir Duncan wrote that the Israeli attempts to undermine him betrayed “a poor reading of the facts – indeed, it’s balls – but it gives a useful insight into Israel’s mentality.”

Reacting to news that Duncan had been exonerated last week, the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) doubled down, telling the Jewish Chronicle that the decision was “shameful”. A spokesperson said: “At a time when antisemitism is at an all-time-high, invoking conspiracy theories and tropes about dual loyalty only inflames the situation for British Jews.

“Political parties are responsible for holding their representatives to account. The Conservative party has failed to do this and would do well to remind itself of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s ruling with regard to the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.”

But Duncan called on the media to report on his case, saying: “It would be heartening to assume – although sadly unrealistic ever to expect – that the same intense press coverage which was given to the accusation in April will now be given to the outcome.”

Novara Media has approached CFI and the Conservative party for comment.