News

Britain's inquiry into the Iraq war has been dealt a severe blow by a
pro-Israel activist on the inquiry committee who has given an interview
to a Jewish settlers’ radio accusing his critics of “anti-Semitism”.

The Iraq Inquiry, led by former civil servant John Chilcot, was set
up by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in June 2009 in order to
“identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict”. It began
its deliberations in November.

On 22 November 2009, as the inquiry, was preparing to convene, a
former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, wrote an article in the
Independent on Sunday newspaper expressing concern at the fact that two
out of the five members of the inquiry’s committee, Martin Gilbert and
Lawrence Freedman, were “strong supporters of Tony Blair and/or the Iraq
war”. He also pointed out that both Gilbert and Freedman were Jewish,
and that “Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism”.

Writing in the Independent newspaper a week later, Richard Ingrams
wondered whether the Zionists' links to the Iraq invasion would be
brushed aside. Referring to Oliver Miles’s article and to an
extraordinary attack on Miles by The Times, in which the paper described
his comments as “disgraceful”, Ingrams said:

The ambassador's comments and the attention paid to them by The
Times may be helpful in the long... >>>