Israeli Blood Money For Blair

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Sunday March 15, 2009 13:22 by Tech1.0

An article on the stipends and benefits for services rendered, to compliant, bought and sold, ex-political elites like Tony Blair.

In this case the source of the $1m 'award', is a transparently Zionist propaganda "foundation". Not that most would be aware of this outside minority publications and the internet, as analysis is unsurprisingly absent from mainstream media outlets.
So in that light, it is published here in the public interest (originally from The Phoenix of 13th of March)

Israeli Blood Money For Blair

Tony Blair's $1m award for “exceptional leadership” from the Israel Dan David Foundation has received surprisingly little international attention. The PR guff surrounding this reward for Blair’s shameless support for virtually anything Israel inflicts on the Palestinians makes much of Blair’s peace initiative in Ireland and Kosovo. But the reality is that Blair is being rewarded for his long time support for Israel.

While a certain cynicism has been expressed about Blair’s Middle East peace credentials following the award — Blair is currently the representative of the Middle East Quartet — the Dan David Foundation itself has received no scrutiny at all. But a peek at the foundation’s directors and the type of person it honours is instructive.

The organisation, headquartered in Tel Aviv University, was founded by Dan David, a life long Zionist who joined the Zionist Movement aged 16 in his native Romania and who has since made millions in instant photography. And while the foundation make much of its criteria for awards being based on academic excellence, the presence of such as former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on its board — Kissinger was a joint founder, with David — indicates a less innocent, non-academic agenda.

The foundation, created in 2000 with a $100 million endowment from David, divides its awards into three categories — archeology, performing arts and material science — and also into past, present and future. However, in 2004, in what appears to have been a move into the political arena, an award for “present ... leadership” was made to Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Schwab was embroiled in controversy in 2000 when the Swiss authorities inquired into investments made by the WEF into two companies Schwab was associated with. More significantly, in 2006 Schwab publicly apologised for an article by Palestinian writer Mazin Qumsiyeh advocating a boycott of Israel published in the WEF Global Agenda magazine.

The magazine was withdrawn and wiped from the WEF website. Schwab is also a trustee of the Tel Aviv based Peres Centre for Peace, founded by Israeli President and former prime minister Shimon Peres.

Blair is in receipt of millions from various western corporate, academic and political entities — €2m plus annual fee from JP Morgan Chase; €200,000 circa fee for each lecture in the US academic
circuit and the all-expenses paid international show-boating as the utterly ineffectual (deliberately so) Quartet Middle East Envoy. These sinecures and stipends can be dressed up as payments from relatively independent, if largely western oriented, sources.

But for this ‘peace’ envoy to take a million dollars from a blatantly Zionist propaganda outlet like the Dan David Foundation just weeks after the Israelis butchered defenceless men, women and children in Gaza reveals a politician who has been bought and sold.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/02/16/news/ML-Israe...s.php