Former British minister under investigation over comments on his party’s pro-Israel stance

By Burak Bir

LONDON (AA) - A former minister is being investigated by Britain’s Conservative Party after saying that some of its members are pro-Israel "extremists.”

Alan Duncan, who served as a Foreign Office minister and an aid minister before stepping down as a member of parliament (MP) in 2019, has been placed under investigation over his comments during an interview with the LBC radio station earlier Thursday.

In the interview, he said his party colleagues who support Israel are "exercising the interests of another country,” including Lord Stuart Polak, the honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), and Lord Eric Pickles, who is chair of the group in the House of Lords.

In a later interview with Times Radio, he said that other Conservative MPs and ministers including Michael Gove, Oliver Dowden, Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick and Priti Patel were also extremists for not condemning illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

A Conservative spokesperson told the Guardian that Duncan would be investigated as a party member over the remarks to LBC.

Separately, he told Sky News that "the cause and origin" of the Oct. 7 attacks "emanates from them (Israel)."

Calling for the UK to suspend arms sales to Israel, he said: "The Hamas attack was a response to years of difficulty in Gaza, but more importantly, the continuing annexation, illegally, by Israel of the West Bank."

Following that, Duncan released a statement saying the decision to investigate him over accusations he used “antisemitic tropes” could prove "dangerously harmful" to the party's reputation.

He said he has not been informed directly from his party about the investigation and the party has not laid out "any substantive grounds for their action."

"If this is indeed their intention, I will probably be the only person ever to be reproached for upholding his party's policy and for defending the principles of international law and justice in the face of others who would undermine them," he noted.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack in early October by the Palestinian group Hamas killed around 1,200 people.

More than 33,000 Palestinians have since been killed and 75,577 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which last week asked it to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.