River Island, the billionaire Lewis Family and the genocide in Gaza: How they are related.
David MillerDavid Miller
Source: Al Mayadeen English
12 Oct 2024 14:10
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7 Min Read
To end the genocide all of these charities must be shut down. We can begin to make that happen if we boycott River Island.
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In every British high street there is a branch of River Island, the clothing and fashion retailer. As we shall see, some of the voluminous profits from this venture help to fund ethnic cleansing, land theft and genocide in Palestine.
River Island was created by two brothers, David and Bernard Lewis.
Born in London in the 1920s, their surname was Pokrasse. Their forbears were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine on their father’s side and Romania on their mother’s. The family changed its name to Lewis in 1933. They created the Chelsea Girl chain of shops in 1965.
When he died, David was referred to as a ‘pioneering champion of Zionism’ by the Daily Express.
Today, River Island has some 350 stores across Britain and Ireland and has a presence in many other countries.
The Lewis family also own the Isrotel hotel chain in “Israel” via the parent company of the Lewis Trust Group.
Some parts of the group are owned by various offshore tax haven companies. Company dividends are paid to L51N Ltd, whose immediate parent company is LFH International – registered in the Cayman Islands.
The family are in the Forbes list of billionaires with an estimated fortune of £1.5 billion.
Most of the leading positions in their intricate network of onshore and offshore companies are led by members of the extended family. Their main venture in the UK is the Lewis Trust Group.
The family also runs two charitable trusts which regularly donate to Zionist causes. These are Bernard Lewis Family Charitable Trust and David and Ruth Lewis Family Charitable Trust.
Among the recipients of their largesse are the genocidal Zionist occupation forces. Palestine Declassified, the show of which I am the producer, has identified three separate charities to which they have contributed which are connected to the genocidal occupation forces.
The first is ORT. It trains young Zionists in arms companies and on occupation forces bases. Its world headquarters is in London. Until recently it was in the same building as the Community Security Trust.
The second group is the British Friends of Israel War Disabled. It works closely with an agency in the Zionist entity to care for injured members of the genocidal occupation forces involved in the current genocide.
In fact, the charity says its “primary intention” is “bringing groups of” genocidal war criminals to the UK. It claims to have brought some 5,000 of them
The third group is the UK Friends of the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers.
In 2021, it opened a swimming pool in an occupation forces base in the Naqab desert entirely funded from British donations. The base allows the genocidal military to rest and recuperate. It is less than an hour’s drive from Sde Temain camp maintained by the occupation to torture, rape, and kill Palestinians
Palestine Declassified previously reported on this group, following which its website and all social media were deleted.
River Island makes cutesy videos – such as this one celebrating the 30th anniversary of the chain which features Bernard, Vanessa, and Ben Lewis. In it, they happily interact with some of their employees. And Bernard opines “we hope you like wearing the clothes, we hope it gives you a sense of excitement each time you put them on. We like to think you feel better in them”.
But the family’s funding of the genocidal Zionist movement is a less happy or exciting affair. In addition to directly funding the genocide by sending cash to the occupation forces, the Lewis family funds a myriad of other Zionist projects, including four related activities:
Directly funding settlements in occupied Palestine;
Funding UK organizations pushing the so called “new antisemitism” scam
Funding UK normalization projects, and;
Funding Islamophobia in the UK
Here is how.
Donated amounts below relate to both charities and is cumulative between 2007-23.
Firstly, they are engaged in directly funding ethnic cleansing in illegal settlements. They fund the Jewish National Fund (£135,000) the pre-eminent land theft agency of ethnic cleansing in Palestine, and the Jerusalem Foundation (£632,131) engaged directly in ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem. They also funded Friends of Yad Sarah UK (£13,911), a UK based charity raising funds for Yad Sarah based in occupied Palestine, but also operating in almost twenty separate illegal settlements, including Ariel, Betar Illit, Efrat, Givat Ze’ev, Har Homa, Kiryat Arba, Kiryat Sefer, Ma’ale Adumim, Ma’ale Ephraim, Mevo Horon, Modi’in, Neve Yaakov, Pisgat Ze’ev, Psagot, Halamish, Ramot and Ramat Shlomo.
Secondly, they have supported the “antisemitism” scam, including funding Zionist regime assets like the Community Security Trust (£679,000), or the Antisemitism Policy Trust (£50,000), both of which have been central to the scam. The CST is a longtime Mossad collaborator and the Antisemitism Policy Trust funds the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism. It is, in turn, funded by Zionist family foundations associated with the Pears and Rubin families.
The Pears Family Charitable Foundation is run by the Pears brothers, once voted the worst landlord in the UK by viewers of a BBC consumer program. In recent years, the Lewis family also funded the fraudulent Campaign Against Antisemitism (£439,000, from 2019 onwards), whose director Gideon Falter made headlines attempting to provoke pro-Palestine demonstrators in London earlier this year.
Thirdly, the Trust spends on dishonest front groups claiming to foster understanding and peace. Their real role is to normalise Zionism, pretending it is not a fundamentally racist and genocidal ideology. This includes groups such as the Coexistence Trust (£30,000) and the Alliance for Middle East Peace (£50,000). Two groups that try to infiltrate British schools have also been supported – Solutions Not Sides (£130,000) and One Voice Europe (£313,000), a group with a long history of dubious Zionist lobby work.
Fourthly, barely a year goes by when the family does not contribute funds to Islamophobic think tanks including the Centre for Social Cohesion which gave Douglas Murray his start in the Islamophobia network (£50,000 in 2009 and 2011), the Policy Exchange (£65,000 between 2009 and 2012), and of course the Henry Jackson Society (£367,000 between 2012 and 2022).
Lastly, we can note that the Lewis family also lavishly fund lobby groups engaged in some or all of the above, such as the United Jewish Israel Appeal (£899,000) and the Jewish Leadership Council (£495,000).
The Lewis family, Ben, Bernard, Leonard, Vanessa, Clive, Caroline, Rachel, Deborah, and the rest, have enriched themselves in part by selling clothes to ordinary British citizens. They have then moved significant quantities of their profits offshore to the tax haven in the Cayman Islands. They have also made significant so-called charitable donations that are used to organise for, and help to enact, genocide in Palestine. How much longer will the British public tolerate this?
To end the genocide all of these charities must be shut down. We can begin to make that happen if we boycott River Island.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
