Scottish Zionism’s Inner Circle: The Caledonian Cousinhood That Bankrolls Occupation and Genocide

Tucked into the leafy suburbs of the Southside of Glasgow, behind quiet streets and luxury homes, lies the real engine of Scottish Zionism. It’s not a government office, a public institution or a charity, but a web of interlinked families whose wealth, marriages, and political networks have shaped the Zionist movement in Scotland for over a century. This article uncovers how that network—the so-called Caledonian Cousinhood—has quietly expanded its reach, drawing in new families who now steer some of the most powerful Zionist organizations in the country.

We begin this piece by highlighting the connections between the wider Cousinhood and the most significant family involved in the creation of the Scottish Zionist movement, the Goldbergs—first introduced in part one of this series and explored further in part two, “The Caledonian Cousinhood: How the Zionist Movement Embedded Itself in Scottish Life.”

 

Goldberg connections

Since the Goldberg name is relatively standard compared to many other notable Zionist families, there is a greater pool of potential marriage partners. That, along with the family’s wealth and patronage power, may help explain why multiple Goldbergs have married into the Cohen and Wolfson families, both of which are important Zionist families in Glasgow in their own right.

They have also married an Ognall and a Berkley, both of whom are also key Zionist families interlinked with the Goldbergs in both business and politics.

 

Berkley family

The Berkley family is another long-standing Zionist family. Among their connections to the Goldbergs, one son of the Berkley family—Michael Berkley (1959-2008), son of Maxwell Berkley and his first wife Adele—married Nicola Goldberg in 1983.

Nicola, who listed her occupation at Companies House as both “Psychologist” and “Property Company Director,” was appointed to several Berkley family companies, including Methcroft Limited, where eight other family members are or have been directors. She was appointed to Methcroft after the death of Michael in 2008, but had previously worked in two different family firms.

In 2011, she was appointed as a director of one of the Berkley family’s charity ventures (Talteg Limited), which channels profits from their business ventures into supporting Zionist groups complicit in Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing. The Berkleys today are deeply embedded in the Zionist movement, as were their forebears.

What follows is a partial map of the Berkley family’s inner circle, individuals tied by marriage, legacy, and business roles to the Zionist infrastructure in Glasgow. Fred (March 29, 1924, to Dec. 19, 2015); his wife, Sybil Berkley (June 8, 1929, to Feb. 15, 2024); Arnold Berkley (July 3, 1928, to June 5, 2009); his wife, Shirley Maureen Berkley (born in November 1931); Maxwell Berkley (July 1925 to 2018); and his second wife, Irene Berkley (1925 to 2020) were all directly involved as directors of companies or charities that channeled money to Zionist causes.

Fred was active in Zionist radicalization efforts. He co-founded Calderwood Lodge Primary School in 1962—an initiative of the Zionist Federation—and helped establish Hillel House at Glasgow University, which later became part of the Union of Jewish Students, another Zionist organization.

He was among the early trustees of the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust, established in 1963, which has, according to its account, given millions of pounds to around 50 Scottish “Jewish” groups—all, or nearly all, Zionist in cause.

Arnold was a long-time supporter of the Chabad movement, which critics have described as a messianic and ultra-Zionist cult. In an editorial I previously wrote for PressTV, I described the group this way:

It styles itself as a friendly outgoing Jewish movement dedicated to helping Jews reconnect with Judaism. However, in reality, it is a supremacist, hate-mongering Zionist cult. Chabad is now so ultra-Zionist that it called in December for Gaza to be recolonized with Jewish settlers. Worse, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports, its adherents believe – as laid out in the Tanya, Chabad’s key religious text – gentiles have only animal souls, not human souls…

Followers of a Chabad Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh are known as the ‘hilltop youth’. Two of his followers wrote the hugely controversial King Torah, which was also recommended by Ginsburg. The book states that it is permissible to kill Palestinian children, including babies.

“There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”…

It’s not just words. Ginsburg’s followers in the so-called ‘Hilltop Youth’ are said by the Zionist intelligence agency Shin Bet to be responsible for most ‘price tag’ revenge attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Support for Chabad has also come from Adam Berkley (son of Maxwell and Adele) and his wife, Anita, as well as from Delia Berkley (daughter of Arnold and Shirley). Delia is also a director of the Scottish branch of the Jewish National Fund—officially known as the KKL (Scotland) Charitable Trust—which serves as the primary agency involved in land appropriation in occupied Palestine.

She sits on the board alongside David Links and Stanley Lovatt—Israel’s “honorary consul” in Scotland and a key figure explored in an earlier MintPress investigation. The trust was established in 2007, though Delia had previously been a patron of its predecessor, the Glasgow Commission of the JNF.

 

Genteel Genocide: The Berkley Legacy

Members of the Berkley family run three foundations—Talteg Limited, Westleague Limited, and the Clive Jay Berkley Foundation—and both Adam and Delia are trustees of the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust, which had access to more than 13 million pounds in charitable funds as of 2023.

The three entities they control directly—The Clive Jay Berkley Foundation, Talteg Limited, and Westleague—draw on millions in resources funneled through Berkley-controlled property companies like the Clive Jay Berkley Foundation. In 2012, it was reported that the family owned at least three properties, each valued at over one million pounds, in Edinburgh’s iconic Royal Mile.

Adam and Delia both live near one another in Whitecraigs, a prosperous area of Giffnock in Glasgow’s G46 postcode.

 

The Ognall family

The Goldberg family is also connected by marriage to several other notable Zionist families, including the Ognall family. In the early 20th century, Lazarus Ognall and Harry Ognall were important Zionist activists. Lazarus, a native of Petrograd, arrived in Glasgow around 1892, according to historian Ken Collins, and died at age 65 in 1917. Lieutenant Harry Ognall (who died in 1933 at age 50) founded the Glasgow branch of the Jewish Lads’ Brigade and was later appointed honorary vice president of the Glasgow Jewish Young Men’s Institute in 1919—both Zionist organizations.

Geoffrey Philip Ognall (born in June 1946, Harry’s grandson) was in his first year of a business degree at the University of Glasgow when, as he put it, ‘my late father became unwell. I went into the family business for a “short-term period” to help out and never returned to my studies!’ The family business was debt collection.

Ognall was unapologetic about his debt collection business, even describing it as a source of professional pride. In 2006, he stated that he ‘loved the challenge and responsibilities of building up Legal & Trade,’ the company that was the primary family vehicle for the business he calls ‘collections.’ In 1971, Ognall married Sharon Esta Goldberg, a member of the Goldberg family in Eastwood and Mearns, Glasgow, at age 25.

Later in life, Ognall had business connections with a wide range of key Scottish Zionist families. For example, between 21 October 2002 and 28 April 2023, he was a director of The Glasgow Property Partnership LLP (So300150). Among other directors at the firm were multiple individuals from the Goldberg and Dover families, as well as another Ognall.

Ognall is also a fervent Zionist and played a key role at the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust, where he served as Chairman from 1996 to 2000. The Geoffrey & Sharon Ognall Charitable Trust, registered as a charity in Scotland with a London address, operated between 1992 and 2012. Ognall was a director of the leading British Zionist fundraising agency, the United Jewish Israel Appeal in London, between 2000 and 2016.

He is pictured smiling (right) with another member of the cousinhood, Samuel Kingsley (left), and Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz (center), in this photo from a 1998 UJIA dinner.

He has also been a director of sundry other UJIA business ventures, as well as Jewish Continuity (1995-1997 and 2007-2016), which features a who’s who of the leadership of the British Zionist movement. It’s also a venture in which Zionist activist Keith Black owns at least 25% of the shares. Black is one amongst many Zionists sending cash directly to support the Israeli military, accused by human rights groups of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, as I have reported elsewhere.

 

Sellyn, Berkley and Maitles

Lazarus Sellyn (grandfather of Lawrence Sellyn, whom we met in part one of this investigation) married Jessie Mendelson. Her sister Fanny (1897 – 1960) married Alexander William Berkley and their children Maxwell, Arnold and Fred Berkley were involved in the family property business as were each of their wives Adele Esther Edelman (1933-2012), Shirley (born 1931) and Sybil (1929-2024), who in 2017 became a settler colonist in order to be “closer to her family,” which had also transitioned to being settlers in occupied Palestine.

Arnold was a “dear friend and supporter” of the Chabad Lubavitch cult in Glasgow, according to Chabad emissary Chaim Jacobs. The Berkley family, especially Delia and Adam, has continued to support Chabad ever since.

Three of the brothers’ children, Adam, Delia and Michael, took over the business operations. Clive Jay Berkley, Delia’s brother, died in a skiing accident in St Moritz in 1985 at age 30, and the family set up a charitable trust in his memory (The Clive Jay Berkley Charitable Trust), which still exists and provides grants to Zionist groups. Michael died in 2008. Since then, several of the Berkeley offspring have been incorporated into the business as directors of various firms, including, in order of birth date: Alan Richard (1980), Simon Leon (1982), Colin Noah (1986), and Alexander Jay (1997).

 

Berkley, Maitles, Winocour

After the death of his first wife, Maxwell Berkley (1925-2018) married Irene Maitles (nee Sless, 1925-2020) in 1975. Irene’s first husband was Marcus (who died in his forties in Pollok, Glasgow, in 1946). The Maitles family had a business connection with another of the Zionist families through Marcus’ brother, Henry. He owned cinemas and theatres with the Winocour brothers, Harry and Claude. Official Valuation records for 1935 list Henry as ‘proprietor’ of a cinema in Chapel Lane, Irvine and a Picture House in Townhead Street, Hamilton, both of which are towns near Glasgow.

Harry Winocour (original name Hersz Winokur) was from Poland and naturalized as a British citizen in 1947. He married Dora (nee Silver, who died in 1970), in whose name the Dora Winocour Charitable Trust was created in 1969. The Trust was wound up in June 2012 and its remaining resources transferred to the pre-eminent trust bankrolling Scottish Zionism, the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust.

Today, its secretary is Helena Winocour (nee Black).

Helena Winocour is actively promoting the ideology of Zionism through the GJCT. Paul Winocour (born in 1951), her husband, is also involved, serving as a director of Jewish Care Scotland (since 2014), an organization that has explicitly committed to Zionist principles.

Other directors of the company over the years have included a roster of surnames from the Caledonian Cousinhood of Zionism, including Beach, Dover, Lewis, Links, Livingston (twice), Morron, Strang, Tankel (twice), Tenby, and Walton. Other members of the extended Winocour family have also played significant roles in the Zionist movement.

Richard Alan Winocour (Paul’s younger brother, born in 1956) became a settler colonist in occupied Palestine after having married Simone Ruth Plotnikoff in Eastwood and Mearns, Glasgow, in 1986.

His son, Naftali, is now a member of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Their other offspring, Jacob (born in 1993), Yael (born in 1996), and Leah are all settler colonists in Palestine, Jacob and Yael having moved there from a childhood in Glasgow. Jacob served in the so-called IDF for two years and eight months (August 2013 to March 2016), where he says he was “combat trained,” and “Reported field intel to superior officers.”

Other extended family members involved are David Winocour, who attended the Zionist Jewish Free School (JFS) in London, studied American Studies & Politics at the University of Nottingham, and has worked with the Zionist group Aish On Campus. Back in Glasgow, Paul and Helena’s son, the twenty-something university student Toby (born 2001), formerly attended the 20,000-pound-a-year fee-paying Hutchesons’ Grammar School in Glasgow.

Zionist activism—under the heading Jewish Activities in Mainstream Schools, bankrolled by the UJIA—is welcome within the school and involves setting up a “Jewish society” to radicalize the pupils before they even reach university or the world of work. He has already signed up to work with the Zionist movement through his role as Social Media Manager at Glasgow Friends of Israel (since September 2024) and “BBC Media Accuracy Reporter” for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) (since December 2024).

 

The Jesner family

The Goldberg brothers, Michael and Ephraim, collaborated closely with Isaac Jesner to set up the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust in 1963. On an impulse, Isaac bought the plot of land, which is today the headquarters of the Scottish Zionist movement in 222 Fenwick Road, Giffnock, Glasgow G46. The Jesner family ran a garage at 402 Tantallon Road in Shawlands on the southside of Glasgow.

This was a business that brought them to the attention of the law when, during the Second World War in 1942, brothers Louis, George, and Isaac were prosecuted for operating a black market gasoline distribution network. The Glasgow Herald reported the case under the headline ‘Alleged petrol offence: “Six Glasgow men on trial,” October 8, 1942.

In later years, a rift within the family led to a court case, which inadvertently highlighted the rise of the family. The case reveals how the Jesner family’s intergenerational structure mirrors that of the broader Zionist elite: a web of siblings, children, and business vehicles designed to concentrate wealth and continuity.

The company of J. Jesner & Sons Ltd. was formed in 1924. Three directors were Isaac, Louis and George Jesner… In 1963 the three brothers set up a company, Jarrad Properties Ltd.,… The purpose of the new company was to provide money for the seven children of the three brothers when they grew up. The seven children, [were] namely David, Philip and Jeffrey, the sons of George Jesner, Rosemary and Joseph, the daughter and son of Isaac Jesner, and Rebecca and Adrian, the daughter and son of Louis Jesner.

The Jesners were, according to Jeremy Rosen, the “pillar of Orthodoxy in Glasgow, Scotland, since 1968. They, as a successful business family, took responsibility for Jewish life in Glasgow, supporting its rabbis and its yeshiva. The family has always been passionately committed to Judaism and Zionism.” The family tradition continued through Dr. Gerald M. Jesner, Isaac Jesner’s nephew, who served as president of the longest continuously existing Zionist group in Scotland, the Glasgow Jewish Representative Council, from 1980 to 1983.

In later years, Isaac’s son, Joseph, became a settler colonist in occupied Palestine. One of Joseph’s sons, Yonatan (born in 1983), led the Glasgow branch of the Zionist youth group Bnei Akiva as a young man. In 2012, while visiting occupied Palestine, he was eliminated, at age 19, by the Palestinian resistance. In 2010, one of his brothers, Jared, let it be known that he was also moving to occupied Palestine to be a settler on stolen land.

In 2017, David Jesner (son of George) stood as an independent in the council elections in Newton Mearns. I once walked innocently (around 2012) through a field past David’s palatial house in Newton Mearns, beside the Darnley Reservoir, only to be met with threats from the occupants that a gun would be brandished should I ever return. In 2014, David opposed the building of a Mosque in the area:

David Jesner, chairman and planning convener of Newton Mearns Community Council, accused local politicians of risking “major community ­disharmony” to win votes from Muslims.”

Today, the family remains well networked in the Zionist movement. The Jesner Charitable Trust (created Nov. 26, 1964), although less active than it once was, continues to support Zionist causes, including the genocidal Chabad cult. Rabbi Adrian, son of Louis, is a trustee of the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust, though he lives in the south of England.

Rabbi Jesner served as a motor vehicle engineer in the Israeli military during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, according to the Jewish Chronicle (March 20, 1987). The same outlet also reported that he was among a group of rabbis who signed a petition supporting Israel’s rejection of the Reagan peace plan in the 1980s (Jewish Chronicle, Sept. 18, 1982).

 

More Debt collectors: The Lewis family

The Lewis family is also central to the Glasgow Zionist scene. Adam Lewis has been the chair of the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust since June 2023.

He works closely there with Lawrence Sellyn, whom we met in an earlier article. But that is not the only connection between the Lewis and Sellyn families. Adam is the son of Lawrence Lewis, the former husband of Sellyn’s second wife. Since June 2023, Lewis has been Chairman of the Trust. Ken Smith’s hagiographical account of the Trust’s history, “More Than a Helping Hand,” mentions Adam only in passing, noting that he arrived at the Trust via a circuitous route, having sent his children to Calderwood School, the openly Zionist primary school established by the Zionist Federation in 1962.

Lewis, the book states, was on the board that oversaw the “Jewish education and Hebrew lessons” in the school, which was dissolved once the school transitioned to local authority control. The remaining resources were transferred to the Trust, and thus Lewis got involved. This is to somewhat underplay Adam Lewis’ achievements in the field of debt collection, which are not mentioned. Nor are any details given about the court judgment entered against Adam Lewis in 2002.

To understand the Lewis family’s influence, it’s necessary to trace their origins and how each generation built on debt collection to fund political ambitions. The family amassed their millions from collecting debts from the poor. This includes pursuing Poll Tax and Council Tax arrears with Poindings, a barbaric practice of seizing the personal belongings of Poll Tax/Council Tax debtors. The Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan campaigned relentlessly against the practice, which was abolished in Scotland in 2002 by the Abolition of Poindings and Warrant Sales Act 2001.

Meet the Lewis family. They have been in the debt collection business since 1924, according to the Herald. One of their companies, Stirling Park, was “founded in 1924 by the grandfather of Jonathan and Adam Lewis, two of the five partners in the business.” But the Lewis brothers couldn’t leave it there. According to court proceedings, they exceeded the legal limits of debt collection etiquette.

As the judge said, Adam Lewis was guilty of ‘misconduct’. In Lewis’ case, the judgment read: ‘I impose a fine of £1,000 and order that he be censured… I hold Mr Lewis’ culpability to be greater partly because the finding is in respect of four acts of misconduct, but more significantly because he was the senior partner of Messrs Stirling Park at all material times and had overall responsibility for its activities.

An independent blog cataloguing the crimes of Lewis and his co-conspirator was threatened by lawyers acting on behalf of Lewis. The blogger concerned notes:

The site originally located here was removed because solicitors acting for Stirling Park LLP, namely Dundas & Wilson, wrote to the site’s web host claiming that it contained defamatory material.

However, the site was then resurrected and remains accessible today. (Archive version)

But what were his activities? The full judgment can still be accessed on the Internet Archive here. A useful summary can be found on the threatened blog. Lewis and his co-accused:

Were found to have ordered other sheriff officers in the firm to wrongly threaten poindings unless fees were met, and to recover money to which they were not entitled. Other offences included instructing poindings to proceed, despite unauthorised notices being served and to have unlawfully discounted fees to a lucrative client, HM Customs and Excise.

The full extent of misconduct, which included illegally adding VAT to court decrees and recovering it from debtors, may never be known. According to a report in The Herald newspaper, one source fears it runs into many tens of thousands of pounds and called on debtors to pursue legal actions “if they were ripped off.” MSP Tommy Sheridan, who pioneered last year’s abolition of poindings, said of the pair: “They should be struck off for acting unlawfully, despite being officers of the court. Is it any wonder so many people have so little faith in sheriff officers and their bully-boy tactics?”

Lewis was not, however, struck off.

The judge also made an order of full costs to be paid jointly and severally by Lewis and his co-conspirator. This, the judge said, was a “significant penalty in itself”.

The total estimated costs of £60,000 were about two-thirds of the average price of a house in Glasgow, some seven years later, when the Lewis family moved into a palatial new home in leafy Whitecraigs in Glasgow. They bought their house, presumably in part with the profits derived in part from the earnings of the poorest in society, for 1.7 million pounds on Jan. 23, 2009. At the time, the average house price in Glasgow was approximately 107,000 pounds.

The Daily Record reported the following year that Lewis, the “Cash con sheriff officer,” was back in business. The paper reported:

A ROGUE sheriff officer who ripped off people he was chasing for cash is back running one of Scotland’s biggest debt collection firms. Adam Lewis, 46, was found guilty of serious professional misconduct for falsely adding VAT and trying to recover it from creditors. He and a colleague were rapped eight years ago by Sheriff Principal Edward Bowen who said: “The gathering of debts is not a matter which is thrown open to market forces. “I have no difficulty in holding that a sheriff officer who seeks to extract a sum which is not lawfully due from a debtor is guilty of misconduct.”

Four months earlier, Lewis and his brother Jonathan had sold their Stirling Park company to a Swedish debt collection firm for £7.9million. But Lewis has now bought back the business, which has contracts with 11 local authorities to chase council tax arrears.

Adam Lewis is of course a fanatical Zionist, as can be seen self-evident in the fact that he is the Chairman of the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust, which in the past two years alone has given money to the Glasgow Jewish Representative Council, the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, the United Jewish Israel Appeal and to the genocidal Chabad cult.

But of course, we also see evidence of this in his posts on Facebook, such as this one of a vile Islamophobic cartoon back in 2015, about which he wrote, “Kind of sums Europe up.” Or, his call not to vote for the ‘antisemitic Marxist’ Jeremy Corbyn in 2019; Or, his claim that there was a ceasefire on October 6, 2023, which was broken by Hamas.

 

The Cousinhood and the Zionist movement

These families, then (Winocour, Jesner, Berkley, Lewis, Ognall, and those featured in my previous article—Goldberg, Links, Sellyn, and Walton), have all been at the center of the creation and development of the Zionist movement in Glasgow and, indeed, more widely in Scotland.

As the social basis for the Zionist movement (the Jewish population) has declined and contracted geographically, Glasgow has become ever more the epicenter of its activities. Well, I say Glasgow, but, as we have seen, the center of Zionist operations is in just two postcode areas – Giffnock, G46 and Newton Mearns, G77, which are formally outside the Glasgow City Council area in East Renfrewshire.

In future parts of this series, we will examine how closely packed the leaders of the Zionist movement are in the leafy streets of Newton Mearns, Whitecraigs and Giffnock in Glasgow. These streets should perhaps be renamed Genocide Gardens, Nakba Avenue or Racists’ Row.

Meanwhile, some of the Cousinhood have travelled to become settler-colonists in occupied Palestine, and some, such as Yonatan Jesner in 2002, have paid the price for that. But the Cousinhood doesn’t relent, it continues day after day, year after year, decade after decade, to use its best efforts to procure the material, financial and human resources to support genocide in the Levant, both ideologically and practically.

It is long past time for those of us who oppose the genocide to be much more aware of the people who walk among us, so we can better combat their activities, the organizations they form, and frustrate their schemes.

Even if the Zionist colony collapsed tomorrow, we would still face the long-term challenge of de-Zionizing Scotland, the United Kingdom and, indeed, the rest of the world.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

Professor David Miller is a non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University and a former Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol. He is a broadcaster, writer and investigative researcher; the producer of the weekly show Palestine Declassified on PressTV; and the co-director of Public Interest Investigations, of which spinwatch.org and powerbase.info are projects. He tweets @Tracking_Power.

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