Bad news fro England
mos...@mm.huji.ac.il
• OPINION EUROPE • NOVEMBER 18, 2009, 4:49 P.M. ET Wall Street Journal
Another Vast Jewish Conspiracy British media and society are gripped by lies
about a "secret" Israel lobby controlling foreign policy. By ROBIN SHEPHERD
• Here is a small selection of events that have taken place in Britain
since the end of Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year. The
government has imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel and failed to vote
against the Goldstone report in the U.N . The charities War on Want and Amnesty
International U.K. have both promoted a book by the anti-Israeli firebrand Ben
White, tellingly called "Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide." The Trades
Union Congress at its annual conference has called for boycotts of Israeli
products as well as a total arms embargo. In the media, the Guardian newspaper
has stepped up its already obsessive campaign against the Jewish state to the
extent that the paper's flagship Comment is Free Web site frequently features
two anti-Israeli polemics on one and the same day. The BBC continues to use
its enormous influence over British public opinion to whitewash anti-Semitism
and Holocaust denial in the Middle East. Its Web site, for example, features
a profile of Hamas that makes no mention of the group's virulent hatred of
Jews or its adherence to a "Protocols of Zion"-style belief in world-wide
Jewish conspiracies. Readers may be surprised to learn, therefore, that the
British media and political establishment is apparently cowering under the
sway of a secretive cabal of Zionist lobbyists who have all but extinguished
critical opinions of Israel from the public domain. Such charges have
been aired to mass critical acclaim this week in a landmark documentary,
"Inside Britain's Israel Lobby," on Channel 4�"the same outlet that offered
Iran's Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an uninterrupted,
seven-minute propaganda slot on Christmas Day last year. The makers of
the documentary�"top Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne and TV journalist
James Jones�"have also written about their program in the Guardian. Both
furiously deny that they are peddling conspiracy theories. But the mindset
we are dealing with was neatly exposed by the authors' own explanation on
how their suspicions were aroused that something sinister is at work in the
corridors of British power. It all transpired, they told readers ominously,
during an address earlier this year by Conservative Party leader David Cameron
at a dinner hosted by the Conservative Friends of Israel. "The dominant
event of the previous 12 months had been the Israeli invasion of Gaza," they
wrote. "We were shocked Cameron made no reference in his speech to the massive
destruction it caused, or the 1,370 deaths that resulted, or for that matter
the invasion itself. Indeed, our likely future prime minister went out of
his way to praise Israel because it 'strives to protect innocent life.' This
remark was not intended satirically." Since it is inconceivable, the authors
obviously believe, that anyone could honestly credit Israel with anything
other than the most damnable motives it must therefore follow that those who
do in fact praise the Jewish state must be being paid or bullied into doing
so. If you think this all sounds familiar, you'd be right. Messrs. Oborne
and Jones produced an extensive pamphlet accompanying the documentary,
which openly claimed inspiration from none other than John Mearsheimer and
Stephen Walt, authors of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"�"another
conspiracy theory alleging malign Zionist influence in the United States. But
if Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt at least felt the need to dress up their
polemic in pseudo-academic wrapping paper, the sheer amateurishness of the
British documentary they inspired is breathtaking. There was the endless
superimposition of the Israeli Star of David on to the British flag, which,
along with some absurdly melancholic background music, was presumably
designed to prepare viewers for an astonishing series of revelations. But
of course such revelations actually never materialized. It turns out from
the documentary itself that the allegedly secretive Jewish donors have been
quite open in declaring their interests in accordance with the law. One
of them, Poju Zabludowicz, the billionaire funder of the Britain Israel
Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) is good friends with Madonna�"not
exactly the kind of company you'd choose if you were trying to hide behind
a veil of obscurity. Much is also made of the influence of Friends of Israel
groupings in the British Parliament. Such allegations are, of course, rendered
ridiculous with a moment's reflection on the countervailing influence of
vast amounts of Arab oil money, not to mention the fact that membership in
such groups for many parliamentarians is either purely formal or outright
meaningless. Michael Ancram, for example, a former Northern Ireland minister
and a member of Conservative Friends of Israel for more than 30 years, is
famous for calling for talks with Hamas. Given the paucity of the arguments,
it would be tempting to dismiss the whole thing as unimportant. Would that we
could. The documentary has already provoked a torrent of abuse against British
Jews, not least on Channel 4's widely read Web site, whose moderators have
seen fit to approve dozens of postings about the Zionist lobby's "seditious
behavior," its "disgusting attack on British democracy," "the hand of global
Zionism at work," and several along the lines of the following, which said
flatly: "We want our country back. The agents of a foreign power embedded at
all levels of our government and politics need flushing out." If this sort of
language takes hold, a bad situation in Britain may be about to get a whole
lot worse. Jewish leadership organizations have long feared accusations
of divided loyalty between Britain and Israel and, ironically given the
charges now being made against them, are frequently criticized in their own
communities for failing to be sufficiently robust in Israel's defense. The
risk is that some may now be panicked into silence. Non-Jews who call for a
more reasoned discussion of Israel�"already a small and diminishing group
in Britain�"will likely face additional slanders against their integrity:
Since there is supposedly no reasonable case to be made in favor of the
Jewish state, we must have sold out to the "Lobby." Such calumnies cannot be
allowed to stand. Now more than ever, the forces of reason and decency must
continue the fight to be heard. Mr. Shepherd is director of International
Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society. His new book, "A State Beyond the Pale:
Europe's Problem With Israel," has just been published by Weidenfeld and
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