The Guardian on 'Dispatches: Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby'
On Monday, ‘Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby’, presented by Daily Mail journalist Peter Oborne, was broadcast. In the words of the Channel 4, the programme sought to investigate ‘one of the most powerful and influential political lobbies in Britain’, which ‘aims to shape the debate about Britain's relationship with Israel and future foreign policies relating to it.’ The Guardian of the same day published an opinion piece authored by the programme makers and was the only broadsheet to cover the story before the documentary aired.
This interest may have been linked to the fact that the newspaper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, appeared on the programme itself, in a segment that scrutinised the relationship between Israel advocacy groups and the media. He described scrutiny and pressure on outlets like The Guardian as “off the scale”.
In their article, ‘Friends in high places’, Peter Oborne and James Jones argued that ‘the pro-Israel lobby, in common with other lobbies, has every right to operate’ but that ‘it needs to be far more open about how it is funded and what it does’. Many of the charges made were echoed in an article in the news section by The Guardian’s Middle East Editor, Ian Black, published on the same day.
In ‘Pro-Israel lobby group bankrolling Tories, film claims’, Black listed many of the findings outlined in the programme. He also stated that, unlike in the United States, where Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer controversially examined the subject in their book, ‘The Israel Lobby and U.S. foreign policy’, ‘Britain’s pro-Israel organisations have been subjected to far less scrutiny.’
Coverage in The Guardian has continued through this week. On Wednesday, two days after ‘Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby’ had aired, an opinion piece appeared by David Cesarani, research professor in history at Royal Holloway University. In ‘A frisson of conspiracy’, Cesarani argued that, while ‘Oborne showed beyond doubt that there are well-resourced pro-Israel advocacy groups operating in the UK’, it was still a ‘shallow and irresponsible polemic’.
A second article was published on the Comment is free website, in which Jonathan Boyd, acting director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, criticised the ‘shoddy research’, the ‘lack of context’, and the programme’s failure ‘to mention in any detail why some Jewish leaders may feel compelled to support Israel.’
The debate is set to continue, in view of yet another Comment is free article published this morning, this time by Antony Lerman, who also featured in the documentary. Interestingly, he acknowledges that some viewers, ‘may not care for the visual, audio and rhetorical techniques’ and adds, ‘but this is television for a mass audience. It's not an academic lecture. Dramatisation aside, the objectives and the conclusions were sensible and low-key.’
The programme can be watched here, and the accompanying pamphlet by Oborne and Jones can be read here.