The Warped Mirror: United against Britain's 'Israel lobby'

Lavish praise was heaped on some of Britain's media in the English-language Saudi Arab News, where columnist Neil Berry hailed last week's screening of "a groundbreaking Dispatches documentary for Britain's Channel 4 television, trailed by an article in The Guardian newspaper, [that] investigated the covert influence of Britain's 'Israel lobby.'"

If you take Berry's word for it, Tony Blair was a Zionist stooge, the British Labor party is run by the "Israel lobby," and if the Conservatives come to power in Britain, things will get even worse - if that's at all possible. But Berry assures his readers that not all is lost: he describes the publication of the Mearsheimer/Walt book on "The Israel Lobby" in the US as "an epoch-making event" that has led over the past few years "to a sea change in the climate of Western intellectual, as well as general public opinion, vis-à-vis the boundaries of debate about the Jewish state."

Indeed, relating to another event that caused much debate in Britain last week - namely the publication of the English translation of Shlomo Sand's new book, The Invention of the Jewish People - Berry confidently asserts that this book "is of similarly cardinal significance."

So let's try to get this straight: first the Jews (or maybe the Zionists?) invented the Jewish people, then the Jewish people and/or the Zionists proceeded to invent the Jewish Lobby - no, make this the "Israel lobby" - and then all these inventions went on to control much of the world.

Obviously, the idea that every Jewish achievement, including nowadays the Jewish state, comes at the expense of non-Jews and is somehow due to one big conspiracy that needs to be uncovered and undone, is hardly new. It unmistakably echoes the idea "Die Juden sind unser Unglück," that is: "the Jews are our misfortune," a concept first made popular by the German historian Heinrich von Treitschke in the 1880s and later adopted by the Nazis.

The makers of the British documentary on the "Israel lobby" were clearly well aware of the sordid history of this calumny, and therefore emphasized in an article published before the program aired: "It is important to say what we did not find. There is no conspiracy, and nothing resembling a conspiracy."

Mind you, this statement comes right after a paragraph that includes claims of an "operation" that is supposedly "carried on against media organisations that criticise Israel's foreign policy," and there is also the assertion that "Israel has a long reputation for bullying the BBC." It's a pretty clever formulation, because all it says is that there are people who believe that Israel is bullying the BBC - and no doubt, there are people who believe that.

Criticism of the program's "barely concealed antisemitic undertones" is thus hardly unfair. That this criticism is indeed richly deserved is also illustrated in an excellent post at the CST blog that examines the question "Who liked Dispatches?"

Unfortunately, the answers to this question are no longer surprising: the CST bloggers start out by looking at the website of a prominent supporter of the far-right British National Party (BNP) who liked the article published by the left-wing Guardian before the program well enough to post it on his blog, adding the comment: "The Tories are nothing more than Zionist stooges of the Zionist Murdoch and run by the Zionist bankers."

Needless to say, there was more along these lines after the program was broadcast, including an article by the dedicated anti-Israel activist Gilad Atzmon, who felt it was time to demand: "Britain Must De-Zionise Itself Immediately."

The perhaps most important point made by the CST bloggers bears repeating:

It is a sign of how much the old ideas of left and right have changed, and in particular assumptions about the natural home of this sort of discourse, that a BNP official cites a Guardian article approvingly, to prove his view that the Conservatives are 'run by the Zionist bankers.'"

CST's Dave Rich explored this development already a few years ago in some more detail, making the case that "what has happened is that the rhetoric of far left and Islamist organisations is increasingly similar to that of the far right whenever Israel, Zionism, Jewish political activity and the Iraq war are mentioned."

Interestingly, the executive producer of the program on the "Israel lobby" acknowledged that it triggered "a deluge of pretty horrible antisemitic comment on a range of websites." But he compared this to the "torrent of bile" directed against Muslims which followed in the wake of previous programs that uncovered "evidence of racist, homophobic and misogynist preaching in supposedly 'moderate' mosques" in Britain, and he argued that "this kind of feedback in no way diminishes the legitimacy of the investigation, and cannot be allowed to effectively censor broadcast journalism."

I can well imagine that there were many inappropriate comments blaming Muslims in general for the incitement preached in some British mosques. Nevertheless, the suggested equivalence is somewhat disingenuous; the investigations of the mosques uncovered actual wrongdoing, whereas the investigation of the "Israel lobby" did not.

As another CST blog post on the program about Britain's "Israel lobby" notes, viewers were told at the end of the broadcast that the investigation had not "found anything even faintly resembling a conspiracy." Yet, the CST bloggers argue that this was hardly more than a feeble attempt at "shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted," since it came after "one hour of innuendo about 'pro-Israeli' moneybags controlling the Conservative and Labour Parties; 'pro-Israeli'  intimidation of British media; premeditated 'pro-Israeli' abuse of antisemitism; and sinister music accompanying photos of 'pro-Israelis' blurred across Israeli and British flags."

It is interesting to note that it was exactly two years ago that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt toured Britain to promote their book on America's "Israel lobby." Back then, Dave Rich wrote an article wondering what consequences the book would have in Britain. Now we know.

In somewhat understated terms, Rich pointed out that in Britain, the "case against Israel is frequently aired in the mainstream media" and that it was therefore absurd to see some undue pro-Israel influence at work.
But for quite some time, it's actually no longer been about how easy it is to get a platform - and much applause - for presenting the case against Israel; instead, as Robin Shepherd pointed out in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, it's about delegitimizing and silencing those who want to respond and make the case for Israel.

Little wonder that this development is considered good news in a column published in the Saudi Arab News.