Activism and BDS Beat 29 January 2019
The explosive undercover documentary produced by Al Jazeera’s investigative unit exposes how US lobby groups – including the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Israel on Campus Coalition – work closely with the Israeli government to spy on, smear and sabotage American citizens who speak out for Palestinian rights.
But the four-part film never aired on Al Jazeera. After Israel lobby pressure on Qatar, which funds the news network, the documentary was censored.
Starting in August 2018, The Electronic Intifada and Blumenthal’s Grayzone Project began leaking excerpts from the film.
In November, The Electronic Intifada, along with the French publication Orient XXI and Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar, released the entire leaked film online.
In the interview on Hedges’ show On Contact, Blumenthal and I discuss the background to the film and how and why Qatar caved in to Israel lobby pressure.
I tell Hedges that the story has been starved of oxygen by mainstream media:
“Imagine that, all other things being equal, this had been an undercover documentary revealing supposed Russian interference or Iranian interference or Canadian interference in US politics, and powerful groups had gone to work to suppress its broadcast, and then it leaked out, just that element – the suppression and the leak – should be front page news.”
Instead there has been silence.
Blumenthal says the film reveals “a foreign government running a malign campaign against American citizens who are particularly progressive in order to prevent them from carrying out legal political activities in the United States.”
It exposes “military psychological warfare tactics being used against Americans by a foreign power,” Blumenthal adds.
Watch our interview with Hedges at the top of this page.
Also watch episodes one and two, and three and four of The Lobby–USA – the film the Israel lobby did not want you to see.
Comments
Quora
Permalink Quentin Poulsen replied on
You should take a look at the American-based Quora site. That is total hasbara, the Israel-Palestine category being dominated by very professional but aggressive writers who accuse all who oppose them of anti-semitism, while themselves making racist comments about Palestinians and posting racist cartoons.
Discussion about Israel lobby film
Permalink Barbara Lyons replied on
I am a member of JVP. We know about the power of AIPAC but it is waning. Will you discuss the rising power of the the Christian fundamentalist support for Israel? They may be more powerful in the US now than the Jewish Zionist groups. Am I correct?
Christian zionists are subordinate to the Israel lobby
Permalink Deborah Stern replied on
This is a great inquiry! My understanding is that Christian zionists are a larger community, but are much less powerful where it counts like in corporate media. AIPAC and Israel’s other coercive organizations still control corporate media in the US.
Look at Marc Lamont Hill’s firing by CNN’s Jeff Zucker (Wolf Blitzer was an AIPAC Lobbyist for twenty years.)
a valuable discussion
Permalink tom hall replied on
I look forward to the second segment of this interview. As much as we need to direct public attention to the crimes of the apartheid regime in Israel, I think it's also important to focus in this instance on the brazen lock-step refusal of mainstream media to report on the documentary or its suppression. We have to do more to make media misconduct a major issue in this struggle, because breaking down that barrier will produce a cascade of revelations for ordinary people. In particular, Americans are still confined by their news sources to a cocoon of propaganda. Constructing parallel narratives isn't enough- not when one side controls trillions of dollars worth of access and the other has almost no material resources. We have to find ways of direct engagement with corporate media on their own sacred ground- to invade the newsroom, as it were. I don't have an easy answer as to how this can be done, but I know that whenever Palestinian voices are given a chance to be heard, they prevail in any forum of discussion.
highest levels
Permalink John Costello replied on
Max's acquaintance at NYT, who wants to write an article on The Lobby but hasn't shows, I think, the elitist and Zionist agenda of NYT management. BDS has clearly emerged from the shadows as a legitimate, grassroots, democratic movement, which cannot be demonstrated to have any more than an unsought, even unwanted association with advocates for the destruction of Israel. Max's reporter is responding as a reporter should to this emergence but has not published. Someone doesn't care that the movement has been vindicated of false charges of anti-Semitism because they want the movement squelched, whether it's a democratic and progressive one or not.