It's the Real News.
I'm Aaron Maté.
The annual American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, AIPAC Summit has wrapped up in
Washington D.C., and one of its most controversial
moments came when Democratic senator, Chuck
Schumer, outlined what he called the real
reason for an absence of Middle East peace.
"Palestinians," he said, "Don't believe in
the Jewish bible."
Let me tell you why.
Let me tell you why, my view, why we don't
have peace, because the fact of the matter
is that too many Palestinians and too many
Arabs do not want any Jewish state in the
Middle East.
The view of Palestinians is simple.
Well, the Europeans treated the Jews badly,
culminating in the Holocaust and they gave
them our land as compensation.
Of course, we say it's our land.
The Torah says it.
But they don't believe in the Torah.
So, that's the reason there is not peace.
Schumer's comments highlighted perhaps a better
explanation for why there is no Middle East
peace.
Influential liberals like him hold extremist
views like that.
And one major factor is the lobby group that
he was addressing.
AIPAC has played a key role in lobbying members
of Congress to support Israeli government
policies.
Well, now there is a major effort underway
to prevent an exposé of the Israel lobbies
US operations.
Al Jazeera has made a documentary film that
sent undercover journalists into pro-Israeli
government groups in the US and that has sent
the Israel lobby into a panic.
The Israeli government is seeking to pressure
Qatar, which funds Al Jazeera, to suppress
the documentary.
Well, a new report reveals at least one revelation
the lobby wants to bury.
According to the Electronic Intifada, the
documentary exposes the Foundation for Defense
of Democracies, a leading neoconservative
think tank, as an agent of sorts of the Israeli
government.
I'm joined now by the reporter who broke this
story for the Electronic Intifada.
Asa Winstanley is an independent journalist
and the Electronic Intifada's associate editor.
Welcome, Asa.
Great to be with you, Aaron.
Thanks for joining us.
Talk about what you found out about this Israel
lobby documentary that the Israel lobby and
the Israeli government want to prevent Al
Jazeera from airing?
Well, we've known for a little while now that
the Al Jazeera's investigations unit had put,
run an undercover journalist inside the US-Israel
lobby.
The head of the investigations unit, Clayton
Swisher, in October, came out on Al Jazeera
Arabic and stated that they'd done as much
and this came on the heels of a similar investigation
that they'd run in the UK being vindicated
entirely by the UK's broadcasting regulator.
And we don't know very much about what's actually
in the documentary but we know that it must
be explosive for the Israel lobby to be putting
as much effort as they are in to quash it.
It seems that the identity of the undercover
journalist has become known or at least his
existence and the existence of the film became
known.
There's been reports in the Israeli press,
for example, in Haaretz and in some American-Jewish
newspapers' websites that, with connections
to the Israel lobby saying that Israel lobby
sources told them about this person and that
he'd been exposed.
So, there's been a lot of speculation in various
newspapers, but in October, it was confirmed
by Al Jazeera's head of the investigations
unit that they'd done a documentary, and since
then there's been a wave of pro-Israel lobbyists
who've been going to Qatar and been putting
pressure on the government, on the ruling
royal family, to not air this.
I mean, they're not saying they've done this
but we can infer that's a big part of what
they've been doing.
We know from our source that I wrote about
in my article that it's, the film contains
footage of the vice president of Foundation
for the Defense of Democracies, Jonathan Schanzer,
talking very candidly about the Israel lobby
and how they use anti-semitism as, in his
words, a 'smear' against Palestine activists
in the US.
Right.
So, before we get into that further.
Let me go to a clip of that initial Al Jazeera
documentary that you mentioned.
This US documentary that has not come out
yet is a sequel to a documentary that was
made in Britain by Al Jazeera that revealed
that Israeli officials there are trying to
influence the British government, including
by getting staffers who are deemed to be insufficiently
supportive of Israel to be demoted or fired.
And this is one clip of that where Al Jazeera
goes undercover and films an Israeli official
trying to pressure a British official into
firing someone who Israel does not like.
Can you give us a some of the people to suggest
that you will take down?
Well, you know, if you look hard enough, I'm
sure that there is something that they're
trying to hide.
Yeah, I guess...
Fine.
Let's talk about it.
Okay.
No, but you know we can't be the only one
to think about the question.
Yeah, it's good to remind me.
So, that's a clip from the Al Jazeera documentary
that was made on the Israel government and
its activities inside Britain.
Asa, you mentioned that the documentary was
vindicated.
What do you mean by that?
Well, Israel lobby in this country.
Several people put in complaints with the
broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, and they alleged
various things to try and dismiss the credibility
of the report.
They alleged that it was anti-semitic.
They alleged various things.
Ofcom found completely in Al Jazeera's favor.
It was vindicated on all counts.
They hadn't misrepresented any facts.
Al Jazeera went through the ringer in actually
providing, as I understand it, from reading
the Ofcom report, unedited footage so they
could check that it had been not taken out
of context.
And so, all these attacks that it was anti
semitic were just a complete smear.
So, it was vindicated.
And it seemed, I mean, my impression seemed
that the Al Jazeera may have been holding
off to see how this investigation came out.
In the end, they received this vindication
and then perhaps, the staff were expecting
the, "Okay, now the sequel on the US lobby
can be released."
You know, one irony that you note in your
piece is that the, in response to news of
this documentary, now AIPAC has gotten its
allies in congress to call for Al Jazeera
to be registered as a foreign agent, modeled
on the tactics that were used against the
Russian state-funded TV network, RT.
But interestingly, as were talking about,
you were mentioning how the Foundation for
the Defense of Democracies is this neocon
think tank, that they are now working with
the Israeli government but they have not,
of course, registered as a foreign agent.
What exactly are they doing in the US?
On behalf of Israel?
Well, that it's directly cooperating with
the Israeli government.
So, in the footage, according to our source,
the director general of the Israeli Ministry
of Strategic Affairs claims in her words,
"We have FDD."
So, we have FDD working on things for us including
surveillance of activist groups.
So, Israel has these agents, you could say,
in the United States which is working for
it, and one of them does seem to be the FDD.
And it's not registered as a foreign agent,
and so it really calls into question whether
FDD is violating American law and whether
Israeli organizations, pro-Israeli organizations,
possibly the Israeli embassy, is violating
American law.
Finally, Asa, you talk about in your piece,
according to your source, who's familiar with
the contents of this documentary, that the
Israel lobby is working with the Israeli government
to monitor activists and gather data about
Palestinian solidarity activism in the US.
And one lobby official laments the fact that
anti-semitism, that calling critics of Israel
anti-semites, is no longer an effective smear.
Yeah, that's right.
Our source has actually seen the film and,
as always, we're satisfied about the reliability
of our information.
And yeah, this is Jonathan Schanzer of the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies who
reportedly, according to our source, says
in the film that anti-semitism as a smear
is no longer what it used to be.
So, he's admitting, number one, that the Israel
lobby, very cynically, misuses the very real
concerns about anti-semitism that there is
in the world to falsely allege that its political
enemies are only motivated by hatred for Jews
rather than concern for Palestinians.
So, he's admitting it's smear, but he's also
admitting that it's not as effective as it
used to be which is interesting.
So, the Israel lobby does very much like to
portray itself as powerful, as hegemonic,
and it certainly is influential.
It has a lot of money behind it and a lot
of, kind of, inertia, especially in America.
But I think we see historical trends where
its power is beginning to slip and we see,
in this, reportedly, what is this very candid
moment in the documentary where that is admitted
in private.
And I would not be surprised to see, hopefully
when the film does come out, far more of that
kind of candor in private.
Right, and as you say in your piece, whether
or not the Israel lobby succeeds in burying
this Al Jazeera documentary will be a very
strong test of the type of influence that
the Al Jazeera documentary team set out to
expose in the first place.
We will leave it there, though.
Asa Winstanley, Associate Editor of the Electronic
Intifada, thank you.
Thanks.
And thank you for joining us on The Real News.
