Clayton Swisher, “The Lobby (Episode 3: An Anti-Semite Trope)” (Al Jazeera, 2017)
In this third episode of the four-part series focusing on the Israeli government’s infiltration of political parties and grassroots political movements in Britain, the emphasis shifts away from Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter Robin (who is posing as a pro-Israeli activist ingratiating himself with activists in the pro-Israeli lobby) and to UK Labour Party member Jean Fitzpatrick who is attending the UK Labour Party conference in Liverpool. She strikes up a conversation with people at a Labour Friends of Israel booth at the conference and asks two LFI representatives on how Israel will implement a two-state solution that will suit both Israel and the Palestinians. The representatives either avoid the question or spout tired old rubbish about how the security situation in Israel must improve before work can begin on the two-state solution or how Israel has the issue in hand and is proceeding slowly but steadily. No answer satisfies Fitzpatrick so she repeatedly presses the issue. At last one LFI booth representative (and British Labour Party politician) Joan Ryan cuts off Fitzpatrick and refuses to debate any more with her. Fitzpatrick drifts away and Ryan decides to report their exchange to LFI and other associated pro-Israeli flacks as “anti-Semitic”. One things leads to another and yet another, and it’s not long before Fitzpatrick discovers she is under investigation from her own party for supposedly “anti-Semitic” behaviour at an information stall at the Labour Party conference.
The way in which an argument (about whether the Israeli government is dragging its heels over developing a two-state solution that helps all parties involved in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinians) is deliberately exaggerated and blown up into an insidious and ridiculous “anti-Semitic” rant would be deserving only of egg-throwing derision and scorn were it not real. The reactions of Ryan and her fellow pro-Israeli activists (including the Israeli embassy’s senior political officer Shai Masot) can only be described as stupid, deranged and cruel. Fitzpatrick had not expressed a personal opinion about Jewish people or individuals and her initial question had concerned only the Israeli government’s deliberate delay in carrying out the two-state solution. The fact that Ryan could exaggerate aspects of her exchange with Fitzpatrick, twist those aspects into a fairy-tale and then expect her fellow LFI members and others who support her to accept her lies uncritically and without demanding proof shows the depth of deranged idiocy and the narrow-minded and uninformed viewpoints of her intended audience. Ryan and her pals in LFI and other pro-Israel groups repeatedly turn over her exchange with Jean Fitzpatrick among themselves and in their own minds to the point where the reality and actual subject matter of that exchange disappear in their feverish imaginings, to be replaced by their own small-minded fantasies about how Jewish people are continually being harassed and hounded out of whichever communities they live in, in countries where by and large Jewish people and communities rarely suffer discrimination at present.
Robin attends and records other events at the conference but few have the fire of Fitzpatrick and Ryan’s debate. As usual the oily Shai Masot works his crowd by appearing to offer support or money, or bringing together people from different pro-Israeli organisations. In further interviews, Fitzpatrick expresses concern that her encounter with Ryan is endangering her party membership and her fear that other consequences that might threaten her personal affairs may also follow.
This episode demonstrates the real menace that Israeli penetration of political and grassroots activist organisations and movements poses to democracy (or whatever is left of it in Britain) and to ordinary Britons’ right to free speech. Distressingly, when Al Jazeera later asks Joan Ryan about her argument with Fitzpatrick, Ryan continues to assert that any form of “anti-Semitism”, which in her mind covers any criticism or opinion that suggests the Israeli government is less than squeaky-clean angelic in whatever it does, is unacceptable and she will continue to speak out against it at the risk of inviting other people’s judgements on her intelligence. Ryan’s behaviour and the way in which other pro-Israeli activists collude and encourage that behaviour, and exaggerate incidents, building them into something outrageous and entirely untrue, suggest a cult-like mind-set cut off from reality and reason.