How Israel tried to hide its “malign campaign” against US citizens

Ali Abunimah Activism and BDS Beat 29 January 2019

This week, RT aired the first half of a conversation between host Chris Hedges, journalist Max Blumenthal and me about the film The Lobby – USA.

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.