New Spanish deputy prime minister hosted antisemitic TV debate

One of Spain’s four new deputy prime ministers, Pablo Iglesias, hosted a TV talkshow about the “power of the Zionist lobby” in which guests voiced antisemitic conspiracy theories and used anti-Jewish tropes.

In a video of Fort Apache, broadcast in April 2018 by the Iran-funded HispanTV, Mr Iglesias can be seen nodding and smiling as panel members hold forth about how Wall Street is “practically in the hands of Jews”, and the “huge” media power of the pro-Israel lobby which “determines” US foreign policy.

The leader of the far-left party Unidas Podemos ('Together We Can'), who was made deputy prime minister for “social rights” in Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s coalition government on Thursday, says at the start of the show, “Today we are talking about the power of the Zionist lobby over American politics”. 

In her own introductory comments, journalist Teresa Aranguren, a self-described Middle East specialist and “defender of the Palestinian cause”, says, “There are a lot of lobbies in the US, it’s a system that works using lobbies…. but where the pro-Israel lobby has influence is in the field of opinion-formation, whether in the New York Times, or Hollywood… maybe it’s not the most economically powerful but it’s the most efficient in its work.