In another depressing development that will surprise precisely nobody, Louis Theroux has been honoured with an award at the Broadcasting Press Guild (BPG) for his thoroughly objectionable BBC Two documentary The Settlers.
Of course he has! No matter that British Airways withdrew sponsorship of his podcast last year after his softball interview with “death to the IDF” rapper Bob Vylan, during which Theroux mused how “Jewish identity… as expressed in Israel” had become an “aggressive, militarised form of ethno-nationalism,” which is “rolled out” as a “prototype” to other “white identitarians” around the world. He went further, suggesting that Jewish identity had become a sort of “post-Holocaust Jewish exceptionalism, or Zionist exceptionalism.”
The BPG, a group of journalists, critics and other media insiders, was always bound to conform to the trend for Israelophobia dominating the industry and bask in the plaudits it produces.
Remember when Gary Lineker left the BBC shortly after sharing a post depicting Jews as rats? Remember how, within a few months, he pulled off a major upset by breaking Ant & Dec’s 23-year winning streak at the National Television Awards? There’s a pattern here. Whenever Jews are upset by something, the industry rallies round and doubles down.
Whoever said Jews control the media? It recalls that old Second World War joke about the Jewish man reading Der Stürmer. The same might be said of a cancelled Jewish comedian, or actress, or presenter, taking comfort in claims made by far-right American websites that despite all evidence to the contrary, the Jews are in positions of power after all.
Which returns us to Louis Theroux. The great irony of his documentary was that it purported to shine a spotlight on these West Bank bullies and the suffering they visit upon the innocent Palestinians. What it was really doing, however, was using the partial weapon of the camera to present viewers with apparent evidence that Israel is a fascist regime.
The power here wasn’t with Daniella Weiss, the 79-year-old “godmother” of the settler movement, who treated Theroux to a string of inflammatory statements and objectionable rhetoric. The power was with the foppish Englishman who, by harnessing the magic of television, crafted her as an ambassador of Israel to the world.
The irritating thing about this piece of entertainment – for that, to a certain viewer, is what it was – is that it offered nothing that would challenge the assumptions of the audience, or even enrich or inform them. So what exactly was the point?
After almost three years of ceaseless propaganda in the media, through international institutions and online, your average Briton is bound to instinctively agree with the Green Party’s mind-blowingly pernicious assertion that “Zionism is racism”. After all, as the leftist MP Zarah Sultana reminded her half-million followers on X the other day, “they love killing kids”.
At this point, to the man in the street in Canterbury, Dudley, Northallerton or Perth, it would come as no surprise to see footage of Israelis goose-stepping around Gaza with their fingers thrust under their noses while herding Palestinian toddlers into a gas chamber and chanting “Nigel Farage”. By seeking out the most extreme Israelis he could find, and sprinkling the narrative with Hamas casualty figures and other little tricks – he tactfully ignores the martyrdom posters in Nablus, for instance – Theroux offered apparent evidence that this perception is entirely correct.
You know what would truly have been worthy of an award? A documentary in which Theroux interviewed the Arab soldiers in the IDF, or a gay Palestinian seeking refuge in Tel Aviv, or got inside the state-funded Sharia courts that Israel provides to deal with the family disputes of its Muslim minority. That would have been unexpected. That would have been worthy of a plaudit.
As it stands, however, Theroux – another public figure I used to like – used his platform, access and budget to do nothing but reinforce the bigotry of the masses. Create propaganda, in other words. As if the world needed any more!
That’s the dreariness of the Israelophobic media crowd. They are all so boringly conformist. Where have all the independent thinkers gone? Where are all the rebels? Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods?
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