Consortium News, April 29, 2026
Leading U.K. media don’t mention the Israel Lobby because they’re part of it, writes Mark Curtis. But its influence over U.K. politics is likely to be greater than any other state, except perhaps the U.S.
BBC Bias Kills – London protest against Israel’s assault on Gaza, May 15, 2021. (Alisdaire Hickson, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Britain’s national media fails to recognise the influence – and even the existence – of an Israel lobby, our new media analysis shows.
Declassified researched two years of reporting by seven British media outlets and found only 16 mentions of the phrase Israel lobby without speech marks.
Nearly all those mentions are in comment articles rather than news pieces and none we found expound on what influence such an Israel lobby might have.
The phrase “Israel lobby” – used with speech marks – is slightly more common in these outlets, with 26 mentions in two years, and tends to be used to quote others in a disparaging way or to suggest such a lobby does not exist.
For example, one Guardian article refers to “the trope of the ‘Israel lobby’.” The Daily Mail reported in May 2024 of hecklers at a speech by then foreign secretary secretary David Lammy “accusing the MP of having taken ‘shady money’ from the ‘pro-Israel lobby’ on the grounds that he once lawfully accepted £30,000 from a Zionist lobbyist named Trevor Chinn.”
In fact, British businessman Trevor Chinn has funded Keir Starmer and several senior Labour ministers and was awarded the Israeli medal of honour for his “dedication” to and “love” for Israel.
Of seven media outlets analysed — BBC, Express, Guardian, Independent, Mail, Telegraph and Times — the BBC and the Express are the most extreme. No mentions of the phrase Israel lobby, used without speech marks, could be found at all in their publications.
BBC Broadcasting Building entrance at night, 2013. (Zizzu02/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0)
The BBC is failing to mention the Israel lobby while having regular meetings with it. As Declassified recently revealed, the BBC held nine meetings with Jewish groups strongly sympathetic to Israel in the first year of the Gaza genocide.
The Guardian was found to have made only five mentions of an Israel lobby without speech marks, three of which are in comment pieces by columnist Owen Jones.
By contrast, independent Scottish newspaper The National, which has consistently criticised U.K. policy towards Israel, has mentioned the Israel lobby twenty-three times in the two-year sample period, never in speech marks.
Israel Lobby
The Israel lobby in Britain is extensive. Declassified has revealed that a quarter of MPs have been funded by pro-Israel individuals and groups, as have one half of Keir Starmer’s Cabinet.
Neither of these findings have been reported in the mainstream media, as far as Declassified is aware.
British ministers and officials are known to hold off-the-books meetings with pro-Israel lobbyists, and under Starmer’s government, the Foreign Office has held numerous meetings with pro-Israel advocacy groups such as Board of Deputies of British Jews and the European Leadership Network (ELNET).
The U.K. government’s total proscription of the Lebanese movement Hezbollah in 2019 was the work of pro-Israel lobbyists while the lobby group, We Believe in Israel, has taken credit for the U.K. government’s proscription of Palestine Action last year.
Keir Starmer, as Labour Party leader, attending the Labour Friends of Israel vigil on Oct. 10, 2023, at Labour Party conference in Liverpool following the Hamas attacks on Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. (Keir Starmer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
As long ago as 2009, a landmark Channel Four documentary, Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby, which was presented by journalist Peter Oborne, revealed the close relationship between the Israel lobby and the Conservative and Labour parties, and its attempts to curb criticism of Israel in the media.
The Israel lobby’s influence over U.K. politics is likely to be greater than any other state except perhaps the U.S., and certainly far more than Russia which has received decidedly more media attention.
Friends of Israel
The British media’s failure to explicitly acknowledge an Israel lobby comes alongside nearly 300 articles in these seven outlets during the two years mentioning either Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) or Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), of which dozens of MPs are supporters.
These lobby groups are invariably mentioned in the media without any analysis of their influence or even that they are explicitly part of a lobby that advocates for goals which benefit a foreign country, such as opposing an arms embargo on Israel.
The Independent has mentioned the phrase “influential Labour Friends of Israel” group three times, and The Times once, without mentioning how it is influential.
Yet CFI has been the largest donor of free overseas trips for MPs in recent years, and both CFI and LFI refuse to provide a list of their funders. LFI says its work is funded by “the generosity of members of the Jewish community and those who share our commitment to the State of Israel.” It adds that it “does not receive any money from the Israeli government or the Israeli Embassy.”
The Times has mentioned the phrase Israel lobby, without speech marks, on only four occasions in the two years, but has mentioned Labour Friends of Israel in over 50 articles. That LFI might be a part of a broader Israel lobby has apparently not been spelled out by The Times to its readers.
Part of the Lobby
These omissions might be because the seven media outlets we analysed often function as part of the Israel lobby that they refuse to sufficiently recognise.
The most extreme is The Telegraph, which routinely publishes articles supportive of Israel during its genocide in Gaza, illegal war on Iran and brutal attacks on Lebanon.
The paper has recently called to restore U.K. military ties to Israel, headlined with “Israel condemns ‘hateful and racist’ Greens,” and published an article by pro-Israel writer Jake Wallis Simons headlined “The case for Trump attacking Iran,” among many similar articles.
Some articles in these outlets suggest that recognition of an Israel lobby is anti-semitic. One opinion piece in The Telegraph runs:
“Anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory about how the world works. You think you live in a democracy, it runs, but actually there is this secret invisible system of Jewish power that rules the world through the banking system, the media and the Israel lobby.”
Similarly, The Guardian reported on Labour MP Diane Abbott in May 2024, stating:
“She apologised for liking tweets about the influence of the Israel lobby, which she admitted could be interpreted as an anti-semitic trope.”
The Guardian has been found to cave in to pro-Israel pressure, to amplify Israeli propaganda, and to be responsible for the same “systemic bias, deliberate distortion and deceptive underreporting” on Israeli crimes as the rest of the British media.
When the vice chair of LFI, Damian Egan, was forced to pull out of a school visit in January this year due to pressure from a pro-Palestinian group, both The Independent and The Times chose to focus on Egan simply being Jewish, headlining: “Jewish MP’s visit to local school cancelled after pro-Palestine campaign.”
Over 100,000 people have recently signed a petition calling for a public inquiry into pro-Israel influence on politics and democracy.
Note – our media analysis covered the period Apr. 7, 2024 to Apr. 7, 2026, using the Nexis media database and conducting website searches of the seven media outlets.
Mark Curtis is the co-director of Declassified UK and the author of five books and many articles on U.K. foreign policy.
(Photo credit: Emilio Morenatti/AP Photo/picture alliance)
