There is so much I don’t know. But the information is out there, and I just asked the question: why have I heard UK Politicians refer to the ‘Friends of Israel’?

So here is a book which may enlighten me, with the preface from the author

This book departs from the premise that Palestinians are struggling for freedom, justice and equality against the oppressive violence of a state practising settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. For many decades, Palestinians have been saying that Israel’s regime constitutes apartheid, defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as ‘inhuman acts … committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group’.1

Between 2020 and 2022, Israeli human rights groups Yesh Din and B’Tselem, followed by leading international NGOs Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, reached the same conclusion.2

I wrote this book because I believe that all actors – civil society organisations as well as governments – working to shore up support for Israeli apartheid, or to marginalise and repress solidarity with Palestinians, ought to be held publicly accountable and should not be immune to criticism. Their actions cause harm, albeit indirectly. To try to illustrate this harm, each chapter of this book opens with anecdotes juxtaposing the activities and narratives of the ‘Israel lobby’ or ‘Zionist movement’ (terminology I define and explain in what follows) with the reality, as lived by Palestinians.

The book focuses on pro-Israel actors, so it inevitably decentres Palestinians to a certain extent. However, it situates the Israeli government and Zionist movement’s strategies as responses to a century of Palestinian resistance. Israel’s government is only able to sustain its apartheid system due to the impunity it is granted on the international stage. In particular, Britain’s role in and responsibility for Palestinians’ oppression has historically been, and remains, pivotal. Yet to examine and critique pro-Israel organisations is not to argue that their activities are the only, or even the main, reason for Britain’s alliance with Israeli apartheid. On the contrary, as we will see, the Zionist movement – and the state of Israel itself – were supported in the early years due to their perceived utility to the British Empire. In a sense, this dynamic of dependency remains, though today more so in Israel’s relationship to US empire.

The book does show, however, that the Israel lobby today plays a supporting role in maintaining Israeli apartheid, alongside the British, US and, of course, Israeli governments. In particular, the Zionist movement is a key mover in an intensifying campaign of repression against the Palestine solidarity movement, with the support of both the Israeli and British governments. This book therefore argues that the British Zionist movement not only exists but can and does, in some contexts, wield considerable power – especially in coordination with state actors. It contributes to the oppression of Palestinians both through helping to maintain British government complicity and, often more visibly, through working to repress Palestine solidarity initiatives. This is demonstrated with detailed empirical evidence.

Rather than fetishising or exaggerating the Zionist movement’s power, however, the book highlights its limitations and the potential for resistance. Specifically, it shows that the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – initiated by Palestinians in 2005 – has been effective enough to provoke a massive counter-campaign led by the Israeli government and yet, despite this repressive backlash, continues to grow across the world. In what follows, I highlight the strong parallels between the Israeli government’s counter-campaign and the propaganda campaign waged in previous decades by the South African apartheid regime, which similarly sought to counteract a global boycott campaign emanating from civil society.

My interest in studying this topic as a researcher grew out of time spent doing solidarity activism in the occupied West Bank, a period which had a profound effect on me. I witnessed the pervasive injustice and brutality of Israeli apartheid alongside the dignity, humanity and steadfastness (sumud) of Palestinians’ daily resistance. Engaging in solidarity activism in Britain subsequently, it was impossible to ignore the Zionist movement: its most far-right elements would show up to stage aggressive counterprotests at demonstrations, waving Israeli flags and hurling racist abuse at Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. I am proud to support the BDS movement and firmly believe that decolonisation in Israel/Palestine will mean not only liberation for Palestinians but also peace, through justice, for Israelis. I wrote this book – the first of its kind focusing on the Zionist movement in Britain – not out of a belligerent glee in controversy or a desire to sensationalise or provoke, but in the hope that subjecting Israel’s support networks here to critical scrutiny could make a contribution, however small, to undermining settler colonialism in Palestine.

I also believe this book is necessary on a second count: fighting anti-Semitism. Currently, in Britain there is a cultivated and pernicious ignorance about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, about our long-standing complicity, and about the activities of the Zionist movement. In the absence of informed and rigorous discussion, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories can gain traction. A clear, seriously researched and robustly anti-racist analysis can, however, demystify pro-Israel networks and in the process rebuff such ideas, carving out space for a healthier discussion. The book seeks, therefore, to be an anti-racist intervention in this taboo topic. Simultaneously, what follows serves as a corrective to misguided narratives which position support for Israel as a problem of ‘foreign influence’ undermining British democracy. Instead, I situate Israel’s support networks as a long-standing part of the British establishment and foreground the harm done to Palestinians.

Inevitably, the book is also a case study in British politics and Britain’s grossly unequal power relations, highlighting the need for more transparency and democratisation. But principally, my concern is with British actors’ complicity in the systematic denial of Palestinian rights. What is at stake in Palestinians’ struggle for freedom transcends Israel/Palestine itself. Indeed, Palestinian liberation is intertwined with other liberation movements around the world.

The situation in Palestine is historically rooted in imperialism, ongoing settler colonialism and state racism; Israel is a carceral society in which prisons, policing, borders, militarism and other forms of state violence combine to devalue and destroy the lives of a racialised people; it is a quintessential case of the denial of refugee rights and of unequal access to housing, water and land. When the organised Zionist movement defends Israel, it implicitly makes the case that such inequities should be tolerated not just in Palestine, but everywhere. To oppose these arguments is not only to support Palestinian liberation and contribute to efforts to create alternatives to a status quo characterised by seemingly endless violence and suffering; it is also, more broadly, to argue against a world defined by borders, walls and racial injustice.