J-TV is a Conservative Party project; what does that say about religious politics in Britain?

Media organisations acting more or less as organs of political parties are not rare in Britain. The Times currently plays a role as a departure lounge and decompression chamber for the centre-right of the Conservative Party; former news editor Michael Gove, although still an MP, is now back at the Murdoch title as a columnist and critic; Camilla Cavendish, after a sojourn running the 10 Downing Street policy unit, is also with the Times, as are Tory figures like Lord Daniel Finkelstein and former MP Matthew Parris.

On the Labour Party side, the perennially Labour-backing Trinity Mirror group employs former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott as a columnist at the Sunday Mirror; Tony Blair’s infamous former spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, used to be political editor on the daily title while simultaneously writing speeches for Labour figures, while the newspapers’ editors have never supported any party but Labour in a general election. So slavish are Labour party officials to the Mirror way — it’s a rare media ally in turbulent times — that they have all but ignored (as has most of Britain) the serious “phone hacking” scandal that engulfed the newspaper last year, while throwing mud at Tory-supporting tabloids which did the same thing.

As the traditional media spreads online, these patterns of media-political partnership are even more pronounced. Each party has its own semi-official “grassroots” website — think ConservativeHome, LabourList or Left Foot Forward — including the now rightly infamous Breitbart, whose London editor was former chief of staff to UKIP’s Nigel Farage and whose American founder is now chief of staff to — and I can’t believe I’m writing this — the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump.

Delve deeper into the online media and you’ll find the centre-left making hay in supposedly neutral e-petition

ing websites, with Democrat senators pushing for wars in Syria and Libya via websites like Avaaz (set up, incidentally, by a Democrat senator). In Britain, 38Degrees is doing the same; it’s another petition website that doesn’t object to bombing the Middle East, although its target of preference is Iraq and it occasionally bleats, quietly, about war-time accountability. Although 38Degrees claims brazenly to be “independent” it isn’t; it was founded in memory of a New Labour donor, Anita Roddick, and is funded by another Labour Party donor (who has also given money to the Greens and Liberal Democrats, but not the Tories). Both of the Roddicks once mentored Labour MPs. I quite like some of the stuff that 38Degrees pushes for, particularly on Israel, but to call it independent is a joke.

Equally comical would be to call J-TV, the new “Global Jewish TV Channel”, anything but a bid by Conservative Party activists to capitalise on Jewish disillusionment with Labour over the issue of Israel-Palestine. This disillusionment is in many ways justified, I believe, even allowing for an element of the anti-Semitism allegations only being over-heated pro-Palestinian activism. There is also undeniable stirring by the Israeli embassy which is concerned that Jeremy Corbyn will raise the profile of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, as well as the wholly opportunistic faux concern about anti-Semitism expressed by the Labour leader’s opponents. Despite all of this, there remains a residue of anti-Semitism amongst on the left in Britain just as those on the right have developed a tendency for Islamophobia; both examples of racism need to be dealt with.

J-TV has been set up by Oliver Anisfeld, a chirpy, capable presenter currently studying history at University College London. The show is broadcast on YouTube and filmed in a studio above his father’s luxury fishmongers in east London. Both his father and mother were part of a recent Conservative Friends of Israel delegation accompanied by several Conservative MPs; indeed, Lance Anisfeld, Oliver’s father, is a former member of CFI’s Executive Board and the Conservative Party activist has previously worked as a special adviser to Tory Peter Lilley MP. The chosen presenter for J-TV’s current affairs programming is also a Conservative Party activist, Alan Mendoza. He is also currently the Chief Executive of the somewhat notorious and very pro-Israel Henry Jackson Society, whose Associate Director Douglas Murray authored “Neoconservatism : Why We Need It”; Mendoza himself stood at the last General Election as a Tory candidate.

The Jewish TV station has some great content centred around young people, a mouth-watering food section, fascinating debates on atheism and some uplifting content that draws on the spirituality of Judaism. Like 38Degrees or Avaaz, the Mirror or the Times, there is certainly nothing wrong with J-TV existing; having more religion in public life is always a promising development. Norman Finkelstein and Hannah Weisfeld have been pro-Palestinian Jewish guests who received reasonably fair hearings from Mendoza.

There is, though, a problem with having such a broadcaster so clearly connected to the Conservative Party, not least the fact that the studio is owned by a Conservative Party activist and has a presenter who is a Conservative Party candidate, and yet this not declared anywhere within J-TV’s marketing material. The closest it came was when J-TV launched in February at a high profile parliamentary event hosted by the Conservative MP Jonathan Djanogly, with an official message of approval from Zac Goldsmith, who was at the time also a Conservative MP.

There are two broader and more important questions: is the decidedly pro-Israel stance of J-TV, which is essentially backing a populist right-wing government in Tel Aviv not dissimilar to Donald Trump and his cronies, really reflective of opinion across British Jewry? Is the dominant “Conservative Party” view on Israel — if J-TV reflects this accurately — being fair to the significant current of pro-Palestine sentiment in the Conservative Party? I have speculated previously about why the pro-Palestinian Tory Alan Duncan MP did not become Middle East minister, while forty one Tory MPs voted to recognise the state of Palestine, and a Tory candidate fighting an important seat at the last election was openly supportive of the BDS movement. If J-TV is a Conservative Party organ in all but name, is it representing only a section of Tory opinion on Israel, or is it ignoring the fact that many Conservative supporters are deeply uncomfortable with the way that the leadership of their party has aligned itself with a UKIP-esque political establishment, tinged with Putinism, in Israel?

J-TV claims to be a “Global Jewish TV Channel” but is it reasonable for it to have such a clearly right-wing bias? It may well be. Corbyn has, like it or not, made Labour the party of Palestine, and many British Jews are uncomfortable with that. That is one issue, but it is secondary. More importantly, Corbyn is perceived as being soft on anti-Semitism. Just as it is not for non-Muslims to lecture Muslims on what is and is not Islamophobia, it is not for Gentiles to lecture Jews on what they should and should not be offended by. J-TV says that it wants to “fill a gap in the market.” I suspect that this “gap” isn’t so much about commerce, because online TV channels are rarely huge money spinners. It is more about the real gap left by Labour in abandoning those who were once an important part of its support base; British Jews.

If J-TV is a Conservative Party project, what does that say about religious politics in Britain? In essence, we seem to be witnessing the end of a century of political life in which Labour was the party of the Jews and Israel, and the Conservatives were the party of Palestine and the Arabs. As Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan put it, the-times-they-are-a-changing.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.