Richard Millett’s first hand account of violence by pro-Palestinian activists at an LSE Israel Society talk at Kings College featuring former Israeli Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon – cross posted here – not only went viral, but was widely covered in the Jewish, Israeli and British media. The story was riveting because of the exclusive videos taken by Millett (and David Tamman) showing the disruption, and the fact that protesters hounded and intimidated Ayalon and the attendees despite the fact that the program was promoting peace.
The behavior by pro-Palestinian activists at the London university was strongly condemned by the British government.
In addition to reports at the Jewish Chronicle, The Algemeiner, Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, and Haaretz, the story was covered by most major UK media outlets, including LBC, Evening Standard, Huffington Post UK, Times of London, The Independent, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, Scottish Daily Mail, Sky News and even the BBC.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dfO-Ow9dO4]
Tellingly, the Guardian is one of the few major UK new sites which has thus far failed to cover the incident.
This of course isn’t the first time the Guardian has sanitized or ignored extremism by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. In September, David Collier noted that a Guardian report by Peter Beaumont about an anti-Netanyahu rally at Downing Street failed to inform readers that some demonstrators waved the flags of Hezbollah and Hamas, whilst others engaged in explicit antisemitism.
Similarly, the Guardian failed to report antisemitic banners and extremist sympathies at a pro-Palestinian rally in London during the 2014 summer war between Israel and Hamas.
