CAMERA is a pro-Israel media lobby with chapters in most major US cities and Israel including New York City, Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles, Miami, and Boston.
More worrying for the UK is that this lobby also has an affiliate lobby in London that monitors media coverage of Israel with the intent to promote the dissemination of Israeli government policies, i.e. the propaganda of the ruling, right-wing Likud party under Binyamin Netanyahu in all British print and broadcast media.
Explicit in its activities is its criticism of respected BBC journalists and reporters such as Middle East Editor, Jeremy Bowen, (a war correspondent since 1989 who has reported from over 70 different countries); Orla Guerin MBE ( former London Press Club Broadcaster of the Year) and Lyse Doucet OBE, BBC’s Chief International Correspondent.
The CAMERA media lobby is closely associated with AIPAC, the US Israel lobby that influences American foreign policy through its financial support of Members of Congress who are willing to subscribe to its agenda. The AIPAC lobby is one of the most powerful (unelected) political pressure groups in the US which endeavours to impose its agenda upon the elected President and the White House through its political hold on Congress.
In London, the Lobby’s agenda is to monitor all reporting of Israel with the intent to refute, dismiss or denigrate any report that in its partisan, political opinion does not correctly reflect the views of the current Israeli government. It attempts to promote this agenda by lobbying the elected
Members of the House of Commons in an emulation of the lobbying of the US Congress by its counterpart in America.
There are many who believe that such lobbying by powerful, moneyed pressure groups, in attempting to impose their vested political or financial interests, is anti-democratic and runs directly counter to the principles of Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. There is also the contention that, where necessary, such lobbying should be declared illegal in order to maintain the principles of democratic government that acts in the interests of the majority and not in that of merely one minority group.
