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By Mandy Turner
Earlier this month, two headlines in the media made my spirits soar, because they show that Palestine solidarity is going mainstream in the United Kingdom (UK) despite the desperate actions of the multi-million-dollar pro-Israel propaganda machine.
The first headline “Half of Britons believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza” reported on an opinion poll commissioned by the advocacy group Council for Arab British Understanding (Caabu). The YouGov survey found that 50% of the British public surveyed believed that Israel is committing genocide; a figure which rises to 67% of Labour voters, a significant factor if Labour wants to retain its supporters and remain in government. Moreover, and with potential longer-term impact, only 15% believed that the UK should be an ally of Israel, opposed to 55% who say it should not. This is hugely significant – it is a watershed moment.
Israel thought that by agreeing to a ceasefire deal with Hamas in October 2025 – a ceasefire during which Israel continues to bomb Gaza, kill indiscriminately, and block aid – it could remove Palestine from the front pages of the world’s media and repair the damage the genocide has caused to its reputation. But the Caabu survey shows that Israel’s trajectory towards pariah statehood continues.
The second headline that caught my attention – “Foreign donors funding hate on Britain’s streets” – reported on a 129-page publication from the pro-Israel organisation NGO Monitor about pro-Palestine demonstrations in the UK. The publication is titled “Imported Influence: Foreign Funding, Regulatory Black Holes, and Extremist Connections of the Post-October 7 UK Protest Infrastructure.”
How can an attack on the pro-Palestine movement be seen in a positive light, I hear you ask? Bear with me, I will explain.
“Imported Influence” reads like a set of poorly researched Wikipedia pages about every group ever involved (centrally or tangentially) in demonstrations in the UK. The report is dominated with NGO Monitor’s favourite buzzwords “antisemitism”, “proscribed”, “terrorist”, “Iran”, “Hamas”, Hezbollah, and “PFLP” (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). In the foreword, it claims to show links between the groups it investigates with Russia and China – but provides no evidence. Russia only gets a further two mentions, totally unrelated to funding or organisational links. China is not mentioned again at all.
This is the publishing equivalent of throwing mud at a wall and hoping some of it sticks. It smacks of desperation because it highlights how flimsy NGO Monitor’s work is and how desperate the pro-Israel propaganda machine has become.
NGO Monitor’s McCarthyite techniques
NGO Monitor was founded in 2002 under the guidance of former Israeli diplomatic Dore Gold, a long-term advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu, and who later served as director-general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Gerald Steinberg, its founder and president, has worked for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. NGO Monitor coordinates closely with the Israeli government and is renowned for its McCarthyite techniques of selective filtering of facts, guilt by association, and blanket smear campaigns.
Queen Mary University of London professor Neve Gordon has written about how NGO Monitor and other pro-Israel advocacy groups have harnessed the “war on terror” to brand and smear human rights organisations as “terrorists” and “terrorist sympathisers”.
Gordon argues that the dossiers that NGO Monitor created on six Palestinian human rights organisations – Al-Haq, Addameer, Defence for Children International Palestine, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees – were a crucial part of the propaganda Israel used to justify their proscription as “terrorist organisations” in October 2021. These dossiers are also being used to try to scare off funders and advocate for proscription by other governments, but most have rejected the allegations.
NGO Monitor has been a key source for Israeli apologists, producing fabrications and smears against the Palestine refugee agency UNRWA and against UN officials such as Francesca Albanese.
“Imported Influence” follows in this tradition. It covers 40 groups, 15 in-depth – from activist groups such Palestine Solidarity Campaign, to humanitarian organisations such as Medicine Sans Frontières (MSF), through to Jewish groups such as Na’amod: British Jews Against Occupation. University College London Students for Justice in Palestine is also targeted, which is odd given there are similar groups in universities across the UK. Maybe NGO Monitor worked out that identifying and smearing dozens of student groups might alert readers to the fact that Palestine solidarity is popular. It’s difficult to smear people as terrorists when they have widespread support.
Perfidious calls for financial transparency
NGO Monitor relies on a network of right-wing pro-Israel politicians, journalists, and think tanks to amplify its flimsy findings.
For “Imported Influence”, Lord Walney wrote an introductory “letter”, praising its conclusions and boosting its call for greater transparency in the funding of charities and organisations.
This admirable support for financial transparency should also apply to NGO Monitor itself which provides sparse information on its own funders and to the financial support that the pro-Israel lobby in general provides to individuals, particularly politicians.
Lord Walney is John Woodock, a former Labour Blairite MP who has extensive links with Israel and pro-Israel organisations. In November 2019, Woodcock was nominated for a life peerage by former prime minister Boris Johnson and now sits as an independent peer in the House of Lords. In January 2024, Woodcock joined a “solidarity mission” to Israel led by Peter Mandelson and organised by the European Leadership Network (ELNET), a group that promotes Israel’s interests in Europe. In May 2024, Woodcock called for the proscription of Palestine Action (along with other protest groups). In October 2024, the Labour government was urged to remove Woodcock as the independent adviser on political violence and extremism because he had commercial interests in arms companies with extensive links to Israel.
On 22 June, the House of Commons was forced to hold a discussion about pro-Israel influence on British politics. This was triggered after more than 180,000 people signed an online petition calling for a public inquiry. The government rejected the demand.
Financial transparency is required for some but not for others.
Israel’s propaganda machine in desperate times
Like all publications produced by NGO Monitor, this report employs the oldest trick in the book. By continually referencing the purported “enemies” of Western governments, its goal is to provoke parliamentarians and the judiciary to further criminalise pro-Palestine activism.
The report is also designed to deter funders of the groups it attacks, otherwise it is difficult to explain the seemingly pointless lists of foundations and governments. The title screams for attention to “foreign funding” but then names European governments and US philanthropic organisations. Shock, horror – Ireland, the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and the Soros Foundation are funding humanitarian organisations. It would be laughable if it weren’t so sinister.
Palestine activists should take heart from this because banning organisations and scaring off funders is never enough to turn the tide of public opinion.
Why am I so certain of this? Because we have seen it before. In Selling Apartheid: South Africa’s Global Propaganda War, New York Times journalist Ron Nixon documents the organisations and individuals that advocated for apartheid South Africa in the West and how they tried to undermine the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
The times may be different, but the strategies are entirely the same. The apologists for apartheid South Africa failed then, and the apologists for apartheid Israel are failing again now.
Mandy Turner is a senior researcher with Security in Context.
