The ABC platformed an Israel lobbyist last month without disclosure in blatant breach of much that the once-venerable broadcaster purports to stand for. Cathy Peters with the story.
In a pre-recorded interview for ABC Radio National’s Global Roaming program on September 22, Geraldine Doogue platformed Andrew Roberts, aka Lord Roberts of Belgravia, in a program titled, “Can the centre hold? Lord Andrew Roberts on extremism and antisemitism”.
Roberts was described as a prominent British military historian who was in Australia to give what Doogue referred to as “really big speeches”. He was here to give two presentations for the right-wing think tanks, the Menzies Institute and the Centre for Independent Studies, where he spoke on “How to Fight Antisemitism”.
What was not disclosed in the introduction to this interview was that Roberts is an outspoken supporter of Israel. He was one of the founding members of the Friends of Israel initiative in 2010 and a supporter of the IDF in 2024 during the Gaza genocide.
The Roberts Report and non-disclosures
Another non-disclosure was that the Report that Roberts chaired on the Hamas attack (the ‘Roberts Report’ or the ‘7 October Parliamentary Commission Report’) referred to throughout the interview was not an official UK parliamentary report as was implied, but rather an unofficial document published by the All Party Parliamentary Group UK Israel.
funded by a private company, Cedarsoak Ltd.
As is noted on the front page of this Report,
“This is not an official publication of the House of Commons or the House of Lords. It has not been approved by either House or its committees. All-Party Parliamentary Groups are informal groups of Members of both Houses with a common interest in particular issues. The views expressed in this report are those of the group. This Report was researched by the staff of the APPG UK-Israel and funded by Cedarsoak Ltd.
“The APPG-UK-Israel’s aims include fostering and promoting links between the UK and Israel and to making ‘the case for Israel and the UK’s bilateral relationship with the Jewish state…”
At no point was any of this information provided by the interviewee or interviewer.
Cedarsoak Ltd
The company which funded the Report, Cedarsoak Ltd., is a UK-registered private shell company linked to an active Israeli private company, Cedars Oak Israel Ltd. The sole directors of Cedarsoak UK are Lord Mendelsohn, lobbyist and former chair of Labour Friends of Israel and Lord Polak, former chair of Conservative Friends of Israel.
Mendelsohn came under intense scrutiny and public complaints as his and the APPG UK Israel’s parliamentary financial registers did not include Cedarsoak’s support for the Report, nor the funding for trips to Israel taken by those employed to research and write the Report.
In response to a question about responses to this Report, it’s of interest that Roberts admitted that the BBC completely ignored it.
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Criticising Israel antisemitic
While this interview purported to be an examination of big themes about global issues, the bulk of it centred on Roberts’ interpretation of the October 7 Hamas attack and his characterisation of critics of Israel as antisemites and Islamists.
He stated that the Report was done in part to counter denials about the Hamas attack, which he said were growing like Holocaust denial.
Roberts used familiar tropes generated by Israel about the October 7 Hamas attack. The theme of ‘foul, vicious and disgusting’ acts by Hamas was returned to numerous times with claims that this attack was singularly unique in historical terms, ‘predetermined and ordered’ to create maximum terror, which is a
seriously questionable claim not queried by the interviewer.
Roberts emphasised ‘torturing, maiming, raping and killing’ as well as ‘kinocide’, claiming that Hamas’ actions in killing all members’ families were also unique. However, the Israeli decimation of whole families in Gaza is well documented and something Roberts would be well aware of.
This detailed Al Jazeera report names families and family members killed in Gaza in just one year between 2023 and 2024, showing that some 902 whole families were totally erased.
Roberts stated that the ‘military side of the fighting was less important than the terrorism side’ and that Hamas deliberately found the friends and family of those they were ‘torturing, maiming, raping and killing’ on social media and ‘sent it to their families’ in order to ‘create the maximum amount of terror’.
Roberts could also have mentioned that the IDF had to ban its soldiers from sharing social media posts of their actions in Gaza after thousands of posts (as documented by the Washington Post) were made showing IDF soldiers beaming over dead bodies, lines of undressed, bound Palestinians, looting, destroying homes, hospitals and schools,
as well as snaps of sniper targets on children.
Roberts also failed to mention statements gathered from Israeli ZAKA emergency response volunteers who worked at the sites of the Hamas attacks, who later admitted that some of the claims of rape were incorrect and that detailed media examinations also found some of these allegations incorrect and debunked.
The claims were part of the Israeli narrative that was used by political leaders and media worldwide to support the forthcoming Israeli genocide in Gaza as retribution.
False equivalence
Roberts made infrequent historical references but managed a staggering comparison between the Hamas attack in which 1,132 Israelis were killed and the1934-35 Rape of Nanking, where an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers were killed, with between 20,000 and 80,000 women and girls sexually assaulted, mutilated and/or killed.
This was to reinforce his key message that the Hamas attack was singularly unique for its ‘killing frenzy,’ which he said was akin to what was seen in the Rape of Nanking, as if the ‘gates of hell had opened’ or like something seen in medieval accounts, but not something that takes place between civilised countries.
This analogy was not countered by Doogue, nor was Roberts’ contention that Hamas’ one-on-one killing of unarmed Israeli civilians was much worse than Israel’s industrial-scale killing of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza.
Roberts’ implication was that conventional warfare and Israel’s ‘defence’ was somehow less savage or violent than the Hamas attack and not planned to inflict the same terror, death and destruction on Palestinians despite Netanyahu’s widely reported Amalek reference and genocide incitement by Israeli government ministers.
“Civilised barbarism”
Roberts attempted to give credibility to his claims by framing himself as a historian who ‘tries to stay logical and rational when looking at what actually happened in these cases’ and that he sees “a totally different thing between the face-to-face massacre after torture and rape of Israelis on October 7th and the warfare that took place in Gaza between the IDF and Hamas”.
In other words, the Hamas armed attacks were barbaric while Israel’s response was somehow ‘civilised’.
When asked whether it would be advisable to produce a similar report into the warfare between the IDF and Hamas, Roberts stated that it was a totally different thing, “you see…at no point did the Israelis actually look into the eyes of the Palestinians and murder their children after torturing and raping them”..
This emotive framing of a narrative that demonises Hamas while justifying the horrific Israeli genocide of Palestinians characterised the whole interview.
At no point did this historian provide background or context in relation to the Hamas attack including the almost two-decade long blockade and current 3 years total siege of Palestinians in Gaza or Israel’s previous military assaults on the Strip.
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Denial of facts
When asked about proportionality in war by Doogue, his first response was, “What do you mean by proportionality?” and followed, after a platitude about deaths of children, with this comment, “And also of course, you’ve got to kill as many terrorists as possible . . .”
Another egregious and uncontested statement by Roberts followed in relation to the numbers killed by the IDF,
“I don’t believe that anything like 70,000 people died. . . the Hamas government, the Gaza government sees its health department as part of its propaganda department, so what you should be looking at is an incredible, ferocious and fiendishly difficult campaign that is fought not just on the ground but underground . . They also don’t care how many of their population die.
In fact, in terms of public relations, the more that die the better.
Doogue did not interrogate this statement but later in the program sign off offered a summary of what she kept referring to as ‘contested’ figures regarding the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza.
A failure of journalism
These comments, however, do not overcome the obvious criticisms that should be levelled at Doogue regarding her responsibility and the ABC’s editorial policies, which require her to challenge interviewees making such highly dubious statements as these. She attempted to provide some justification for her silence during the interview.
Suffice to say that this interview did not become ‘broad and philosophical’ or ‘deep and meaningful’ as quipped by Latika Bourke, co-host and former Fairfax journalist and 2UE reporter, as she endorsed the interview and noted earnestly that it was ‘peak Geraldine’.
By not directly calling out Roberts’ denial of the 70,000 Palestinian death toll, which is now considered to be well below the true count, “all of that in the backdrop” is Doogue (and Roberts) continuing to give credibility to Israeli lies and propaganda when almost all media outlets and commentators have stopped trying to deny that a genocide in Gaza has occurred.
“Antisemites, students and Islamists are all the same”
The second half of this interview looked at the phenomenon of antisemitism and to a lesser extent, extremism which in the end was neatly conflated with antisemitism by Roberts.
He claimed that the ‘real antisemites’ in society today are well-educated students from elite UK universities who he labelled as ‘Islamists’. This claim was not challenged, nor was his claim about the influence of social media ‘churning out antisemitic propaganda’ on youth.
Roberts predictably equated anti Zionism and pro-Palestinian advocacy with antisemitism and characterised marches in support of Palestinians as “pro-Palestine hate marches”. These assertions, including that the Green Party in the UK was anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, antisemitic, were not countered by Doogue who rather pivoted away from these wild claims, shifting to a question about the ‘rage’ as she put it, by alluding to political scientist, Francis Fukuyama.
Rage, anger and extremism
Doogue’s explanation of the ‘rage’ of extremists and others was summed up as a “desperate desire for recognition in society – they feel left behind, not respected. …Sometimes they can’t even describe it … they just want to blow the system up.”
This attempt to discuss extremism allowed Roberts to reiterate his criticism of social media which, “seems to be a way in which all of the people who feel the same anger can get together much more easily..” While Roberts briefly referred to white supremacist political parties, terrorism and gun availability, his criticism of social media as offering simplistic solutions and enabling ‘antisemitic propaganda’ was directly linked to these comments.
In line with the aim of Zionists like Jillian Segal regarding limiting rights to political speech, Roberts maintains that social media feeds disinformation, fuels antisemitism and denialism about the Hamas attack,
turning ‘perpetrators of violence into heroes while vilifying victims.
However, it’s clear that the impact of direct posts from Palestinians and medics working in Gaza has been crucial for the world to see the carnage wrought by Israel. The targeted murder of hundreds of Palestinian journalists and Israel’s continued denial of access to international media in Gaza has not hidden Israel’s genocide. This is the ‘disinformation’ that Roberts and Israel apologists decry.
And finally, we were offered a solution to the rise of extremism in Europe. Roberts stated that crises bring out great leaders and cited Ukraine’s President Zelensky as a prime example. He then proceeded to support white militarism, “Nato and AUKUS and the fellowship of the English-speaking peoples like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Britain is needed now more than ever before..”
In summary, Roberts was given free rein to air racist and pro-Israel talking points dressed up as neutral historicism and fact. The latitude he enjoyed on the ABC was unfortunately not uncommon, especially in relation to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
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Cathy Peters is a former ABC RN producer/executive producer and Greens councillor on the former Marrickville Council. She also worked for a state Greens MP and is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights. In 2014, she co-founded PSNA / BDS Australia. She has Jewish heritage, has travelled and volunteered in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.