When Catherine Perez-Shakdam took the helm of Britain’s biggest grassroots pro-Israel campaign group this summer, she inherited a bulging inbox .
Aside from the continuing domestic fallout from the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the UK’s new Labour government has made a string of decisions that have dismayed and infuriated large elements of the country’s Jewish community and supporters of Israel.
Since taking the helm in July, Labour has restored funding for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA; pulled out of a legal case opposing the International Criminal Court application for arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant; and partially suspended arms exports to Israel.
Add to that the simmering controversy over the BBC’s coverage of the conflict between Hamas and Israel. It boiled over at the beginning of September with the release of a report finding the corporation had displayed a “deeply worrying pattern of bias” against the Jewish state, and had breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times in its reporting at the height of the Israel-Hamas war.
But Perez-Shakdam is hardly a stranger to tough challenges. In March 2022, having written a series of blog posts for The Times of Israel, Perez-Shakdam revealed to the paper her incredible journey from pro-Tehran talking head to arch-critic of the Iranian regime.
Born to Jewish parents in Paris whose own parents had fled Nazi persecution, Perez-Shakdam lived as a Muslim while studying in the UK after marrying a Muslim man from Yemen. She later spent years as a journalist and commentator in the Middle East and began appearing on Iranian state media. Increasingly trusted and valued by the regime, Perez-Shakdam was granted an audience with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei; interviewed the late Ebrahim Raisi during his initial, unsuccessful 2017 bid for the presidency (he would succeed in 2021 and serve as president until his death this year); and was invited to a pro-Palestinian conference in Tehran attended by Hamas terror chief Khaled Mashaal.
However, thanks to her teenage daughter — who had come to embrace Zionist views — Perez-Shakdam began to question her own outlook and reconnect with her Jewish heritage.
“For years, I was motivated by a kind of self-hate. But you realize that you can’t deny who you are,” Perez-Shakdam told The Times of Israel at the time.
Perez-Shakdam’s journey was capped by her appointment last month as director of We Believe In Israel. She replaces Luke Akehurst, who was elected as a Labour MP in the July general election. The campaign group seeks to counter the well-organized pro-Palestinian lobby by mobilizing grassroots support for the Jewish state.
The group’s latest campaign has the BBC firmly in its crosshairs.
The new report into the BBC led by British-Israeli lawyer Trevor Asserson says the public service broadcaster’s coverage associated Israel with war crimes, genocide, and international law violations far more often than it did Hamas. It claims that the BBC downplayed Hamas terrorism, and finds that the BBC’s Arabic service was among the most biased global media outlets in covering the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Perez isn’t one to pull her punches during an interview with The Times of Israel.
“It’s appalling, it’s profoundly biased,” Perez-Shakdam says of the BBC coverage. “It is portraying Israel as this pariah state that has no right to self-defense, almost challenging its right to exist by characterizing Hamas’s action as that of a resistance group. For me, that is very devious, it’s very nefarious and it’s insidious.”
“You have to pay for the BBC,” she says. “I think that they have an obligation to the British public to really inform them… and unfortunately, [that] hasn’t been the case.” (The BBC is funded by a license fee which all Britons with a television are legally obliged to pay.)
In Britain, she says, this approach has contributed to a surge in antisemitism and the fact that “anti-Zionism has become the new norm.” Perez-Shakdam is unapologetic about her approach. “People may disagree with me, but I think that we need to be quite strong,” she says. “After October 7, I don’t think that we can hide behind polite talk.”
We Believe In Israel’s campaign — which attracted more than 2,000 emails to the BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie, within 48 hours of its launch — calls on the BBC to open an independent investigation into its handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict. It also urges the BBC to “publicly recognize that the disinformation broadcast by the BBC has harmed Jewish communities and Israel,” and requires the broadcaster to set new standards to root out bias.
Perez-Shakdam says her organization’s campaigning is not driven by hostility to the BBC, which is prevalent in the opposition Conservative party and its media allies, as well as on the far left. “It’s not a witch hunt. This is not an effort to bring down the BBC,” she says. “It’s just to elevate the level of journalism and to make sure that ethic [of impartiality] is at the forefront of it all.”
The corporation itself has questioned the report’s methodology and Davie defended coverage when he appeared before the House of Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee this week.
“Broadly, I think we are doing a very good job and the research that we have into the overall public response is good,” he told peers. “But that doesn’t mean we are perfect.” But, appearing alongside the director-general, the BBC’s chair, Samir Shah, indicated that he believed its coverage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas should be the subject of the next “thematic review” conducted by the BBC.
Perez-Shakdam is dissatisfied with the broadcaster’s response so far.
“The BBC has a lot of answering to do and I don’t think that it’s willing to do that; it [has] already doubled down,” she says. She believes the government may have to take action. “Taxpayers’ money is being used, through the vehicle of the TV license. The government needs to do something about it. This is not a case of free speech. It’s a case of holding the BBC accountable for a service that it is not providing in violation of its own [guidelines].”
Perez-Shakdam returns often to the theme of “accountability.” There is a constant call from the media and international community for Israel to be held accountable for its behavior, she notes. It’s now time for others to be held accountable and take responsibility for theirs.
Perez-Shakdam is angered by the government’s decision to restrict arms sales to Israel and accuses ministers of “abandoning” an ally of the UK in its hour of need. But she is also incensed by the timing of Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s critical statement on the topic, which came as Israelis were burying six hostages murdered by Hamas. “It is appalling. I have no words, no words at all,” she says.
Perez-Shakdam dismisses Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s argument that the government was simply following the legal process. “This is… a very typical political answer,” she responds. “He’s trying to run away from accountability.”
She accuses Labour of being motivated by a desire to “make a point.”
“This is an issue when politicians are peddling not the interests of the country, but that of their base. I feel that it was a very political decision,” she says.
Perez-Shakdam notes too that Labour’s decision was not made in a vacuum but followed swiftly on the heels of its decisions on UNRWA (the subject of another We Believe In Israel campaign) and the ICC arrest warrant bid. She believes the decisions collectively reflect pressure from within the Labour Party and calls for a “greater conversation” within the country about them.
But Perez-Shakdam is also concerned that the threat posed by Israel’s enemies to Britain and other Western democracies is not well enough appreciated.
“I wish that the government and the media were spending half of the time they spent on Israel, trying to cover Iran and raise public awareness,” she says. She believes the Islamic Republic operates a “very powerful underground lobby group” in the West “through a series of outposts.”
Iran, she says, is “abusing and using our charity laws and NGOs.” She also accuses the regime’s supporters of “infiltrating… academia.” The result, she notes, is apparent in the anti-Israel protests on campuses in the UK and Western Europe, the US and Canada.
Perez-Shakdam believes there’s too little focus on the military support Iran is providing to Russia in its invasion of Ukraine (although Britain, Germany, France and the US imposed new sanctions on Tehran in September after it transferred more than 200 ballistic missiles to Russia), as well as the “death squads” deployed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to target regime critics.
As a high-profile supporter of Israel and staunch opponent of Tehran, how much does Perez-Shakdam worry about her own safety?
“If you’re Jewish, the threat is there. The threat is real,” she responds. The plight of French Jews is much on her mind and serves as a warning: “In France, people are dying. People are being attacked. Synagogues are being targeted… How can I stay silent?” she says. “I think that we have a collective duty as Jews to care for each other and look after each other and defend each other.”
Her assessment of the regime with which she once had close ties is scathing.
“They don’t scare me because I know what they are,” Perez-Shakdam says. “They are bullies, they are fascists, they are the worst kind. I will fight them and I will denounce them at every corner, come what may.”
Perez-Shakdam says she is inspired by the example of teenagers serving in the IDF. “If kids can fight for our freedom and our survival, then I will do that too with the tools that I have.”
She is keenly aware that pro-Israel groups in Britain lack the impact of those opposed to the Jewish state. This isn’t simply a question of money, numbers or organization, but also the manner in which the pro-Palestinian lobby has “managed to weave a narrative by claiming to be the underdog and the great liberator of the world and to be standing for truth and freedom.” But, she says, anyone who knows anything about the grim existence of Palestinians under Hamas rule in Gaza knows there is “nothing liberating” about it.
“I don’t think that they understand the reality of it. I don’t think they actually are doing anything for Palestinians,” Perez-Shakdam says.
Her prescription is to trust in the good intentions of the public.
“You have a lot of good people in good conscience who are making the most terrible decision on the basis of a lie,” Perez-Shakdam says. “We Believe is perfectly positioned to tell people the truth. If I make my case clear enough and well enough, then I believe that they will have no choice but to join us.”
“Israel is defending freedom and Zionism is the biggest exercise in decolonization in modern-day history and we should treasure it,” she says. “We’re going to fix it. I have hope.”
Source » timesofisrael