Western journalists are accepting trips to the Middle East organised by pro-Israel advocacy groups, it has emerged.
Reporters from the Spectator and Newsweek magazines and a Sunday Express correspondent were among “top flight journalists from across Europe” who the groups helped to visit Israel in June.
The five-day itinerary, seen by Declassified, promised briefings with a former Mossad chief, Israel’s state-owned arms company and soldiers serving in Gaza.
A government lawyer who defended Israel at the Hague and a minister from Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline Likud Party were also on the line up.
It was organised by the Europe Israel Press Association (EIPA) in tandem with the America Middle East Press Association.
Declassified understands that the groups offered to pay for travel and accommodation, although it is unclear which reporters accepted financial support. EIPA does not disclose its funders.
This author was invited on the trip but declined on ethical grounds and monitored its progress online instead.
Social media posts from the EIPA confirm that around two dozen journalists received a briefing on the Middle East from Zohar Palti, who “heads the Political-Military Bureau at Israel[’s] Ministry of Defence.”
The group boasted: “Before this role, he led the Mossad Security Intelligence Directorate and was deputy head of the Research Division in the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps”.
Palti gave a similar talk to another EIPA delegation earlier this year.
Journalists who went on the June trip were offered a chance to observe the Lebanese border and receive a briefing about the “current intelligence picture and delicate situation between Israel and Hezbollah and Iran – pending security developments”.
They would then meet with Israeli residents evacuated from their homes near the border, before visiting Israeli arms firm Rafael for a briefing about anti-missile aerial technology.
Ellie Cook, a Newsweek security reporter based in London, wrote about visiting the Lebanon-Israel border as part of the trip.
One-sided view
There were no Palestinians listed as speakers on the itinerary seen by Declassified. Instead, the journalists would be presented with a one-sided view of the conflict, as perceived only through the eyes of Israelis.
These were set to include family members of hostages and a visit to bereaved members of Nir Oz, a kibbutz near the Gaza border which was the site of “some of the worst atrocities of Hamas on October 7”.
Tamar Kaplan, a lawyer who represented Israel at the International Court of Justice hearings in the Hague, was another figure who met the group.
Other days would involve a trip to the Erez Crossing on the Gazan border where the journalists would be briefed by COGAT, an Israeli defence ministry unit, “about humanitarian aid going daily into Gaza”.
Israel has repeatedly denied that it is restricting aid from reaching two million Palestinians in Gaza despite the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor seeking an arrest warrant against prime minister Netanyahu for “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”.
Reporters on the trip were further promised a “Field Briefing by [an] IDF officer on the Gaza border” and a chance to “visit IDF special unit Yahalom responsible for underground warfare in Gaza – pending security developments and unit’s availability”.
Days after that briefing, Marco Giannangeli, diplomatic editor at Britain’s right-wing Sunday Express, wrote an article about Hamas citing “a special briefing” he had received from “tunnel experts for the Israeli Defence Force”.
Giannangeli confirmed he was part of the press trip, writing about how “an IDF officer told a gathering of journalists attached to the Europe Israel Press Association (EIPA)…‘explosives were placed in kids’ rooms – children had to actually live surrounded by these explosives. That’s how cynical Hamas are’.”
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The Express journalist used the trip to generate another article headlined Keir Starmer as PM ‘would spell open season for anti-semitism’ warns Israeli minister.
Giannangeli was quoting Amichai Chikli, who is Netanyahu’s minister for diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism, and an admirer of Tommy Robinson.
The Likud minister said of Starmer’s Labour Party: “Their policy is pro-Islamist. It’s the green and red alliance – green for Islam, red for communism”.
The Spectator’s Angus Colwell also covered Chikli’s comments for his magazine, although with more balance. Colwell pointed out: “This is not a charge that Starmer has faced in Britain. On the contrary, the pro-Gaza movement have often been opposed to the Labour leadership.”
In March, Chikli made headlines for telling reporters on a previous EIPA press trip that London had become “the most Antisemitic capital in Europe” where Jews might be attacked just for speaking Hebrew. The comments were picked up by the Daily Mail, GB News and the Jewish Chronicle.
GB News reported at the time that “During a heated press conference with the Europe Israel Press Association, [Chikli] called Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez an ‘anti Semite’ and said US President Joe Biden caved into ‘political pressure’ by criticising the Israeli campaign in Gaza.”
These previous comments may explain why so many reporters from right-wing Spanish language outlets attended the latest press trip. In addition to two Americans, the EIPA brought “22 journalists from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.”
Israeli news site blinker.co.il reported that “senior journalists from the most important newspapers in Europe and the USA: Europa Press; The Mirror; The Telegraph; Newsweek and many others” had joined the trip.
Articles referencing parts of the trip itinerary were not readily identifiable on the Mirror or Telegraph websites.
‘Public diplomacy’
Founded by Israeli rabbi Menachem Margolin in 2012, EIPA appears to have merged with the European Jewish Association (EJA) in around 2019.
EIPA spokesperson Nir Natan told Declassified that the group “does not hold any public or political views regarding Israel beyond the country’s right, like any other nation, to defend its citizens, and has therefore never expressed any public or political positions.
“The organization’s activities are entirely professional—providing reliable information to any journalist or media outlet interested in it.”
He characterised the group’s work as “public diplomacy” and said it “does not support any specific political approach and offers journalists access to both government and opposition officials.”
Natan said journalists who went on the trip had “no conditions on how they cover the events” and that “there is absolute freedom of journalism!”
He added: “Since its founding, EIPA has faithfully served hundreds of journalists, editors, commentators, broadcasters, and bloggers from leading media outlets all over Europe, and recently also from the USA.”
In response to the lack of Palestinian voices on the itinerary, EIPA said: “We do not pretend to represent the Palestinians. And the reason is quite simple—we are proud Jews concerned about Israel’s image and regretfully see that pro-Palestinian propaganda does not need our assistance.”
Cook from Newsweek, Colwell from the Spectator and the Express’ Giannangeli were approached for comment.
EIPA is not the first to arrange such press trips, with the lobby group Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) having organised controversial delegations in the past.
Simon Childs, a journalist at Novara Media who went on a BICOM trip when he worked for Vice, told Declassified: “I visited Israel with BICOM wondering if I would find a North Korea-style propaganda tour. In fact I found something more subtle, with a modicum Palestinian representation in an attempt to present the story of a two sided conflict in which Israel is besieged – rather than a longstanding illegal occupation and dispossession of the Palestinian people.
“I think it’s possible for journalists to attend press junkets like this while also seeing them for what they are and maintaining a critical distance. After my tour of Israel with BICOM, I visited parts of the occupied West Bank, with the help of some anti-occupation Israelis, which I would have struggled to do otherwise.
“The problem is that journalists have every incentive to follow the path of least resistance and swallow BICOM’s spin.”
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Declassified has identified 11 journalists who wrote articles under their own bylines after going on the EIPA trip in June.
Many of them were from right-wing outlets in Spain, where socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez had just recognised Palestine as a state.
Miguel Pérez Pichel, a Spanish journalist writing for El Debate, wrote a number of articles about the press trip.
He covered the meeting with Zohar Palti, the visit to kibbutz Nir Oz, and the trip to the border with Lebanon.
El Debate is a Catholic news website, run by the Catholic Association of Propagandists.
Alicia Alamillos also wrote about the trip for liberal business website El Confidencial, while the Spanish press agency Europa Press carried an interview with Chikli by journalist Ignacio Tuda.
Tuda reported how Chikli told the EIPA journalists “Now [Sanchez] is the government, but we are patient,” calling “the Communist” Sanchez “an accident” and saying that the rise of far-right parties like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France signalled “positive changes” for Europe.
Tuda also wrote for Europa Press and Diario Siglo XXI about the visit to kibbutz Nir Oz, and about Chikli’s comments on Spain’s government for El Periódico de España.
El Independiente’s Francisco Carrion interviewed former Argentine-Israeli hostage Luis Har about his experience of being held captive by Hamas in Gaza; covered the EIPA’s trip to the Lebanon border; and Chikli’s comments about prime minister Sanchez.
His interview notes that “Chikli speaks with familiarity about [Spain’s Vox party leader, Santiago] Abascal – whom he already considers a friend”.
Abascal is a hard right Spanish nationalist who has called for a second Reconquista, the period in which Muslims were driven out of southern Spain in the 15th Century.
El Independiente is one of a number of Spanish publications founded by staff from El Mundo, described by El Pais as a “scourge of progressive governments”. Their website carries numerous opinion pieces critical of Sanchez’s Socialist government.
Reporter Leonídio Paulo Ferreira wrote for Portugal’s Diário de Notícias (comparable to The Times), about the meeting with Chikli, saying “Chikli has a reputation for being direct.
“And he proves it, accepting an open conversation in which he can be quoted at will, even in personal attacks on Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who recognized a Palestinian State, and in denouncing the increase in anti-Semitism in Europe.”
Belgian journalists also attended the trip, with Vincent Georis writing about it for the business publication L’écho, and Fabrice Melchior for the liberal La Dernière Heure. Norwegian journalist Alexander Ibsen wrote for Minerva about the trip.
