LBC presenter O’Brien names Israel’s atrocities
JVL introduction
James O’Brien, one of LBC’s most pugnacious presenters, has seen Israel’s barbaric behaviour towards Palestinians for what it is and – almost alone among British broadcasters – called it out.
In a radio programme segment available on LBC’s YouTube channel, O’Brien expresses uncomprehending horror at the killing of four-day-old twins, Asser and Ayssel, along with their mother and grandmother, and at the widespread Israeli support for soldiers torturing and raping helpless Palestinian prisoners. He also berates others in the mainstream media who continue unquestioningly to adopt the Israeli narrative.
We can only celebrate O’Brien’s forthrightness. Now that we have far right groups feeding off anti-Muslim rhetoric from politicians calling Palestine solidarity protests “hate marches”, and hostility against Jews rising because people see leading Jewish spokespeople defending Israel’s genocide, dare we ask if he now understands why we warned against accepting at face value many of the antisemitism allegations leveled at pro-Palestinian supporters of Jeremy Corbyn?
The clip is from a programme originally broadcast on August 14.
NWI
Brave, gut-wrenching, no punches pulled radio – grateful thanks to LBC and James O’Brien. Grateful thanks also to JVL for introducing and providing the LBC clip.
I didn’t know anything about LBC (www.lbc.co.uk ) or its reach so I looked up its Wikipedia entry.
“LBC (originally the London Broadcasting Company) is a British phone-in and talk radio station owned and operated by Global and based in its headquarters in London. It was the UK’s first licensed commercial radio station … LBC has a like-branded sister station, LBC News, dedicated to rolling news, travel and weather.
“As of December 2023, LBC and LBC London broadcast to a combined weekly audience of 3.8 million, according to RAJAR.”
O’Brien gave his audience all the information they needed to check out the stories for themselves. Hopefully some people will do this and discover what seems to me to be the UK media’s shameful misrepresentation of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
A welcome piece, long overdue from any MSM broadcast media. I especially recommend an article published in today’s Guardian (of all papers).
i.e. “Stop using the term ‘centrist’. It doesn’t mean what you think it does”
(Arwa Mahdawi, Guardian 22 August).
Thanks for this. I hope you will now join the next National demo to promote Palestinian human rights on Saturday 7th September, join the insistent demand for the UK to stop arming genocide and offer to speak on the platform.
I’m David Cannon, Chair of Jewish Network for Palestine.
It is vital for a Jewish voice to expose the lie that there is a conflict between Jew and Muslim. It is also a lie that the situation is complicated. The truth is simple;
• it is violent racist Zionism v Human Rights,
• it is violent racist squatting colonisers v indigenous Palestinians of all religions & none,
• it is violent racist oppressors v the oppressed!
Zionism was originally opposed by most Jewish people as it implies Jewish people do not belong anywhere except Israel. That changed after the horrors of the Holocaust but why should Palestinians pay the price for western antisemitism? Surely, we all agree;
• that two wrongs NEVER make a right,
• that peace is IMPOSSIBLE without justice,
• that not only antisemitism but ALL racism must always be opposed.
In 1948, Israel was founded on violent terrorism; stealing Palestinian land and lives.
• HUNDREDS of Palestinian villages destroyed,
• THOUSANDS of innocent Palestinian men, women and children slaughtered,
• 750,000 Palestinian refugees fled their businesses, their land and their homes.
Having stolen 78% of Palestine, including the most fertile coastal strip, in 1967, Israel imposed control on the rest. This violent theft, illegal under international law, has been enabled by vicious apartheid and protected by the false hope of a 2-state ‘illusion’ to distract from 76 years of continuous theft;
• theft of Palestinian homes,
• theft of Palestinian land,
• theft of Palestinian freedoms,
• theft of Palestinian lives!!!
Zionists are guilty of yet another theft; that of Jewish identity. Today many prominent Jewish individuals and organisations oppose Zionism and promote the long Jewish tradition of justice and progressive politics. All people, including Jews, must feel safe, indeed celebrated, wherever they live but no-one should expect superior rights!
Israel’s violent Israeli colonialism is supported by powerful…
[cut to our limit of 300 words – admin]
I am mystified. James o’brien consistently backed the antisemitism accusations against Labour under Corbyn’s leadership, and continues those accusations in his recent book How They Broke Britain.. He also consistently trashed any callers to his talk programme who tried to explain what Israel was, already doing…
Gaza is a global political sea change. From a position where most of us ‘tolerated’ Zionism. now we must become active anti-Zionists. AND WE MUST LOOK FOR ALLIES AND THEY ARE NOT IN ‘THE WEST’…..
I hope you’ll forgive me, but I shall keep James O’Brien’s conversion at arms length, for the time being, waiting for the other foot to fall.
I’m not 100% ‘sold’ just yet.
J.O’B stands out because he is an exception to the BBC and other broadcasters who keep their mouths shut whilst the fake State ot Israel is attempting to obliterate the genuine State of Palestine by using genocide. Psychotic Zionists in Israel have been given weapons of mass destruction by equally mad Zionists in the UK, USA and elsewhere, to enable them to carry out this mass murder.
If just 5% of what O’Brien said was on the BBC News, we would be shocked.
They frame every sentence, to make it look like an equal fight between Israel and Hamas, even down to twisting a sentence that makes it look like Israel is defending itself. We who are on Social Media are a tiny proportion of the population, so their Biased Propaganda is believed by a massive majority. Even LBC’s Audience is small in comparison and I wouldn’t mind betting that a large number of their audience are also those that use Political Social Media, you often see clips on FB and X of LBC interviews.
What always strikes me as I read about the earlier Nazi and Fascist movements is the they were middle class movements and very often supported by the very rich. Reading about the founding and rise of Zionism it is again very much a middle class movement supported by the very rich.
Amanda Sebestyen, as a Jeremy Corbyn supporter, I too was annoyed by O’Brien’s criticisms of him, therefore I did a little digging and found this. Make of it what you will:
https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/vital-monologue-anti-semitism-jeremy-corbyn/
Time he apologised for the smears he’s repeated and amplified against Corbyn and many of us in “the party of Holocaust denial”, as he described Labour. And to the smeared callers who tried to disagree with him, he needs to apologise for his hysterical sneering belligerence towards them.
It was quite over the top.
Generally, I think that James O’Brien is a positive and calm voice in the talkshow Tower of Babel. However, I also think that the reservations expressed by Amanda Sebestyen and George Peel are valid ones. O’Brien has established for himself an idiosyncratic niche in the medium.
yes great from JOB perhaps his next book will be How I got it wrong eh.
Re Amanda Sebestyen’s question, James O’Brien is an enigma. I sometimes listen to LBC, and then only to O’Brien’s morning programme. I have never heard him be anything but furiously on ‘my ‘ side. But I have read about his right-wing tirades and know he was fiercely anti Corbyn.
Read his Wikipedia entry for the full set of contradictions. He worked on right wing papers (Telegraph, Mail, Express) before going into broadcasting. I don’t think he is on the left, but it would be easy to think he was if you listened every now and then to his radio rants!
He is certainly very knowledgeable about politics, and an immensely skilled presenter. Perhaps when he is good, he is very very good, and when he is bad, he is just horrid.
The clip posted here is a terrific example of what he does on a good day: a story about a Gaza family, no sadder than many stories, but featuring the terrible coincidence of a man securing birth certificates for his newborn twins just as they and the rest of his family are killed. Utilising coincidence and twins together, it knows exactly how to tap into our emotions.
Then he moves to a more forensic account, choosing the rape of a Palestinian prisoner by employees within Israel’s state apparatus, and the way politicians and ordinary Israelis responded to it. It’s very skilled, very effective, very true – and genius to pick that particular story. Brilliant principled jounalism – worth sharing everywhere.
For all his downsides, the BBC could do with an O’Brien – angry, clever, believing in something, willing to stand up to be counted, and mostly/often?? using his talents for causes we recognise.
And as for O’Brien himself- read the Wikipedia piece and try to make sense of him.
I expect that James O’ Brian will shortly be accused of antisemitism, demands will be made that his show should be taken off air and that he himself should be banned from any platform. David Miller was dismissed from his university job for declaring his views to just a fraction of the audience which James O’Brian has.
Will he now be fired as their previous female presenter was? Or, has LBC woken up at last? This ugly genocide must be called out by everyone without accusation of antisemitism, and without losing their jobs!
I agree with Amanda Sebestyen. James seemed to accept most of the accusations of antisemitism against the Labour Party in the recent past. Dare he and his producers now go further? Will he dare to invite JVL on to his show to expose past lies and the weaponization of antisemitism? Will he dare to revisit some of his comments against Jeremy Corbyn? I hope so. Nevertheless what a very brave stance for James and the producers to take. Also many thanks to JVL for raising this issue. Shalom.
I hope I can have a second bite. I have been binge-listening to O’Brien’s amazing LBC Gaza coverage. Ferocious about Israel’s behaviour – not about Israel which he definitely doesn’t hate, though he excoriates the conduct of its assault on Gaza.
However, I have now heard loads of LBC, and cannot remember O’Brien once discussing Israel’s pre-Oct 7 behaviour towards the Palestinians, what gave rise to Hamas, or Israel’s role in building Hamas to counterbalance Fatah. His rage about Israel’s behaviour is curiously detached from context.
He operates essentially via humanitarianism, logic and ‘evidence’. Constantly questioning – is Israel’s behaviour, treating dead Palestinians (especially children) as collateral damage justified? He also asks – is it likely Israel can actually destroy Hamas? And repeatedly seeks substantiation, often, with Jewish callers, saying – what is your evidence for your last claim? Which he proceeds to demonstrate is non-existent.
But he doesn’t – or, at least, not in the programmes I heard – engage in any historical or political oversight. It’s passionate, clever, well-informed, but not political.
I also heard the broadcast Jack T identified: O’Brien’s rant about Corbyn’s celebration of the Hobson book ‘Imperialism’. After which I read David Feldman’s article on Hobson, then a brilliant JVL posting comprising Donald Sassoon’s fierce historical response to Feldman, Richard Kuper’s equally terrific political commentary, and Lenin’s stunning attack on antisemitism, which we could well recycle, replacing ‘Jews’ with today’s hate figures – ‘asylum-seekers’. (https://jewishvoiceforliberation.org.uk/article/hobsons-imperialism-revisited-some-critical-comments/). Researching all this stuff doesn’t half take time – I wonder what O’Brien did before he commented on Corbyn’s view of the Hobson book.
Last – O’Brien seems convinced that Jewish critics of Israel won’t be called antisemitic. Which makes me wonder – does he really understand the ‘antisemitism wars’? He’s an impressive and valuable journalist/presenter, but is that enough?