Censoring Palestine is a valuable exposé of how Britain’s political, media, educational and cultural institutions have systematically ignored and denied Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while simultaneously censoring criticism of Israel, branding solidarity with Palestinians as antisemitism and suppressing it.

The 75-minute-long documentary is the latest by Platform Films, directed by Chris Reeves. Produced at the beginning of 2025, Censoring Palestine has since been updated and shown at film and arts festivals around Britain.

As yet, the producers have been unable to secure widespread distribution, with screenings blocked and problems organising events; further confirmation—if any was needed—of the pervasive censorship that surrounds Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.

A trailer for Censoring Palestine is available here on YouTube

Platform Films has produced documentaries on political struggles, social injustices and the opinions of workers, activists and community groups typically silenced in the mainstream media. Led by Reeves, Ann Diego, Christine Tongue and Norman Thomas, it has built up a substantial archive of radical cinema, producing films dealing with contemporary political and social issues that few others cover.

Censoring Palestine follows on from Oh Jeremy Corbyn—The Big Lie, a documentary that examined how the media, the Blairites in the Labour Party and the Zionist lobby moved against the Labour leader, particularly after he secured the largest increase in the Labour vote in the 2017 election since 1945.

First and foremost, Censoring Palestine explains that the relentless media focus on the October 7 attacks deliberately pushes out of sight the broader history and context of the Palestinians’ struggle against the Zionist project; the 1948 Nakba and ethnic cleansing of Palestine; Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since the 1967 Arab Israeli war; and its apartheid regime that has “made Israel the South Africa of our time”. That is, history itself is being censored.

The film then examines different forms of censorship across the mainstream media and the very different language used to describe the actions of Israel and the Palestinians.

It cites examples and includes commentary from the mothers of two imprisoned pro-Palestine activists, veteran filmmaker Ken Loach, comedian Alexei Sayle, musician Roger Waters, Labour Briefing editor Graham Bash, political activist and writer Jackie Walker and other activists.

Educational institutions, we are shown, have clamped down on protests, cancelling, disciplining or sacking academics for simply voicing their opposition to Israeli actions against the Palestinians. They have been aided and abetted by well-funded pro-Zionist organisations posing as Jewish community groups opposed to antisemitism, including the Union of Jewish Students, Lawyers for Israel and the Community Security Trust.

In the entertainment industry, comedians, musicians, film makers and writers have faced censorship. Loach explained how self-censorship, with people afraid to speak out for fear of the professional or personal consequences, means that programs critical of the political mainstream largely don’t get made today.

The police have clamped down on pro-Palestinian protests, ostensibly intervening against “disorder” when in fact there was none, claiming that opposition to Israel’s genocide constituted antisemitism, and wielding anti-terrorism laws to target journalists and protesters with seizures and arrest—as directed by the Labour government.

Of the proscription of Palestine Action, the documentary makes the point that it is now entirely legal to hold placards supporting Israel’s genocide but not to oppose it by supporting Palestine Action’s right to protest! By October, more than 2,000 people had been arrested for opposing the ban, with violence coming from the police not the protesters.

Censoring Palestine adds, importantly, that the war on Gaza has led to a sea change in attitudes towards Israel and the Palestinians, particularly among young people, and that this is viewed as dangerous by the political establishment. Indeed, no other imperialist country has seen more massive and sustained opposition to the Gaza genocide than Britain—an anger shared with billions internationally.

The government’s pro-Israel narrative is being challenged daily on social media, helped by Israeli soldiers posting boastful videos of themselves abusing the Palestinians. People under the age of 50 no longer trust the BBC and the mainstream media, prompting attempts to censor social media, with shadow bans on pro-Palestine voices and censorship at the behest of Israel and its international supporters.

The film concludes that the increasing repression exposes the farce of democracy in Britain today and warns that the clampdown will intensify “unless we do something about it”. After more than two years of mass protests aimed at trying to persuade first the Conservative and then the Labour government to stop supporting Israel’s genocidal war, this is important.

However, without specifying the class and Britain’s geostrategic interests that lie behind the censorship and erosion of democracy, the question of who is meant to act and what action should be taken is left hanging in the air, with the film in danger of spreading despair rather than inspiring action. These are the questions which most need tackling, especially among an audience likely already very familiar with the material dealt with in the documentary.

Censoring Palestine builds on Oh Jeremy Corbyn—The Big Lie by helping to explain, without stating so explicitly, what lay behind Corbyn’s removal from the leadership of the Labour Party and his subsequent expulsion. It also highlights the significance of his replacement by the rabidly right-wing, pro-Zionist Keir Starmer and the suppression of dissent within the Labour Party that followed under his leadership.

The forces supporting and actively aiding what Israel is now doing in Gaza could never accept the possibility of a pro-Palestinian prime minister in Britain, to the point that serving army generals said Corbyn would have to be removed.

Corbyn did nothing to alert the working class to the significance of the threats and moves against him, refusing to mobilise his mass support base, even in defence of his closest allies, against the onslaught from the Blairites, the broader political establishment, the corporate and financial elite it represents, and the Zionist lobby. A mass of people, animated above all in their support for Corbyn by anti-imperialist sentiment, was led down a political dead end.

What has happened since shows the attacks on Corbyn and his supporters were not only a question of supporting the Israeli state, but of preparing an explosion of imperialist violence in the Middle East. Starmer’s government has backed Israel genocide against the Palestinians, and wars against Iran and its allies in Lebanon and Yemen, as well as its efforts to weaken Syria and sever Damascus’ relations with Moscow and Tehran—bound up with reordering the energy-rich Middle East under the domination of US imperialism.

These moves are aimed at isolating Iran—or securing a change in regime in Tehran, to one that would pledge allegiance to Washington—in preparation for conflict with China. Israel’s wars in Gaza and the Middle East—ongoing despite supposed ceasefires—form another front in an emerging global war, for which Britain and the other imperialist powers are materially preparing.

The Starmer Labour government, like its counterparts in Washington, Berlin, Paris and Tokyo, is vastly expanding its armaments spend in a bid to secure its predatory economic and geostrategic interests by military means throughout the world.

Censorship centred on Palestine is the spearhead of a crackdown on any and all opposition to this forced march to war, especially in the working class—the only social force capable of halting the ruling elites’ turn to militarism and dictatorship. It is the working class that creates all the wealth in society, a wealth that the oligarchy turns to its own bloody ends.

The rising opposition to US President Donald Trump, embodied in the massive “No Kings” protests, and the upsurge in strikes across Europe and North America show that the working class is entering major class battles. The global protests against the Gaza genocide express the bitter hostility of millions to the gross criminality of the Zionist regime, whose methods will provide the template for the wars of its imperialist backers.

The decisive task is to arm workers in struggle with the necessary socialist and internationalist programme to oppose war and the capitalist profit system that is its root cause.