The former Director General of the Al-Jazeera Network became the first Muslim and non-Western journalist to deliver the annual James Cameron Memorial Lecture at City University in London on Thursday. The anticipation buzzed through the crowd waiting to hear from Wadah Khanfar, one of the most influential figures in world journalism who had been at the helm of Al-Jazeera for 8 years, as the lecture theatre filled to capacity. A number of significant figures were in the audience, including journalists from the Guardian and the Financial Times as well as lecturers and media pundits. The high calibre of the audience highlighted just how significant Al-Jazeera under Khanfar's leadership has been in the development of journalism in the Arab world and beyond.

A response to the deeply-misleading Meir Amit Report

It is the usual policy at Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA) not to respond to blatant attempts to discredit our work by Israel's propaganda machine. Since 1997, many such attempts have been made, yet our organisation goes from strength to strength and our support base continues to grow. However, the Meir Amit Report on FOA is deeply and deliberately misleading and requires a response.

Maxim Shevchenko is an immensely well-respected editor, journalist and presenter on television and radio in Russia. He is a staunch advocate of the Palestinian cause, a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation and he is also one of the latest targets of the pro-Israel Lobby.

Shevchenko, one of Russia's leading journalists, has a wealth of experience behind him, and over the years he has been very open in his condemnation of Israel for its repeated violations of international law in its dealings with the Palestinians. This has, inevitably, led to him becoming a prime target of Russia's Zionists.

There is no doubt that attempts to whip up Islamophobia are on the rise and there certainly seems to be an atmosphere of intolerance and racism gaining traction here in the UK. While it is easy to point the finger of blame at racist far-right groups such as the BNP and "the Zionist false flag operation" the EDL (as the BNP call them) (p32) as a major source for stirring up such unnecessary hatred, a new report published by Spinwatch attempts to trace the source of some of this Islamophobia to its more subversive roots, particularly to groups and agencies which purport to be moderate British think-tanks but which instead serve Israeli interests and promote a clearly Islamophobic agenda.