Brian Lapping

Brian Lapping is a former journalist (started his career working as a journalist on The Guardian and The Financial Times) who moved into documentary making in the 1980s (for Granada TV - UK); he is also a historian. In 1988 Lapping set up as an independent documentary producer with Norma Percy (she became the director of the company) and Andrew Robinson. In 2002, their company Brook Lapping became part of the Ten Alps group. (Source).

Lapping is variously described as a neocon, and has been a "long-time friend" of Richard Perle -- they even have neighboring summer houses in Les Baux, Provence (several other neocons also own houses there). Several of his documentaries have dealt with topics important to the neocons and presented their angle on (1) terrorism (2) Israel-Palestinians (3) the war against Iraq. His second documentary (together with Percy) was "The 50 Years War: Israel And The Arabs" (1998), and more recently "Israel and the Arabs, Elusive Peace" (2006) (Source). John Dixon comments on "The 50 Years war": Consider the remarkable similarities between this 1972 book and a 1999 documentary, The 50 Years War: Israel and the Arabs, that was widely hailed in the United States as groundbreaking in its objectivity and fairness. They both tell their stories through interviews with Arab and Jewish participants, thus making a show of "balance." In treating the rise of Israel, they both begin with the UN partition plan and emphasize Arab intransigence in refusing to accept it. They both ignore the pre-1948 period of colonization and suggest that Israel was founded chiefly as a refuge for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. In covering the war itself they both focus almost exclusively on the war in Jerusalem and in particular the Jewish efforts to break the Arab siege. They both only show images of Arab terror. They both dwell on Deir Yassin, admit the horror, but suggest the exceptional nature of the crime. They both point out the anguish with which Jewish sensibilities reacted to the massacre. In both accounts, the focus on Deir Yassin becomes a kind of badge by which fairness is proclaimed, while in fact each account obscures the dimensions and causes of the larger refugee problem. These similarities are not accidental, but point to a shared and socially maintained structure of interpretation. O Jerusalem! represents an important early manifestation of a new stage in the dialectical development of Western defenses of Israel, a stage that we are still in the midst of.

Alison Weir comments on Lapping's film Case for War:  One entire program in the series, funded with federal money dispensed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), is dedicated to Richard Perle, the neoconservative strategist who pushed for "regime-change" in Iraq and is now promoting it once more in Iran. While his opponents are also included in the segment, Perle is given the opportunity to rebut each one; the film was produced by his associate Brian Lapping. The title of the program, "The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom," seems to indicate a perspective that few facts would support. While only short clips were shown on Friday, Perle's approving, and welcomed, presence at the screening seems to indicate a happy CPB-PBS-Perle relationship. Happy for Perle that is; not for those of us who are less than pleased at manipulations that destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives, at least, and whose agenda appears to be an Israeli American empire based on a mutilating sword, and whose deathly swath cuts many ways.

Other documentaries:

 * Death of Yugoslavia
 * End of Empire, 1985
 * Washington Version, three part series: 1986-1992
 * Children of the Andes Source
 * Avenging Terror (with Norma Percy)
 * Life of Dr. Mossadegh (Source)
 * Case for War
 * Finest Hour (about WWII, produced in 2002)

Publications

 * End of Empire (1990)
 * Apartheid: A History (1990)
 * Bounds of Freedom (editor), (1980)
 * Labour Government, 1964-70, (1970)
 * More power to the people: Young Fabian essays on democracy in Britain (1968)

Affiliations

 * Education Digital Lt (Source)
 * Ten Alps
 * The Young Fabians (Source)