Short answer: No. John Pilger, the Australian-born journalist and documentary filmmaker, was one of the most prominent and longstanding critics of Israel in British media, a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, and an advocate of boycotting Israel. He died on December 30, 2023, in London, at age 84, so his stance is a matter of historical record rather than a current position. As of August 2026, nothing about that record has changed.
What John Pilger has actually said and done
1974: Pilger made his first documentary on the subject, "Palestine Is Still the Issue," describing the flight and expulsion of almost a million Palestinians in 1948 and again in 1967, according to his official archive at johnpilger.com.
September 16, 2002: A follow-up documentary, also titled "Palestine Is Still the Issue," aired on ITV1. It drew a wave of complaints, including from Carlton Communications chairman Michael Green, who called it "one-sided, factually incorrect and historically inaccurate." The UK Independent Television Commission investigated for three months and rejected the complaints, finding no breach of due-impartiality rules, as detailed in a CAMERA.org film review that cites the ITC ruling, corroborated by the film's Wikipedia entry.
August 24, 2007: Pilger publicly backed the campaign to boycott Israel over the occupation, writing in support of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) as a nonviolent pressure tactic, according to Workers' Liberty.
March 2010: The Community Security Trust (CST), a UK Jewish communal security and antisemitism-monitoring charity, published a blog post criticizing Pilger's writing in the New Statesman for what it called "feverish rhetoric against Jews and Zionism," including his phrase "the murderous, racist toll of Zionism." The criticism is documented on the CST website and echoed by HonestReporting.
October 16, 2012: Media-monitoring group CAMERA UK accused Pilger of misrepresenting Gaza War casualty figures in a Guardian "Comment is Free" piece, part of a pattern of watchdog groups disputing his framing of Israeli military actions, according to CAMERA UK.
October 8, 2023: One day after the Hamas-led attack on Israel, Pilger posted on X describing Palestinians as "again fighting for their lives, refusing to live in the prison known as Gaza," and objected to their "resistance" being called "unprovoked." He made no comparable statement condemning the attack on Israeli civilians in this post, according to his own verified X account.
December 30, 2023: Pilger died in London at age 84 after a period of illness. Several of his final published pieces and posts concerned the Gaza war that began that October, and obituaries widely described him as a lifelong "Palestine supporter," as reported by Middle East Eye.
The context behind Pilger's record
John Pilger was never a supporter of Israel. From his first Palestine documentary in 1974 through his death in 2023, he was consistently and publicly critical of Israeli policy, framing the conflict as rooted in what he described as Israeli occupation and colonialism. He made two documentaries under the title "Palestine Is Still the Issue" (1974 and 2002), both centered on Palestinian displacement, and wrote for outlets including the New Statesman and the Guardian arguing for a boycott of Israel. He was not Jewish, and no Jewish-identity connection surfaces in the public record.
His work repeatedly drew formal scrutiny. The 2002 ITV documentary triggered a three-month UK broadcast-regulator inquiry after complaints, including from his own network's parent-company chairman, though regulators ultimately cleared it as balanced. Separately, Jewish communal and media-monitoring organizations, including the Community Security Trust, HonestReporting, and CAMERA/CAMERA UK, repeatedly accused him of one-sided or inflammatory rhetoric about Israel and Zionism over more than a decade. Those are the recorded positions of advocacy and watchdog groups rather than adjudicated findings, but the pattern of criticism spans 2010, 2012, and beyond. Pilger died on December 30, 2023, roughly three months into the Gaza war that followed the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel; his final public statements on the subject sided with the Palestinian side of that conflict.
The bottom line
John Pilger did not support Israel. He was a career-long, outspoken critic of Israeli policy and an advocate for Palestinian rights and a boycott of Israel, a position that drew formal complaints and pushback from Jewish and pro-Israel organizations. He died on December 30, 2023, so this is his settled historical record, not an ongoing stance.
Wear where you stand
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Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
