Vale Hugh Kitson, a lion of our civilisation

It was with profound sadness that I learned today that my friend Hugh Kitson—a lion of our civilisation—had passed away.

Some deaths cause us to pause. Others leave us with the unsettling sense that a pillar has been removed: that someone who had stood watch for many years is no longer at his post. Hugh’s passing feels like that. A courageous voice has fallen silent. A faithful witness has completed his watch. A light-bringer has left us, and the world seems a little darker for his departure.

Hugh Kitson devoted more than half a century to filmmaking. Across a remarkable career, he was involved in more than 200 productions as an editor, director, writer and producer, earning numerous international awards. Yet statistics alone cannot capture the measure of the man. Hugh understood that film was not merely entertainment. In responsible hands, it could preserve memory, expose falsehood, recover neglected history and illuminate truths that powerful interests would often prefer to leave buried.

For more than four decades, he applied that conviction to Israel.

His documentaries included The Forsaken Promise, From Exile to Restoration and Give Peace a Chance. Through these and other productions, Hugh explored the Jewish people’s historical connection to their ancestral homeland, the promises made and broken by governments, and the extraordinary restoration of Jewish sovereignty after centuries of dispossession, persecution and exile.

His crowning achievement was the documentary project Whose Land?

Written, produced and directed by Hugh, and presented by Colonel Richard Kemp CBE, Whose Land? brought together historians, international lawyers and eyewitnesses to examine one of the most bitterly contested questions of our age. It asked audiences to move beyond slogans and propaganda and to look carefully at the historical record and the foundations of international law.

That mattered to Hugh because he understood something increasingly forgotten in the West: truth is not determined by the number of people repeating a claim. Nor does a lie become true through repetition, intimidation or fashionable consensus. Facts remain facts, even when they are inconvenient. History does not cease to exist because activists find it obstructive. Law does not lose its meaning merely because those who misuse its language speak more loudly.

Hugh was prepared to do the painstaking work.

He examined the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Resolution, the British Mandate and the legal instruments that helped establish international recognition of the Jewish people’s right to reconstitute their national home. He challenged the careless or deliberately misleading use of words such as “occupation”, “colonialism” and “settlement”. He gave viewers the intellectual tools to interrogate claims that are too often presented as unquestionable truths.

Yet Hugh’s contribution was greater than any individual argument.

He taught people how to look again.

At a time when history is compressed into memes, moral questions into hashtags and ancient conflicts into emotionally satisfying caricatures, Hugh insisted upon evidence, context and intellectual seriousness. He understood that civilisation depends upon memory. When memory is erased, manipulated or abandoned, societies become vulnerable to those who manufacture grievance, weaponise ignorance and turn falsehood into political power.

Hugh stood against that darkness.

He did so not as a detached observer, but as a man who recognised that the campaign to delegitimise Israel was part of a wider assault upon truth, faith, history and the inheritance of the West. He saw that attacks upon the Jewish people’s connection to their land were not isolated academic disagreements. They formed part of a broader effort to sever a civilisation from its foundations and persuade decent people to become ashamed of the very traditions that produced liberty, human dignity and the rule of law.

Hugh’s work therefore carried both a message and a warning.

The message was that Israel’s story deserves to be understood honestly. The warning was that lies left unanswered do not remain confined to lecture halls, television studios or protest marches. They migrate into institutions. They shape public policy. They corrupt the minds of the young. Eventually, they become permission structures for discrimination, intimidation and violence.

Hugh did not permit those lies to pass unanswered.

That required courage, persistence and stamina. The work of defending truth is rarely glamorous. It demands years of research, fundraising, travel, editing, explaining and enduring the hostility of people determined not to be persuaded. Hugh nevertheless kept going. He carried the baton proudly and for a very long time.

Now it has passed to us.

Our proper tribute cannot consist solely of affectionate words, however deserved. It must also be found in what we do next. We must continue to show Hugh’s films. We must share his research, preserve his work and introduce new generations to the history he laboured to recover. We must speak when silence would be easier and defend truth when falsehood is more fashionable.

Most importantly, we must refuse despair.

Hugh’s life reminds us that one person, armed with conviction, skill and perseverance, can illuminate truths for thousands of others. A light-bringer may leave this world, but the light he carried need not be extinguished. It can be passed from hand to hand, heart to heart and generation to generation.

Goodbye, my friend. Thank you for your courage, your friendship and your faithful service to truth.

Your watch is over. Your work continues. We will pick up the baton. We will carry the light forward.

Colonel Michael Scott CSC Ret’d is a former Australian army officer and the founder of The 2023 Foundation, an initiative dedicated to combating antisemitism.