Am I really as bad as Netanyahu?

I've always supported Palestinian liberation, and here is the proof.

Is there no “material difference” between me and Benjamin Netanyahu? This the claim of one of my persistent detractors - Asa Winstanley at Electronic Intifada.

This in response to a clip from a video I made in October 2023 after antisemitic riots in Dagestan, Russia, in which I said that “in the Middle East, Jews and Palestinians belong in the same space, none of them are going anywhere, that those desiring otherwise must be defeated, that this space has to be shared, that both have to be secure and safe.”

Winstanley has made wider claims about my role during the smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn, which falsely sought to portray him and his leadership as antisemitic, which I’ll come on to.

So we’re clear about the comparison: Netanyahu is a genocidal mass murderer who has exterminated potentially hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, wiped Gaza off the face of the earth, presided over multiple murderous pogroms in the West Bank, as well as perpetrating multiple other slaughters in Lebanon, Syria and beyond. He is subject to an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In terms of the formulation Winstanley objects to, there is a straightforward explanation. I would personally prefer a single democratic state from the river to the sea, where all citizens are equal. This would mean no occupation, no apartheid, no ethno-state. It is not, however, up to me, a white Brit from Stockport, to dictate the future of the Middle East. If a future negotiated peace agreement establishes two states, it might not be preference, but again, it is not up to me.

The reason I used the formulation “Jews and Palestinians” rather than “Israelis and Palestinians” is that this would then imply preference for a two state solution. Some Palestinians are citizens of Israel, and some Palestinians are Christian (around 45,000 in the West Bank).

I’ve long stuck to these vague formulations precisely because I have a preference but it is not the place of people like me to dictate anything. Back in 2012, during that particular Israeli onslaught on Gaza, I concluded by saying: “finally having a just settlement for the Palestinian people, ensuring peace for Arabs and Jews, and the region as a whole.”

And later on, I suggested what that could mean in practise - a federal solution with “equal rights for Arab and Jews”. Recognising most saw that as far fetched, I pointed out that this was the case with South Africa, too.

It is this position which, according to Asa Winstanley, means there is “no material difference” between me and Netanyahu.

The alternative to what I’m suggesting is the forcible removal of 7 million Jewish Israelis. This would not only be gravely immoral and an extreme war crime, it’s also based on a misconception about Jewish Israelis being overwhelmingly of European heritage. The largest group of Jewish Israelis are Mizrahi - that is, from Arab nations such as Iraq and Morocco. 70% of the Jewish population were born in the country itself. Preferring a single democratic state between the river and the sea with equal rights for all does not, actually, make you the same as Netanyahu.

Winstanley, and those like him, have long impugned my record on Palestine. But even though my career has overwhelmingly focused on British domestic politics, as the Question Time clip shows, I’ve spoken in support of Palestinian liberation as long as I have had a platform.

Predictably, I came under attack for that performance at the time - from Douglas Murray in particular, who called me a liar. In response, I wrote a piece which noted how nearly 7 times as many Palestinian civilians as Israeli civilians had been killed between 2000 and 2013, and how a UN report had exposed Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians, including children.

In Israel’s 2014 onslaught against Gaza, I wrote a column for The Guardian condemning the BBC’s coverage - a theme I’ve stuck to in the current genocide. As I wrote:

“Israel under renewed Hamas attack": this was last night's BBC headline on the escalating bloodshed in Gaza. It is as perverse as Mike Tyson punching a toddler, followed by a headline claiming that the child spat at him.

And I continued:

The macabre truth is that Israeli life is deemed by the western media to be worth more than a Palestinian life: here is the "hierarchy of death" at work. According to the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, 565 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces since January 2009, while 28 Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli security personnel have been killed. The asymmetry of this so-called conflict is reflected in the death toll, but it is not reflected in the coverage.

Again, these are the same arguments I’ve been making throughout the genocide.

Throughout the summer, I made speeches at national protests against Israel’s onslaught, in July and then in August 2014.

And again, I came under attack from Douglas Murray in August 2014, who wrote a Spectator article with the headline ‘Owen Jones is lying about Israel. Plain and simple’.

He denounced me for suggesting that the real threat of antisemitism came from the far right - instead, he said it was spearheaded by “young Muslims”, and he said, outrageously, that I continued to “condemn antisemitism at the same time assiduously feeding it”, cynically conflating critique of Israel’s crimes and the evil of antisemitism.

He further accused me of “painting the background” against which acts of violence against Jews took place, pointing for example to how I condemned Israel for the massacre of children, declaring that I revealed “the moral sickness of a portion of the Left”. These are the sorts of attack, of course, that anyone who opposes Israel’s war crimes comes under, including during the genocide.

In that period, I continued to participate in pro-Palestinian activism, including a public debate about the BBC’s dire coverage of Palestine - long a theme I’ve returned to - along with Ken Loach. In 2015, I took part in an Action Summit organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Which brings us to the question of Corbyn’s leadership. The claim which is perennially made is that I was part of the smear campaign against Corbyn over the question of antisemitism. This is a barefaced lie.

The moment he stood, I wrote a Guardian column supporting his leadership bid, and wrote columns throughout the contest with that position. I went on TV throughout the summer of 2015 in support of his campaign - on the BBC News channel, Channel 4, Sky News, BBC 1, and Good Morning Britain. I did a viral interview with him for The Guardian. Similarly, I spoke at rallies in support of his leadership bid across the country, like here.

But I specifically defended Corbyn from smears over antisemitism from the start. In a column in August 2015, my Guardian piece was headlined ‘Stand by for more attacks on Corbyn’s principled foreign policy stance’, in which I wrote: “Corbyn himself abhors antisemitism, and anti-racism is central to his political DNA.”

In 2016, I wrote a column in support of boycotts against Israel’s occupation, headlined ‘Boycotts are vital to democracy. So that’s why the Tories will ban them’, in which I quoted a Jewish peace activist opposing the conflation of Israel and Jewish people, and I added:

He is surely right in believing that the government is using the deadly serious issue of antisemitism to close down activism centred on the policies of Israel’s government.

At the height of the so-called “antisemitism crisis” in 2018, I repeatedly went on TV to defend Corbyn’s leadership against these accusations. Here is an appearance on the BBC, for example, in which I emphasised Corbyn’s anti-racist credentials and attacked the BBC for their failure to scrutinise Tory racism:

When I organised mass canvasses in support of Labour at the time, I made speeches defending the Labour leadership and membership from claims of antisemitism, which led to attacks from The Sun newspaper:

Meanwhile, The Sun can reveal lefty cheerleader Owen Jones accused enemies of Mr Corbyn of “weaponising anti-Semitism” in an astonishing rant posted online.

Speaking at a hard left Momentum rally in Portsmouth on Thursday night the mouthy Guardian writer said only a “minority” of people on the Left hated Jews.

He ranted: “There is a minority of people on the left who are anti-Semitic.

There are also people using that and weaponising that issue to portray the whole left as anti-Semitic and that’s false.”

The most notorious attack against Corbyn in this period was called ‘wreathgate’, in which Corbyn came under attack for laying a wreath in Tunisia in 2014 to remember the victims of the Israeli attack on the PLO’s headquarters in 1985, because he was pictured near the graves of two senior PLO figures, one of whom was on of the architects of the Munich massacre of 1972.

As I wrote, “The smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn over the 2014 visit to Tunis is complete and utter bullshit, and here is why”. And I wrote an entire column expanding on that, headlined ‘The Corbyn wreath ‘scandal’ is just an exercise in hypocrisy’.

When anti-Corbyn Labour MP Frank Field resigned from the party, claiming it was over antisemitism, I penned a column headlined: ‘Antisemitism? No, Frank Field jumped before he was pushed.’

Other columns I wrote at the time included one headlined ‘Saudi Arabia and Israel are killing civilians – and Britain is complicit.’

When Labour was pushed to adopt the so-called International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which was rightly criticised for including examples which conflated legitimate critique of Israel with antisemitism, I promoted the alternative new code of conduct supported by the Labour leadership.

And crucially I did a Guardian video interviewing a British-Palestinian lawyer who set out the objections to IHRA, on the grounds that Palestinian voices were being erased.

In 2019, I went on BBC Radio 5 and said “the idea that in any sense he’s antisemitic or racist is an astonishing, outrageous smear”.

And that year when BBC Panorama did an entire documentary suggesting Labour was antisemitic under Jeremy Corbyn, I called it a travesty, complete with ‘sinister music and camera work’.

I noted how it failed do discuss basic details, like by the summer of 2016 most antisemitism cases predated Corbyn even becoming leader, and criticised it for what I believed were its distortions.

Again, I went on TV to make that case. And I should note that I was often booked to appear on TV because Corbyn’s shadow ministers - including those on the left - refused to do so.

At the time of the so-called ‘antisemitism crisis’, I wrote a piece outlining my overall position, in which I stated:

The large majority of Labour members abhor anti-Semitism. Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell are not only lifelong anti-racists; anti-racism, along with support for women’s liberation and LGBT rights, is at the core of their political tradition.

I emphasised that antisemitism “exists on a fringe of the left.” That was always my view: that the vast majority abhorred antisemitism, and the problem was confined to a fringe. And indeed I added:

There has been an onslaught against Corbyn’s Labour since he stood for the leadership over three years ago, and the anti-Semitism which exists on a fringe is being used to smear both Corbyn himself as well as the entire Labour Party.

The claim that I was part of a smear campaign against Corbyn over antisemitism is a straightforward lie. The receipts speak for themselves. And indeed those who were damning Corbyn’s leadership as antisemitic regarded me as a mortal enemy. In one piece, entitled ‘That Jones Isn’t Funny Anymore’, the author claimed my strategy over claims of antisemitism was “always with a view of protecting Corbyn and the project”. (The truth, actually, is I’ve always believed antisemitism is a grave evil to be fought, and that it’s an outrageous smear to describe Corbyn as antisemitic, which I stand by).

These weren’t the only smears I defended Corbyn over: I wrote columns defended him from absurd accusations about being a Czech spy, and went on Newsnight to denounce attempts to portray Corbyn as a stooge of Putin.

So where do these claims about me from? Asa Winstanley wrote a piece suggesting the contrary, which I genuinely believe is the most dishonest piece anyone has ever written about me. It erases virtually all of the above to make its case. This is known as lying by omission. He wrote the following about me:

He sabotaged the popular movement that brought the veteran Palestine solidarity campaigner to the brink of power by claiming the Labour Party had an anti-Semitism problem, insisted Corbyn apologize for anti-Semitism that he had not even been guilty of and happily played the role of the Israel lobby’s useful idiot.

His links here speak to his dishonesty. In the first link, I wrote about the case of a Labour activist suspended after she was said to having described Jews as having “big noses” and called Adolf Hitler the “Zionist god”. As my piece emphasised, her case predated Corbyn’s leadership.

He offers the second link as evidence that I “insisted Corbyn apologize for anti-Semitism that had not even been guilty of.” Let’s see the damning evidence:

To which I respond: is this a joke? That’s your evidence, a tweet which backed an apology Corbyn had himself made while emphasising “the attempts to smear Corbyn personally with anti-Semitism are also wholly false”?

Winstanley further denounces me for the administrative action taken under Corbyn’s leadership, and specifically by his ally Jennie Formby, who became general secretary in March 2018, after her anti-Corbyn predecessor Iain McNicol was removed. Under her leadership, the disciplinary procedures were improved, meaning swifter action was taken against those accused of antisemitism or other offences.

Yes, I backed that action. And yes, I offered it as evidence at the time to contradict claims that Corbyn’s leadership was institutionally antisemitic, noting it was taking far more effective action than his predecessor. Being accused of being part of a smear campaign against Corbyn’s leadership because I supported the action he took is, frankly, Kafka-esque.

The real grievance Winstanley has is with Corbyn’s leadership for taking actions he objected to. But making that argument would be politically difficult - so rather than criticise Corbyn and his allies, he instead guns for me, a newspaper columnist with no actual political power, for supporting those actions, which in turn is offered as evidence I was part of a witch hunt against Corbyn - i.e. turning reality on its head.

Another argument levelled against me is that I spoke at a meeting of the Jewish Labour Movement in 2017, which is offered as evidence that I “played a key role in a secret, Israeli-government-approved strategy to “sabotage” the Palestine solidarity movement and the British left.”

Here’s what happened. My best friend’s father died. I was asked to do a memorial lecture in his memory. I did the memorial lecture, in which I expressed my longstanding position in support of Palestinian liberation. That’s it. The idea this memorial lecture at a JLM conference had any political impact of any description, meriting the conclusion that it could sabotage anything, is fantastical. I would note that Corbyn spoke at a JLM conference that same year. I don’t think either appearances had any political consequences of any meaning.

Another attack centres on an interview I did with the Jewish Chronicle in 2017. I would certainly admit doing this interview was a big mistake: it felt like an ambush, with leading questions, answers taken out of context, and multiple answers I gave not included, not least defending Corbyn from accusations of antisemitism.

As above, I’ve always supported boycotts and sanctions against Israel. But a completely legitimate criticism is that I - wrongly! - didn’t support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement until 2021, when I recorded a video and published a Guardian column in support.

Winstanley condemns me for “flip-flopping” for changing my view. To which my question is - do you actually want anyone to change their mind on Palestine? As I’ve shown, I’ve always supported Palestinian liberation, but my views have obviously developed. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Shall we condemn everyone who moves to a better position on the question, and if so why?

I would note that when Corbyn was leader, he didn’t support the BDS campaign either. I would imagine that Winstanley would rightly hold that Corbyn is a principled lifelong champion of Palestinian justice - so why not excoriate him over it?

That isn’t to say there aren’t legitimate criticisms of me - there are! In the 2016 leadership election, I voted for Corbyn again but made trenchant and unhelpful criticisms. Before the 2017 general election, I lost faith entirely and suggested Corbyn be replaced by someone with the same politics. None of this had anything to do with antisemitism - I just feared the polling was so bad, Labour would get wiped out and the left blamed and eradicated. My criticisms centred on communication, not substance. But I threw everything into backing Corbyn’s Labour in that general election, including defending him from smears over his speech linking Western foreign policy and terrorism after the Manchester Arena attack. When Labour surged on election day, I wrote a piece offering “an unreserved, and heartfelt apology.”

Another critique focuses on my book This Land, which is about Corbyn’s leadership. This contained a chapter on the so-called antisemitism saga, in which I defended, again, him from claims of antisemitism. The chapter included what was supposed to be a summary of the left’s changing relationship with Israel, as well as Jewish people’s relationship with Israel.

That’s because when Israel was founded, the international Communist movement supported it - the Soviet Union was the first to de jure recognise Israel - as well as the social democratic parties of the time. (Indeed, they ignored the suffering of Palestinians almost altogether). For much of the left, that changed most dramatically after 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza.

Now, there are definitely criticisms to be had about the language I used here. I was trying to do a detached history of ‘the left and Israel’, not an exposition of my views. But, nonetheless, Winstanley and others insist on misquoting me. Winstanley quotes me as so: “Jones writes that there was “an incontestable need for a Jewish homeland” in Palestine.” What I actually wrote was;

After the calamity of the Holocaust and the extermination of two thirds of European Jewry, Zionism – long controversial among the Jewish diaspora – became a dominant idea among Jews. There appeared to be an incontestable need for a Jewish homeland

(Italicisation for emphasis). I wasn’t intending to describe my own sentiments here, I was trying to explain why Zionism went from being a minority to a majority perspective among Jews at the time, with ‘there appeared’ intended to mean ‘to them’.

Another criticism is about my description of Israeli settler-colonialism. I spoke of how the left’s view of Israel changed from support to opposition when “the left widely saw Israel as the last remaining European colonial-type enterprise”. The main point of controversy here is that I wrote:

Yet while the brutality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands is undeniable, the situation was and is fundamentally different from those projects of European settler- colonialism.

I went on to explain that this because in other settler-colonialism, “the Europeans arrived to plant their flags to claim land on behalf of their own states, while Israel’s founders were fleeing the flags of their old nations.” I wasn’t trying to argue here that Israel wasn’t a settler-colonial project - indeed that context makes no difference to how Palestinians experienced it! It was trying to explain a different dynamic in the context of the relationship many Jewish people had with Israel, adding: “Israel was both a state founded by victims of unimaginable horrors seeking a refuge, and a state in which many saw the characteristics of old-style settler colonialism.” Could this have done with better wording? Absolutely. But contrary to the accusation, it wasn’t an attempt to claim Israel wasn’t a settler-colonial project - which it is and has always been.

But trying to do a potted history like this was a mistake, especially without more detail about how Zionism was always a colonial project which sought to displace Palestinians from their land. It should certainly have been clearer that it was intended as a detached historical look at how the left and Jewish people changed their outlook - because that was the relevant backdrop to a chapter discussing the so-called ‘antisemitism saga’ and Corbyn’s leadership.

After I unpacked what was supposed to be context for how Zionism went from a minority to dominant strain amongst Jewish people., I wrote:

Some cynically deploy the charge of antisemitism to shut down legitimate criticisms of oppressive policies pursued by Israeli governments. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is among those who have falsely denounced the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement as ‘antisemitism in a new garb’. Jewish critics of Israel are smeared as ‘self- hating Jews’. The establishment of a unified secular state of Jews and Palestinians may be a far-fetched proposition, but it is still a legitimate belief; nonetheless, it is again often treated as an idea beyond the political pale. Palestinian voices are sidelined.'

As soon as the genocide began, the logical position I had from the very start - given my longstanding position - was to use my platform as best as possible to oppose it. Three days after 7th October, in a pre-booked debate with right-wing Labour MP Margaret Hodge, I was shouted down as I spoke of the context of Israeli occupation and war crimes:

Since then, my platform has overwhelmingly focused on opposing the genocide. That’s included trying to centre Palestinian voices as much as possible on my YouTube channel, and a very lengthy piece about the BBC and its Palestinian coverage.

Yes, there are things I’ve got wrong and will continue to get wrong. I’ve learned a huge amount, and will continued to be educated, not least by Palestinian voices. I should be scrutinised and critiqued.

But do you really think it is reasonable to look at my record and conclude that there is “no material difference” between Netanyahu and me, or that I was part of the smear campaign against Corbyn’s leadership? Is erasing what I’ve actually done honest in any way?

And, finally, I would prefer to focus my attention not on discussing myself (though it has been useful to put everything in one place to avoid doing that in future), but on opposing a genocide. I have long been baffled by how much energy and time certain critics put in to denouncing me, not least those on the left, who seem to believe that if I disappear, something better will replace me.

Nobody speaks out about Palestine because they think it’s good for their career, amidst a McCarthyite assault across the Western world. There are those of us who believe we have a responsibility to use our platform to oppose a genocide our government is facilitating - and accordingly, I will keep doing that as best I can.