Simon Kelner, former editor for the Independent, has penned an op-ed for its sister publication i Paper. In it, he condemns the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) for its picket last week. Specifically, the protest took place outside the Zionist-run, allegedly IDF-staffed, ‘Miznon’ restaurant in London.
He suggests that IJAN is antisemitic for doing this.
In an announcement, IJAN said they protested outside the restaurant because:
Co-owner Segal was the official spokesperson for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) a mercenary company created by Israel and the U.S., who shot and killed Palestinians queuing up for food at their distribution sites.
The other co-owner, Shani is an Israeli chef who has posted extremist Zionist propaganda online and has cooked for Israeli troops on the Gaza Strip border, fuelling their killing spree while offering no sustenance to the victims.
You would think that it’s hard to argue that establishments, run by people with these associations, are not legitimate targets for protest.
But Kelner does. And, as he’s an old hand, he tries to be clever about it.
I’ve criticised Israel myself, y’know
If the piece were written by say hardline ‘Israel right or wrong’ Zionist — think Melanie Phillips, for example — it would easily be taken apart for being rabid. Therefore, Kelner starts off with an anecdote about a chat he once had with author Howard Jacobson. Jacobson definitely falls into that category.
Jacobson is on record claiming that coverage of Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinian children is a ‘blood libel’. Moreover, Jacobson’s rant was elegantly taken down by the inimitable Michael Rosen, so elegantly, in fact, that the Guardian declined to publish it. In contrast, the Guardian had carried the original lunacy quite happily. However, the rebuttal was not published.
Anyway, back to the anecdote. Kelner assures us that he and Jacobson occupy “different points of the spectrum” on Israel. Jacobson thinks that “voicing opposition to Israel’s actions … would only encourage antisemitism”. Kelner voices opposition to Israel’s actions. He’s a liberal Zionist, so we’re supposed to empathise. But he’s still a Zionist. He might oppose some actions, but still believes Israel has the right to exist on land stolen from its Palestinian owners.
And he doesn’t say that Jacobson was wrong to claim that Jewish opposition to Israel increases antisemitism.
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“A friend and supporter”
This opening is a little disingenuous, to say the least. Kelner is not new to this ‘stiletto in a velvet glove’ kind of approach.
In 2025, he penned an article attacking former BBC presenter Gary Lineker, at a time when the Israel lobby was foaming at the mouth because Lineker had reposted a video criticising Zionism as land theft. Kelner wrote “as [Lineker’s] friend and supporter” while aiming straight for the jugular:
I don’t know whether Lineker has been emboldened by his previous public support, or he’s a little demob happy (his final Match of the Day appearance is 10 days away), or his success as a podcast mogul makes him feel impregnable, but his reposting of a pro-Palestinian Instagram message this week was a reckless act born of ignorance that I, as his friend and supporter, find impossible to defend, or even to explain.
In the body of the post was a link to a video. “Zionism explained in less than 2 mins”, it promised, and the video was introduced thus: “they take the land claim that it’s theirs”
The Lineker example
Lineker’s error, which the Israel lobby pinned its outrage on, was not to notice a ‘rat emoji’ in the tweet he reposted. Lineker, Kelner notes:
deleted the post when the antisemitic trope was pointed out to him, and has since issued a contrite apology. “I take full responsibility for this mistake,” he said. “That image does not reflect my views. It was an error on my part for which I apologise unreservedly.”
But Kelner wasn’t satisfied. Instead, he suggested that Lineker’s understanding of ‘Middle East politics’ was deficient and he shouldn’t speak out on it again until he had completed a university course on it. Presumably one that would strip him of all those simplistic notions like ‘killing kids is bad’ or ‘land theft is land theft’.
My feeling is that this did not go quite far enough. In the same way that those in public life who have fallen from grace say they’re going to seek therapy after their indiscretion, or take a course in diversity issues, Lineker should have acknowledged his lack of understanding of global geopolitics and announced that he was enrolling on an Oxford University course on Middle East politics and that he won’t be taking to Instagram on the subject until he’s completed his learning.
Kelner takes the same kind of approach with IJAN. He writes as a liberal Zionist and critic of Israel, so of course he’s only being fair when he sticks the knife in. Endorsing the faux-horror of Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, Kelner says that boycotting and picketing a restaurant whose owners have links to genocide is
a shocking state of affairs, and, in essence, Badenoch is completely right. We cannot allow Jewish-owned spaces to be singled out as legitimate political targets in a way no other minority’s space would be.
It’s Bondi…of course
And, of course, Kelner doesn’t resist the opportunity to invoke Bondi Beach. The fact that the attackers at Bondi had nothing to do with Palestine and subscribed to an ideology that despises Palestinian resistance is not allowed to interfere with that. Or with claiming the IJAN protest will fuel a “global rise in antisemitism” and represents attacking people simply for “their beliefs”:
More important, however, is the context. A demonstration against a Jewish establishment takes place against the backdrop of a global rise in antisemitism, most tragically illustrated by the attacks on the synagogue in Heaton Park and on Hanukkah celebrations at Bondi Beach…
…The symbolism is, of course, horrible: driving law-abiding Jews out of a neighbourhood merely for their beliefs has all manner of terrifying echoes, for Jews, for any minority group and for anyone with a knowledge of 20th-century history.
And eventually, for all his liberal dancing around it, Kelner naturally concludes that the IJAN protest — which was entirely organised by Jews — is antisemitic. And not only antisemitic, but ‘genuinely’ frightening:
…can Jews be antisemitic? Of course they can, just as they can be racist or sexist. We are as capable as any other group of absorbing some of the prejudices of society and turning them sideways.
And so the identity of those who took to the streets in opposition to Miznon – and bear in mind this is a restauirant [sic] serving falafels and tahini, not a provisional wing of the IDF – is almost an irrelevance. In seeking to press home their moral certainty, they are putting people at risk, or at least in genuine fear.
We judge words and actions by their resonance, what they seek to normalise and who they put in harm’s way. In that sense, this protest is wrong-headed, inflammatory and indeed facile. Those responsible should wake up and smell the hummus.
Zionism is antisemitic
Of course, the opposite is true. The Zionist narrative tactic of identifying all Jewish people with the murderous, racist, genocidal project of ‘Israel’ is what is antisemitic — and deeply so. So is ignoring or attacking Jewish people who show that narrative to be false, even if it’s necessary in the mind of Zionists to maintain the fiction. Even if the fiction is wielded by a hand wearing a velvet glove with the words ‘as a friend‘ written on it.
In the end, Zionism is antisemitic — it casts Jews as Pavlovian supporters of genocide, of the murder of babies and other innocents; as supporters of land theft, racism and apartheid. They’re not. Only some are, and many adherents to the racist ideology of Zionism are not Jewish, but they’re no less antisemitic and its their ideology that is abhorrent, not their race or religion.
In a stark contrast to that racism, anti-Zionist Jews fight antisemitism every time they speak up for humanity and for Palestinian freedom. They also speak against the racism and crimes of Israel and the ideology that set it up. In addition, they speak against the ideology that aims to expand it. Importantly, this expansion occurs on land that belongs to others. Every inch since 1948 is stolen.
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By Skwawkbox
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