Lord Austin and Stephen Pollard on the North London restaurants dragged into a proxy war on Gaza

The Guardian employs a sports journalist called Jonathan Liew. I have no idea whether he is any good as a sports writer. However, someone in the Guardian's editorial team unwisely allowed him to publish an "Opinion" article about the protests against a restaurant in North London by Pro-Palestinian activists. It certainly contains opinion, but is a serious discredit both to the Guardian and to him.

The article describes two restaurants in North London, one Palestinian owned and very upfront about it, the other describes itself as “a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK” but which has attracted the ire of pro-Palestinian activist because it was founded in the 1990s by a Jewish baker who no longer owns or has any connection to it. (Apparently its' parent company, Bains Capital, also has some investments which Liew describes as a "distant link to Israeli security funding."

Both restaurants have been the target of very differing degrees of protest and harassment - and I totally condemn all such action against either restaurant.

Jonathan Liew's article has this to say about the harassment of the Palestinian restaurant:

"In the current oppressive climate, even to exist as a Palestinian in western society is to be the target of aggression and suspicion, to be tainted as a murderer and an antisemite, even if your ambitions stretch little further than cooking food and serving coffee."

What  I find amazing is that someone who  - rightly - objects to harassment of the Palestinian - owned "Cafe Metro," and does so in the pretty extreme language above, goes out of was way not to express the slightest criticism of  those perpetrating a far more intensive campaign against Gails, the restaurant targeted by the pro-Palestinian activists. Indeed, without every quite falling into the trap of openly endorsing violence or vandalism, Liew comes as close as he dares to supporting their actions.   

As the former Labour MP and now Independent peer Lord Ian Austin put it,

"What would the Guardian call it if someone targeted a Sudanese restaurant in London in protest at the civil war?

Or spray painted a Chinese takeaway because of the treatment of the Uighurs?

I think that would be regarded as racism, wouldn’t it?

It would also be seen as utterly bonkers!"

There is a longer reply to Jonathan Liew's piece in the Telegraph by Stephen Pollard, which can be found on their site here, 

Gail’s derangement syndrome is getting out of hand

but he has also posted it on X so anyone can read it for free. Here it is.

 

"Gail’s derangement syndrome is getting out of hand

One can only wonder why Palestinian activists are so incensed by a chain of bakeries."

"It is entirely possible to be in favour of a Palestinian state, to vilify Benjamin Netanyahu, to regard the presence of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich in the Israeli government as appalling and to oppose Israeli policy generally – and also to be rational, decent and not in any way anti-Semitic.

Of course it is; that’s the position of many Israelis, after all.

But it’s striking how many of those who espouse such positions take things to another level altogether. Not only do they start to see the Palestinian cause in every walk of life, they see the malign influence of Jews – or Zionists, as they usually put it – everywhere. Even, as we learned this weekend, in cake.

On Saturday the Guardian published an article by one of its sports writers, Jonathan Liew. It could hardly be bettered as an example of this “Palestinianism”, the obsession among so many Western progressives which treats the cause as the great moral issue of our time – indeed the only truly consequential moral issue – and at the same time uses many of the most virulent historic antisemitic tropes to explain why Palestine is such a core moral issue.

Liew takes the opening of a new branch of the bakery chain Gail’s as an example of the perfidious behaviour of the Zionists. You may have read in recent days how this new café in Archway, north London, has been repeatedly vandalised by self-described Palestine activists. Protestors have tried to enforce a boycott, standing outside with placards such as “Boycott Israel for genocide and war crimes in Gaza”. On its opening day, the local Islington branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign posted an Instagram message saying: “This morning, Gail’s tried to quietly open up in Archway and we made sure to give them the welcome they deserve.”

Gail’s has no Israelis involved in its management. I have no idea if it has Jews involved, since – for now, although if the boycotters had their way I’m sure this would change – we Jews are not forced to identify ourselves as such on legal documents. But it was founded, years ago, by an Israeli (who is no longer involved), and its owner is the US private equity firm Bain Capital, which has investments in Israel. That is enough to damn it in the eyes of the obsessives.

Liew contrasts the opening of Gail’s with an existing café nearby, which is owned by two Palestinians. For Liew, this is deeply symbolic, with one deserving support and the other deserving to be treated as villainous. pariah status. They have, he writes, “two almost entirely separate clienteles”.

The “almost” does all the work in that sentence, because it is nonsense. Unless you are, like Liew, an obsessive, you do not ask your barista for his or her stance on Gaza before ordering, let alone finding out if they are sufficiently Palestinian to serve you. Indeed, I have been into that very “Palestinian” cafe many times, just as I have been into other branches of Gail’s. I didn’t check on the political or ethnic background of the pastry chef in any of them before ordering.

If that was Liew’s only argument it would be ludicrous but amusing, albeit unintentionally. But it gets a lot worse. 

He describes the “Palestinian” café as “a fixture of the north London social scene, a source of comfort and community in troubling times”. That may be true. I have no idea as the only comfort I have ever sought from a barista, whether in Archway’s community or elsewhere, is a double espresso. But Gail’s, on the other hand, is the epitome of nasty, corporate, Zionist evil: “its parent company, Bain Capital, invests heavily in military technology, including Israeli security companies.”

For Liew, Gail’s is the Zionist chain, expanding its way through innocent communities and brooking no opposition to its might: “its very presence 20 metres away from a small independent Palestinian cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression”. Heavy-handed, indeed – Liew’s use of oh-so-hackneyed tropes of greed and power is about as heavy-handed as it gets.

I did actually wonder if Liew was high when I read this: “And so somehow these two north London cafes, from two entirely separate worlds, with what we have to assume are two almost entirely separate clienteles, have found themselves on the frontline of a war. A deeply asymmetric war, defined by gross imbalances in power and resources and platforms, but a war nonetheless, and one that simultaneously feels more distant and more local than ever.” War? He is talking about two cafes competing for customers, as happens on most high streets in most towns in most countries. But when one is a Zio café – in the mind of Liew and his compadres, rather than in reality – then it is really about Palestine rather than cinnamon buns.

Which means, for Liew, that the vandalism and the protests are not only right but, he implies, the only moral course to take: “Palestinian activism has arguably never been less capable of exerting a meaningful influence on global events, and so is increasingly defined by small acts of petty symbolism. A smashed window. A provocative sticker. You can’t lay a glove on the US-Israeli military-industrial complex, and you can’t get your local council to boycott Israeli goods, and you couldn’t stand with Palestine Action and the protest march on Sunday has been banned by the Metropolitan police. So some people then direct their ire at the bakery with distant links to Israeli security funding.”

No one will be surprised to see such a piece in the Guardian. But when a mainstream newspaper publishes a screed attacking the arrival of a business on the grounds of the most tenuous linkage to Israel, it’s clear that the rise of anti-Semitism has a long way further to go."