Jake Wallis Simons

Jake Wallis Simons is editor of the Jewish Chronicle

Wednesday

13 Jul 2022

Reporting from Sri Lanka over the years has left me with mixed memories. On the one hand, there’s the horror and trauma of the Easter Bombings of 2019, which claimed 269 lives. The traumatic scenes at the hospital and morgue have been hard to forget, as have the eeriness of the tourist spots after all its foreign visitors had fled. On the other hand, there is the country itself. It is relatively poor, of course, and beset by endemic corruption and nepotism, particularly at the top of government, along with its fair share of ethnic tension. But it has an incredibly warm-hearted and hospitable culture, filled with Buddhist gentleness and good humour, and that charming, slightly stuffy anachronistic Englishness that you find in certain postcolonial societies.

Tuesday

31 May 2022

The cycling habit most hated by drivers

Sunday mornings in the Hampshire countryside remind me of a medieval pageant. While marketeers open their stalls and labradors bark, you see hundreds of jousters in gaudy livery steering their two-wheeled chargers along the lanes, trying not to get knocked off. But while everyone loves a knight, everyone hates a cyclist. Reader, I must confess: I myself am a member of the brotherhood of Lycra. I don’t shave my legs, I hasten to add. Though the fact that I’ve just written that shows how seriously my tribe takes their pursuit. Since taking up cycling in 2019, I have ridden thousands of miles and competed in several amateur races. The sense of achievement, the thrill of speed, the sublimity of the English countryside, the endorphins that follow intense exercise; for me, these things make life worth living.

Sunday

10 Apr 2022

Could Ukraine learn from the Mossad Nazi hunters?

Since the start of the war, many comparisons have been drawn between Israel and Ukraine, not least by President Zelensky. Last week, he said he wanted his country to become a ‘big Israel’ in terms of its focus on security in the years to come. And, of course, in terms of a plucky, advanced democracy thriving in the midst of a sea of hostility. Ukraine’s population is four times bigger than that of Israel. Its territory is more than 13 times the size. The threats it faces are not asymmetrical but those of an old-fashioned hostile state, with tanks and heavy artillery. Israel’s totemic defence systems, such as the Iron Dome missile umbrella, were not designed for such an environment. Yet the inspiration seems to have a common root.

Friday

8 Apr 2022

Can Jews like me trust Keir Starmer’s Labour party?

When I sat down with Sir Keir Starmer this week we had unfinished business to discuss. Foremost in my mind was the central political question in Jewish circles these days, particularly on the left: is it safe to vote Labour again? To answer this, I had to ask him about Jeremy Corbyn. When it comes to his predecessor, Sir Keir has painted himself into a bit of a corner. As part of his attempt to 'tear anti-Semitism out by the roots' in his party, he has stripped Corbyn of the whip and apologised to the Jewish community. But the fact remains that between 2015 and 2019, he tried his best to put Corbyn in Number 10. In an interview with Andrew Marr in 2019, for instance, he said: 'I’m 100 per cent behind Jeremy Corbyn.

Thursday

31 Mar 2022

Anti-Semitism is alive and well in Britain’s schools

My children have never felt the need to hide their Jewishness. That’s the heart of it, I suppose. A few months ago, a boy picked up his books and declared, 'I’m not sitting next to the Jewish girl', before moving to another seat. When she told me about it, my daughter, who is 14, said the kid had just been seeking attention. It was a one-off, she said. She didn’t want me to contact the school. So I decided to let it go; the lesson for her, perhaps, was that this stuff happens in life. Thinking about it, it had happened once before, a few years ago. It was Chanukah, and my son had decided to wear his kippah to school. He was only seven or eight at the time. In the playground, a kid had said: 'You’re a Jew. I hate Jews.

Wednesday

23 Feb 2022

What would prime minister Corbyn have done about Putin?

Jeremy Corbyn’s question in the House of Commons this week filled me with the relief of catastrophe averted. Addressing Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, the former Labour leader and Morning Star columnist said: 'Would he be prepared to countenance, if the Russians pulled back, any reduction in the Nato presence on the border as well in order to bring about a longer-term secure peace in the region?' In reply, with admirable restraint, Wallace condescended to state the obvious. 'We didn't put 165,000 combat troops on the edge of a sovereign country and hold a gun to the head of a democratically elected government,' he pointed out. The catastrophe of war in Ukraine may be unavoidable. But thanks to the common sense and decency of the British electorate, the catastrophe of a pro-Putin Corbyn government never came to pass.

Saturday

12 Feb 2022

Licoricia and the forgotten expulsion of England’s Jews

About three minutes’ walk from my house in Winchester is Jewry Street. It runs from the Theatre Royal at one end towards the 13th Century Great Hall at the other. It’s a picturesque throughfare, dotted with cafés, restaurants, churches and a library. But despite its name, it is all but Judenrein. I’ve lived in Winchester for almost 15 years. My grandparents brought their children up here. The air is clean, crime levels are low and there are many green spaces. It is often listed as the best place to live in Britain, especially for families. But the walk along Jewry Street has always given me a sense of eeriness. Along the street lie unmarked locations of Jewish significance. The site of the synagogue – whose owner was lynched as part of a blood libel in 1236 – is now a small car park behind a bric-a-brac shop.

Tuesday

1 Feb 2022

Whoopi Goldberg and the problem with progressive America

The Holocaust wasn’t about race because Jews are white. This is the through-the-looking-glass position in which progressive America now finds itself, via Whoopi Goldberg. This week, the Sister Act star used her weekly programme The View – which is watched by millions of Americans – to educate the public about the Nazi extermination of Jews. ‘Let’s be truthful about it,’ she said. ‘The Holocaust isn’t about race… It’s about man’s inhumanity to man, that’s what it’s about.’ When another panellist suggested that it was ‘about white supremacy’, Ms Goldberg – who is not Jewish, and whose birthname is Johnson – forcefully responded: ‘These are two white groups of people… Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other.

Thursday

6 Jan 2022

Are J.K. Rowling’s goblins really anti-Semitic?

Is J.K. Rowling anti-Semitic? Yes, I know. It’s the first week of 2022 and this question is being asked, after it was reported that the American comedian Jon Stewart had complained about the portrayal of goblins in the Harry Potter franchise. In a video released online yesterday, Stewart attempted to put the record straight. ‘Let me say this super clearly, as clearly as I can,’ he said. ‘I do not think J.K. Rowing is anti-Semitic. I did not accuse her of being anti-Semitic. I do not think that the Harry Potter movies are anti-Semitic… None of that is true, and a reasonable person could not have looked at that conversation and not found it light-hearted.’ Speaking directly to Newsweek, the publication that first reported that he had accused the Potter writer of anti-Semitism, he added: ‘Your business model is fucking arson.

Wednesday

5 Jan 2022

Why won’t Joe Biden stand up to Iran?

This week marks two years since Iranian terror mastermind Major General Qassem Soleimani was torn apart by a Reaper drone missile in Baghdad, on the orders of Donald Trump. The Iranian regime has marked the anniversary with a flurry of antagonism throughout the region. On Monday, a coalition base outside Iraq’s main airport was attacked by two drones armed with missiles with the words 'Soleimani’s revenge' on them. Both were safely shot down. That same day, two Israeli newspaper websites, the Jerusalem Post and Maariv, were hacked and made to display a picture of a missile being launched from Soleimani's ring at Israel’s nuclear reactor. These provocations were preceded by a letter to the UN General Assembly on Saturday, in which Iran’s presidential office demanded a resolution against the United States.

Sunday

2 Jan 2022

Inside Joe Biden’s disastrous negotiations with Iran

One of the West’s great foreign policy failures of 2021 was the Iran nuclear negotiations, which remained bitterly unresolved as the clock passed midnight. Having spoken to a number of diplomatic sources on different sides in recent weeks, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the process has been woefully inept. Not only has there been a dramatic failure to extract any concessions from Tehran – even a meaningful freeze on progress towards the bomb has remained elusive – but western negotiators have become enveloped themselves in an Asterix-style dust cloud of infighting, competing agendas and tension. All of this, of course, is a gift to the Iranians, who have entered 2022 in a commanding position. In truth, the project was all but doomed to begin with.

Monday

20 Dec 2021

Welby, Israel and the meaning of persecution

I arrived in Colombo the morning after the attack and went straight to the morgue to identify some of the 269 victims. The concrete building, with its pretty wooden roof, had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of Christian dead. Several bodies lay on the floor of the entrance, some only partially covered up. One had gone black. It was very hot and humid and the smell lingered in my clothes for weeks. Outside the morgue, a computer had been set up. Distraught relatives were encouraged to view a slideshow of body parts to see if they could recognise a clump of hair, a fragment of ear or a finger still wearing a ring. This was the 2019 Easter Bombings in Sri Lanka, in which three packed churches and three hotels were targeted by Islamist suicide bombers.

Sunday

5 Dec 2021

Mossad is preparing to strike at the heart of Iran’s nuclear programme

Iran is about to be hit by a fresh wave of Mossad operations, sources in Jerusalem have told me. This is the result of a change in Israeli policy: from now on, when Tehran’s proxy militias make trouble in the region, the Jewish state will retaliate on Iranian soil. ‘No more attacking the tentacles of the octopus,’ one source said. ‘Now we will go for the head.’ For the foreseeable future, I can confirm, this will not take the form of air raids, missile strikes or drone attacks. Instead, Israel’s feared secret service has been told to carry out pinpoint operations inside the Islamic Republic, inflicting surgical but devastating punishment. Mossad’s impressive capabilities in Iran were demonstrated by the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh last November, the full details of which I exposed for the first time in February .

Thursday

2 Dec 2021

The targeting of Jewish teenagers on Oxford Street is a wake-up call

When a friend shared a video of drama on Oxford Street on Monday night, I knew it would go viral. The clip showed a gang of men harassing a group of Jews on a bus, spitting, cursing, making obscene gestures, and even appearing to perform a Nazi salute. This was a group of Jewish teenagers being taken by their rabbi to see the Chanukah lights at Trafalgar Square. They had stopped on Oxford Street and, in their exuberance, left the vehicle to do a Jewish dance on the pavement. That was when it happened. Video has emerged of a group of men spitting at a bus full of Jewish teenagers in Oxford Street where the group were celebrating the first night of Chanukah. pic.twitter.com/orOrA9kJEu— The Jewish Chronicle (@JewishChron) December 1, 2021 Let’s start with the good news.

Saturday

20 Nov 2021

How does Azeem Rafiq explain his past behaviour?

Azeem Rafiq is not having a good week. In addition to having to issue a grovelling apology for antisemitic messages, this morning it was reported in the Yorkshire Post that a mobile number belonging to him allegedly sent creepy sexual messages to a teenage girl, declaring a desire to ‘grab you push u up against wall and kiss you.’ In short, the former Yorkshire and England star has bizarrely managed to find himself at the centre a racism storm, an antisemitism storm and a sex storm all at once – as a victim in the first case and a perpetrator in the second. So far, Mr Rafiq hasn’t commented on the young woman’s allegations and his spokesman told the paper it was being investigated. He did, however, more fully address the antisemitism furore with me in a second conversation over video link yesterday, as further storm clouds brewed unnoticed overhead.

Friday

19 Nov 2021

Azeem Rafiq and the hypocrisy of victimhood

On the face of it, it seemed the most startling irony. Azeem Rafiq, the former Yorkshire spin bowler who has been giving tearful evidence to a select committee about racism at the club, was found to have made racist remarks himself. Well, anti-Semitic remarks. Which is just as serious, right? In the eyes of many, it was a case of pot and kettle. Here was a man making a very public display of his victimhood, who seemingly felt it was OK to mete out the same treatment to others. #Hypocrite, they cried. #Humbug. But not in the eyes of the media and liberal commentariat. With almost no exceptions, reports focussed on the apology that Mr Rafiq gave and the fact that his anti-Semitism was only 'historic'. From one newspaper to the next, before the facts were even known, the tone was notably generous and forgiving.

Wednesday

10 Nov 2021

The sinister targeting of Israel’s ambassador at the LSE

A mob waving flags and chanting slogans hounds a Jewish leader, forcing her to be bundled into a car and driven off for her own safety. These were scenes that might have been expected on 9 November 1938, when the ‘Kristallnacht’ pogroms raged across Nazi Germany, marking the beginning of the Holocaust. Instead, they took place 83 years later, on 9 November 2021, outside that august institution, the London School of Economics, in the heart of the British capital. The recent BBC series Ridley Road smugly suggested that antisemitism in this country was confined to decades past; real life is far more worrying. Antisemitic, you say? That’s a bit strong. The baying crowd that surged around Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely last night, forcing her from the building under the protection of nervy security guards, would hardly think of themselves as such.

Wednesday

15 Sep 2021

Saigon’s sequel: Afghanistan and the failed lessons of Vietnam

The greatest American defeat of modern times was — until very recently — Vietnam. The fundamental reason for the debacle was clear. As Washington was loath to turn the Cold War into a hot one, it was unable to stem Soviet support for the Vietcong. This left America with a choice: mount a full invasion of North Vietnam or suffer the indignity of a humiliating retreat. It chose the latter. That same strategic error could be seen this summer on the streets of Kabul. But this time, the opposing power was Pakistan. Two decades ago, in the aftermath of 9/11, Islamabad trumpeted the severance of its bond with the terrorist militia on its northern border. The truth, however, was rather different. The Machiavels in Pakistan’s military establishment allowed the Taliban to take refuge in the north of the country, evading the American war machine.

Monday

30 Aug 2021

How China drove a wedge between America and Israel

Two weeks ago, CIA director William Burns – who has rather a lot on his plate just now – had a quiet word in the Israeli prime minister’s ear about Chinese investment in the Jewish state. It was the latest and most urgent of America’s attempts to prevent Israel from slipping further towards the Beijing dragon’s maw, an issue which has increasingly threatened to drive a wedge between the two allies. It’s no secret that in recent years, Uncle Sam has found himself asleep at the wheel while China has been pushing ahead in the global race. Four decades of pursuing a policy of friendship towards Beijing had simply opened the door to exploitation. With political, economic, academic and cultural spheres united under a nationalist agenda, China has been quietly rolling out a strategy for dominance.

Tuesday

27 Jul 2021

Why Israel must win over its Arab population

Which Middle Eastern country offers the best life for Arabs? The answer, as they say, might surprise you. Take any measure you like – democratic representation, women’s rights, lack of corruption, freedom of speech, the protection of sexual minorities – and it is clear that Israel comes out on top. I remember covering an Isis gun attack on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul in 2017. An Arab-Israeli woman, 19-year-old Lian Zaher Nasser, was one of 39 people who lost their lives in the atrocity. The attentiveness of the Israeli diplomatic service to her family was striking, and equal to anything I’ve seen elsewhere. Years later, a senior Israeli intelligence source told me of his abiding sense of guilt in failing to prevent the attack.

Sunday

6 Jun 2021

The problem with the New York Times’ Gaza coverage

While war raged between Israel and Gaza, the New York Times published a powerful montage of 64 minors said to have been killed in the conflict so far. Under its famous motto ‘All the news that’s fit to print’, and with the headline ‘They Were Just Children’, America’s paper of record informed us that ‘they had wanted to be doctors, artists and leaders’, and invited us to read their stories. It was impossible to look at those innocent faces without feeling deeply distressed. This was the human cost of the Israeli war machine, brought directly to your breakfast table, in a way that the vicious Turkish assault on the Kurds in April – or, for that matter, the Royal Air Force’s recent ‘major air offensive’ in Iraq – was not.

Sunday

30 May 2021

How London became a hub for Hamas

As the dust settles over Gaza, and Israel’s Iron Dome sensors cool, minds inevitably turn to the lessons that can be learned from the 11-day conflict that cost hundreds of lives. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, the American secretary of state Antony Blinken, and other international dignitaries have visited the region and offered their carefully calibrated support for ‘both sides’ delivering high-handed lectures on the ethics of asymmetric warfare in densely populated urban sprawl. Sadly, however, the British government has become part of the problem. It may have deep military and security ties to the Jewish state, but there lurks an elephant in the room. London itself has been allowed to become one of the world’s most important Hamas hubs.

Friday

21 May 2021

How Israel won the war

Golda Meir, Israel’s first female Prime Minister, once said that when forced to choose between being ‘dead and pitied’ or ‘alive with a bad image’, her country would opt for the latter. Now that Israel and the Gaza militants have agreed a ceasefire after 11 days of fighting, these words ring truer than ever. Both sides will now strive to present a ‘victory picture’ to their peoples and to the world. But while Jerusalem may have lost the propaganda war – anti-Israel feeling and antisemitism is surging both in Europe and the United States – it emerges from this conflict the strongest, its security boosted by a hugely degraded enemy. There is some debate over whether Hamas’ decision to go to war was taken by Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza, or the head of its military wing, Mohammed Daif.

Wednesday

19 May 2021

British cops shouldn’t support Palestine – or Israel

Picture the scene. A female police officer — hi-viz police jacket, regulation black hat, facemask slipping from her nose — punches the air, proclaiming: ‘free, free Palestine!’ Her words are met with cheers from the crowd at the anti-Israel rally in central London that she was supposed to be policing. Actually, you don’t have to bother picturing the scene. Just watch the video clip below to see a perfect symbol of the toxic blend of state authoritarianism and hard-left politics that is creeping across British institutions today. After I posted the video on Twitter, the Metropolitan Police said it was ‘reviewing the footage’ and would provide an update ‘shortly’. One wonders how long the investigation will take.

Friday

14 May 2021

Revealed: How Israel tricked Hamas

I received a message from a trusted contact in Israel yesterday telling me that no ground offensive was planned in Gaza. This was despite the fact that heavy armour and infantry reservists were massing on the border. I decided to hold the story and break it in the morning. Within hours, however, the official Israeli army Twitter account had suggested to the world that ground troops had gone into action. ‘IDF (Israel Defence Force) air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip,’ it said. Nobody noted the careful ambiguity. Within minutes, the news had spread across the world. ‘Israel goes in,’ screamed the MailOnline, the world’s biggest newspaper website. ‘Israeli troops have entered the Gaza Strip as conflict with Palestinians escalates, Israeli military says,’ tweeted the distinguished Washington Post.

Monday

3 May 2021

Israel is not to blame for shelved Palestinian elections

Last week, the irony that stalks the Middle East found a new expression: while Israel has been playing out an almost comical surfeit of democracy, staging four elections in two years, the Palestinian Authority, which has refused to give voters a say since 2006, has shelved another election. Mahmoud Abbas, 85, is currently enjoying the 16th year of his supposedly four-year term as Palestinian president. (Would it be too cheap a shot to wonder how the world would react if Netanyahu behaved like that?) When he announced that a poll would finally be held this month, seasoned observers laid bets that it would never happen. After all, having been trounced by Hamas in 2006 – leading to a brutal civil war and the loss of Gaza to the terror group – staging a re-match would be the equivalent of a sheep arranging to celebrate Eid.

Monday

26 Apr 2021

What Europe can learn from Greece’s alliance with Israel

In the 21st chapter of his magisterial 1948 history of the Second World War, Winston Churchill began with an arresting statement: ‘The Greeks rival the Jews in being the most politically-minded race in the world.’ In his distinctive tongue-in-cheek yet insightful style, he explained: ‘Wherever there are three Jews there will be found two Prime Ministers and one leader of the Opposition. The same is true of this other famous ancient race, whose stormy and endless struggle for life stretches back to the fountain springs of human thought.’ Seventy-three years after they were written, these racial generalisations may ring dissonant in certain 21st century ears. But they resonated this week, when Israel and Greece confirmed their growing friendship with their largest ever defence deal, including an eye-watering £1.

Monday

12 Apr 2021

The West’s shameful Iranian capitulation

On a sweltering day in July 2018, German police pulled over a scarlet Ford S-Max hire car that was travelling at speed towards Austria. The driver, Assadollah Assadi, the third secretary to the Iranian embassy in Vienna, was arrested at gunpoint and taken into custody. Although unusual, there was a good reason for detaining the diplomat: Assadi had used his immunity to smuggle a bomb on a commercial airliner from Tehran to Austria, intending to carry out what would have been one of Europe’s worst atrocities in recent years. Once in Vienna, he had handed the device — codenamed the ‘Playstation’ — to two married Belgian-Iranian agents, Amir Saadouni and Nasimeh Naami, and instructed them to blow up an anti-regime event in Paris, which was to be attended by dignitaries including Rudy Giuliani and former environment secretary Theresa Villiers.

Saturday

27 Mar 2021

Winchester University’s Greta Thunberg statue is a shameless PR stunt

Winchester University’s decision to splash £24,000 on a life-sized statue of Greta Thunberg – who needless to say, has zero connection to the city – was met with both outrage and hilarity. Outrage because since the effigy was commissioned in 2019, the university has enacted swingeing library cuts and two rounds of staff redundancies (despite the vice chancellor’s salary of £233,207). And hilarity because the statue looks rather more like an extra from the Hunger Games than the 18-year-old climate campaigner. Which might be part of the messaging, I suppose. Locals were less than impressed, mounting a brief campaign to replace it with a statue of the local Big Issue salesman. 'When they unveil it I’m going to push it over, so there,' one vowed on Facebook.