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Despite more recently speaking up for Palestinians and becoming famous as a pro-Palestine advocate after the Gaza genocide, Owen Jones is a Liberal Zionist who spent most of his career attacking anti-Zionists as "antisemitic" and the right of return as "mass expulsion" of Jews
Owen Jones is a British journalist and columnist for The Guardian
JOURNALISM
Between 2016 and 2017, Jones participated in the fabricated antisemitic smear campaign against then leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, due to his pro-Palestine activism and involvement in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. In an article for The Guardian titled “Antisemitism is a poison – the left must take leadership against it,” Jones argued that the left has an “antisemitism problem.” Jones cheered on and advocated for the expulsion of Labour Party members such as Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker, Chris Williamson and Ken Loach.
In April 2017, Jones spoke at an event organized by the Jewish Labour Movement, a Zionist lobby group with close ties to the Israeli embassy, despite calls for him not do to so. He defended his position and took pride in it in multiple articles, smearing his detractors as “a group of unreasonable or disingenuous critics and – in some cases – conspiracy-minded bigots.” He defended members of the Zionist lobby group as "a community which increasingly feels alienated by the left” and advocates for a two-state solution."
In an April 2017 interview with the Jewish Chronicle in, Jones told the Zionist newspaper that he had “never been involved in BDS,” falsely claiming that there was a danger that with BDS, “you end up indiscriminately targeting Jewish people”. Jones would later declare his support for BDS in 2021, but even within his declaration, he cautions without evidence that the Palestine solidarity movement includes people who “Seize upon the Palestinian cause” as a mask for their “two-millenia-old hatred of the Jewish people.”
In a 2019 Twitter video, Jones advised against using the words “Zionist” or “Zionism,” claiming they “lack precision as terms” and could cause “hurt and distress.” This stance contrasts with the proud identification of many supporters of Israel, including U.S. President Joe Biden, as Zionists.
In his 2020 book, This Land: The Story of a Movement, Jones argued that there was “an incontestable need for a Jewish homeland” in Palestine. He promotes Zionism as “fundamentally different from those projects of European settler-colonialism” such as Algeria. He also argues that Isarel only “came to resemble a colonial occupier” in 1967 with the invasion and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, overlooking the earlier occupation of the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula in 1956 and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967. This also ignores the fact that Israel has been planned as a settler colonial endeavour from the start as stated by the grandfather of Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, as far back as the 1890s. Additionally, he argues that it is “deeply problematic” when those on the left point out that Zionism is “a political ideology … inherently rooted in oppression.” Jones also attacks Corbyn for refusing to make an official visit to Israel.
In 2021, Jones denied and justified the Zionist movement’s well-documented record of collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust, including figures such as Rezső Kasztner.
In a January 2025 discussion with Youtuber BadEmpanada on X (formerly Twitter), Jones equated the Palestinian right of return to the “mass expulsion of the Jewish population.”
BDS Boycott:
The BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement is a global campaign which follows the worldwide boycott movement that led to the successful dismantling of apartheid in South Africa and therefore advocates for various sustained forms of boycott against Israel until it complies with international law.
Founded as a response to the rampant, ongoing and systemic dispossession, displacement, and disenfranchisement endured by generations of Palestinians, the BDS movement is in direct response to the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements, the imposition of discriminatory laws and the denial of basic rights to millions living under occupation, apartheid or in exile with no right of return.
Central to the ethos of BDS is the belief that every purchase and action carries a weighty moral responsibility. To buy goods from or actively support companies or organizations on the BDS list is to cast a vote in favor of perpetuating injustice, a tacit endorsement of the status quo of occupation and discrimination. It’s a direct violation of the collective conscience, a betrayal of the fundamental principles of human rights and dignity.
By pressuring Israel and its supporters by withdrawing support and capital, humanity aims to bring awareness to — and ultimately — end the occupation of Palestine, grant equal rights to all Palestinians and recognize the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. This pressure also extends to any individuals and entities found to be complicit in the normalization, funding or support of Israel’s brutal occupation and 75+ years of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Conflating Zionism with Judaism:
While the Jewish faith and cultural identity not only long predate and but have no inherent connection to the racist political ideology of Zionism, the modern Israeli regime has deliberately pursued an ethnic supremacist agenda rooted in Jewish ethno-religious identity — yet built upon the demolition of Palestinian homes, the theft of Palestinian lands and the generational uprooting, displacement and dehumanization of the Palestinian people at large.
The harrowing cost of human suffering, loss of life and deprivation of the most basic liberties and security has been unconscionable and now, Zionism represents an utterly deplorable ethnic supremacist ideology that has enabled unconscionable acts of violence, displacement and subjugation against the Palestinian people for almost a century.
Its real-world impacts have been nothing short of a calculated campaign of ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure and apartheid racism - a horrific legacy that cannot be decoupled from Zionism's founding vision of creating an exclusionary Jewish ethno-state through the denial of Palestinian self-determination and indigeneity.
The forced expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homes and villages during the Nakba, rendering millions stateless and exiled as refugees, was an act of premeditated ethnic purging. With the willful destruction of Palestinian property, demolition of homes, uprooting of ancient olive groves, and obliteration of cultural resources further demonstrating a systematic effort to erase Palestinian identity, history and any enduring claims to the land.
Subsequent decades have seen this brutal ethnic persecution, land confiscation and denial of human rights institutionalized through severely discriminatory policies, illegal settlements, violence by occupying forces, arbitrary detentions, torture, and most notably, systemic oppression under Israel's racist apartheid regime.
These are not mere "realities" for Palestinians who remain, but grave crimes against humanity perpetrated through Zionism's new brand of unrelenting, institutionalized cruelty. This utterly shameful legacy of calculated ethnic cleansing, apartheid governance and flagrant violations of international law is inextricably intertwined with how Zionism's racist, supremacist and anti-democratic ideology has been implemented on the ground by Israel.
Any attempt to decouple or whitewash these egregious atrocities from Zionism itself is a form of explicit denialism and complicity in oppression of the highest order. No ethnic, religious or any other group deserves an ethno-supremacist theocratic state constructed through the forcible subjugation of indigenous populations as second-class citizens stripped of all rights, dignity and humanity.
Such an abhorrent exclusionary system based on racial hierarchy is fundamentally incompatible with even the barest notion of true democracy, self-determination or universal human rights regardless of ethnicity or faith.
Statehood, sovereignty and self-determination can never legitimately emerge from such systematic violence, discrimination, forced displacement and ethnic persecution as political Zionism has perpetrated against the Palestinian population.
If a state were to arise organically through democratic processes that enshrine equality, safety and liberty for all citizens regardless of ethnicity or faith, it would have legitimacy. But any racist system of ethnic domination erected through brute force subjugation and calculated ethnic supremacy, as Zionism has done, is an egregious affront to justice and human rights that requires being dismantled - not enshrined - with a new equitable path forward established.
Amplified Zionist Lies:
This individual has used their voice and platform to echo and amplify egregious Zionist lies but also perpetuate the subjugation, torture, brutalisation and murder inflicted by the Israeli-occupation of Palestinian and its attempts to erase Palestinian identity, culture, heritage and statehood. [1] [2] [3] [4]
These egregious and dangerous lies MAY include but are not limited to: [5]
Spreading misinformation and hateful propaganda against Palestinians is a deplorable act of dehumanization that directly enables human rights abuses, ethnic cleansing and violence against the Palestinian people. [35] [36] [37] [38]
By employing such malicious tactics to deny Palestinian realities and whitewash war crimes, home demolitions and the systematic deprivation of human rights under military occupation, this individual has provided racist cover for 75+ years of subjugation. [39] [[40]] (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/human-rights-situation-in-opt-unohchr-23feb-2024/)
This misinformation doesn't just distort the truth, it actively endangers Palestinian lives and inflames hatred, justifies atrocities like the active genocide and obstructs any path to justice through the wilful erasure of the Palestinian lived experience. [41] [42] [43]
For more information about amplified Zionist lies, please visit:
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