Overview:
Howard Jacobson is a Jewish novelist and journalist born in UK. His novels are mostly based on Jewish issues. He writes articles for the Independent.
He Cries in Pain While He Strikes You
Howard Jacobson is a liberal Zionist who embodies the motif of “crying in pain while striking at you.” Jacobson has on many occasions vehemently attacked critics of Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people while crying about “Jewish innocence” and “baseless hatred towards Jews throughout history”. He unabashedly claims that Jews are “among the most dispossessed but least appreciated”1 , while simultaneously defending Israeli genocide in Palestine.
In one of his recent articles on The Observer, he wrote that media emphasis on murdered Palestinian children in Gaza invokes old “blood libels” against the Jews. Writing for the Guardian, he wrote the following as evidence of anti-Israel bias in media reports about children being killed during Israel’s 2024 onslaught in Gaza: “Ask how Israel is able to target innocent children with such deadly accuracy and no one can tell you. Ask why they would want to target innocent children and make themselves despised among the nations of the Earth and no one can tell you that either. Hate on this scale seeks no rational explanation.”2 Jacobson’s remarks blatantly ignore and disregard widely documented cases of Israel systematically conducting genocide in Gaza, killing a majority of women and children in the process.
In another instance, Jacobson claimed that Israel has to “kill Palestinians disproportionately” in order to prevent future Palestinian attacks against Israel.3
Intimidating Labour Politicians
Howard Jacobson like many other Jewish intellectuals and agitators accused the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of “anti-Semitism”. The Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership frequently criticized Israeli heinous crimes. Jacobson equated criticism of Zionism with anti-Semitism4. He asserted that Corbyn was unfit to be Prime Minister due to his anti-Zionist inclinations.5 Such hateful attacks against those who criticized Israel within the Labour Party led to the downfall of people such as Corbyn and the rise of pro-Israel politicians such as Keir Starmer in the leadership hierarchy of the Labour Party.
1: https://electronicintifada.net/content/shoot-and-cry-liberal-zionisms-dilemma/7143
3: https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/10/18/howard-jacobson-israel/
5: https://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/jeremy-corbyn-is-unfit-to-be-prime-minister/
