There’s been some kerfuffle about a Guardian article describing the arrival in London of a new branch of a bakery connected to Israel. And it looks pretty much like the article was, to its author Jonathan Liew, a metaphor for the war in Gaza, with the piece (because it’s the Guardian, of course) seeing the bakery as an evil Israeli colonizer of a block already harboring a Palestinian “supper club”. The outcry about this cockeyed metaphor was so loud that the Guardian decided the article needed to be changed and given a public correction.
First some background from Grok on for Gail’s bakery:
Gail’s Bakery (a UK chain with around 200 branches) has historical founding ties to Israel and indirect links through its current majority owner, which have sparked boycotts and vandalism by pro-Palestine activists. There are no direct operations, stores, or suppliers in Israel, nor any confirmed company donations to the Israeli government or military.
- The business began in the 1990s as a wholesale bakery called The Bread Factory, founded by Yael “Gail” Mejia, an Israeli businesswoman (who moved to London in 1978). It supplied artisanal bread to London restaurants.
- In 2003, American investor Tom Molnar (from Florida) and Israeli investor Ran Avidan (from Tel Aviv) bought half the business. The first retail Gail’s store opened in 2005 on Hampstead High Street, named after Mejia. Early team members included other Israeli bakers (e.g., creative head baker Roy Levy).
- Mejia was bought out in 2011; Avidan sold his stake later. Neither remains involved. The company has proudly referenced its “Jewish roots” and heritage in interviews and branding
Notice that Jews are not vandalizing Palestinian restaurants, but nobody ever points that out.
Click below to see the original article, now archived:
Below are the quotes that caused the problem. First, the background. One branch of the chain of Gail’s bakery moved near a long-established Palestinian restaurant. (Guardian quotes are indented):
The cafe itself has existed since the 1980s, proudly blazons its Palestinian heritage, and has long attracted a small but loyal clientele. In recent years, however, a number of predators have appeared on its doorstep. Costa Coffee arrived a decade ago. Starbucks and Greggs followed soon after. Then, a few weeks ago, on the site of the former corner shop two doors down, came a new branch of the upmarket bakery, Gail’s.
Gail’s has long been feted as a purveyor of luxury baked goods and is an unmistakable barometer of local affluence. In recent years, however, as the brand has expanded to almost 200 shops across the UK, its presence has become increasingly contested. Critics accuse it of accelerating gentrification and squeezing out smaller outlets. Campaigners point out that its parent company, Bain Capital, invests heavily in military technology, including Israeli security companies. And so even though Gail’s describes itself as “a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK”, its very presence 20 metres away from a small independent Palestinian cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.
The night before it was due to open, Gail’s was daubed with red paint. Less than a week later, all its windows were smashed in. Slogans reading “reject corporate Zionism” and “fuck Bain Capital” were written on its walls. To date, no arrests have been made. A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies of British Jews has described it as “part of a wider trend to try to drive Jews out of wider civil society” (Gail’s was founded by an Israeli baker in the 1990s). The local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign made it clear it had no involvement. It should scarcely require saying that Mahmoud, a mild-mannered man in his 60s, had nothing to do with it. “We compete with them legally,” he says. Mahmoud believes rivals seek to dominate the local trade, “but our cappuccino is £2.95 and theirs is £4.50. That’s how we compete.”
Here are the two the troublesome quotes. The first one is. to me, unbelievable, and by that I mean the part in bold:
Gail’s has long been feted as a purveyor of luxury baked goods and is an unmistakable barometer of local affluence. In recent years, however, as the brand has expanded to almost 200 shops across the UK, its presence has become increasingly contested. Critics accuse it of accelerating gentrification and squeezing out smaller outlets. Campaigners point out that its parent company, Bain Capital, invests heavily in military technology, including Israeli security companies. And so even though Gail’s describes itself as “a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK”, its very presence 20 metres away from a small independent Palestinian cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.
Only someone with an anti-Israel agenda could describe the proximity of the bakery to the Palestinian cafe as “an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.” The bakery is a COLONIZER!
And the next part seems to imply that because Palestinians are voiceless and weak, the attack on the Jewish bakery was justifiable simply because there’s nothing else supporters of Palestine can do to express their views:
Does any of this move the dial in the occupied territories even one iota? Almost certainly not. But perhaps this is simply the nature of an increasingly disenfranchised age. 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.
Here is a tweet with the full caption here; the video features an angry journalist (see below):
𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗚𝗨𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗝𝗨𝗦𝗧 𝗪𝗥𝗢𝗧𝗘 𝗔 𝗛𝗜𝗧 𝗣𝗜𝗘𝗖𝗘 𝗢𝗡 𝗔 𝗕𝗔𝗞𝗘𝗥𝗬
Not a war. Not a weapons manufacturer. Not a government contractor. A bakery that sells croissants and lattes.
The Guardian published a piece treating the existence of a GAIL’s Bakery near a Palestinian café as — and this is a direct quote from the article — 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘺-𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘵 𝘢𝘨𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. The entire case against GAIL’s? Its parent company has worked with Israeli companies. That’s the chain of guilt. That’s the smoking gun.
Julia Hartley-Brewer — who actually worked at the Guardian and knows exactly how that newsroom operates — didn’t mince words. She called the piece 𝗯𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆, 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶-𝗦𝗲𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰 and the author a horrific human being. She’s right on both counts.
Notice what the Guardian finds worth writing about and what it doesn’t. A bakery opening near a Palestinian café? Front of the comment section. Iran executing tens of thousands of young protesters in the streets? Silence. Hamas executing Palestinians in Gaza? Nothing to say. Israeli-linked croissants twenty metres from a falafel shop? 𝗡𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗲’𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴.
Hartley-Brewer nailed the real name for this ideology: it’s not anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is a political position about a state.
This is a bakery. There’s no Zionism in a sourdough loaf. What’s left when you strip the political cover away is just Jew-hating — targeting businesses because of who owns them, who funded them, who they might be connected to six degrees away. The British public apparently agrees. Israeli-owned restaurants in London that were targeted by protestors now can’t get a table. GAIL’s will probably see the same bump.
Buy the brownie. Order the latte. Do it on principle.
And the original tweet with the video in which Julia Hartley-Brewer gets upset. I gatber that Hartley-Brewer, who isn’t Jewish, has no Jewish background, and is an atheist, is a well-established journalist in England and hosts an eponymous show on TalkTV and TalkRadio
𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗚𝗨𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗝𝗨𝗦𝗧 𝗪𝗥𝗢𝗧𝗘 𝗔 𝗛𝗜𝗧 𝗣𝗜𝗘𝗖𝗘 𝗢𝗡 𝗔 𝗕𝗔𝗞𝗘𝗥𝗬
Not a war. Not a weapons manufacturer. Not a government contractor. A bakery that sells croissants and lattes.
The Guardian published a piece treating the existence of a GAIL’s Bakery near a… pic.twitter.com/P0THXpihmE
— M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) March 18, 2026
After some outcry, the Guardian “corrected” the article in both its corrections section and now at the bottom of the article. But the inflammatory title and “heavy-handed high street aggression” remain.
The correction:
Corrections and clarifications:
Gail’s bakery vandalism
An opinion piece (In my corner of London, food has become an act of defiance, 14 March, Journal, p4) included a comment contrasting pro-Palestinian activism capable of influencing global events with “small acts of petty symbolism”. This was not intended to minimise the described vandalism of a local Gail’s bakery but rather to suggest the misdirected futility of such acts; the reference has been removed from the online version to avoid misunderstanding. Also the piece referred to the arrival of Gail’s close to a small Palestinian cafe as feeling like “an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression”; to clarify, this meant to refer to concerns about its impact, as with other large chains mentioned, on independent outlets. This has been amended online.
Misdirected futility of antisemitic vandalism? My tuchas! And if the reference to Gail’s wasn’t supposted to conjure up a metaphor for the war, why is the Guardian now saying that the “heavy handed high-street agression” was only about large chains outcompeting independent businesses. Does the Guardian expect anybody with two neurons to rub together to believe these are just “clarifications”. All they’ve done is repositioned the “high street aggression bit” and removed the “petty symbolism” bit.
Here’s the current bowdlerized article, which isn’t very bowdlerized.
This whole business may seem to be a tempest in a teapot, but if it’s bad enough for the Guardian to correct because of implied antisemitism, it’s pretty bad. And this kind of anti-Israeli/anti-Jewish rhetoric is getting so common that it’s becoming normalized, so it pays to be aware of it.
The “aggression,” as usual, is Jewish existence.
The journalist Jonathan Liew appears to be a sportswriter for The Guardian. It seems the editors selected his piece not for any expertise in business, economics, or Israeli-Palestinian relations but rather for his opinion.
That thought crossed my mind, too. Why is a sports journalist writing an opinion piece about a Palestinian café? With the emphasis on Palestine?
The battlefield has changed, but the battle still rages. Remember Gibson’s Bakery?
The wokerati never give up. This May I’ll be taking a trip to Ohio’s Magee Marsh to see the birds. I’ve already worked in a side trip to Gibson’s Bakery, precisely in order to buy some things from them.
Liew has form in unfailingly choosing what he takes to be the most progressive opinion. As a sportswriter, he opined that trans women competing in women’s sports and winning them was a very good thing, as it would provide inspirational role models for trans kids.
Yup. He wrote (in The Independent, before he joined The Guardian):
https://archive.ph/FJFQr
A Jewish man in 1925 sees his friend reading the newspaper Der Stürmer.
Incredulous, he asks, “What are you doing reading this Jew-hating newspaper?”
“Well,” his friend replies, “look at our Jewish newspaper. One article is about a pogrom, the next about a vandalized synagogue, it goes on and on. It’s depressing! But what does Der Stürmer say? It says Jews are wealthy, that we control the press, that we’re powerful – it’s a real ego boost!”
Note: Julius Streicher, publisher and editor of Der Stürmer, was convicted of crimes against humanity during the Nuremberg trials for inciting hatred and was executed in 1946.
This story has been picked up by English-language Israeli websites, which is where I first read about it: https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-jews-decry-the-guardian-for-appearing-to-justify-attack-on-bakery-founded-by-israelis/ and https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-890195. CAMERA has a critique here: https://www.camera.org/article/guardian-gives-three-cheers-for-antisemitic-activists/.
Is the bakery chain really an arm of of the rootless, international, colonizer, Jew? Is its location near a Palestinian cafe just another form of genocide? Blatant antisemitism through and through.
A commentary in “The Telegraph” takes Jonathan Liew’s propaganda piece apart.
Gail’s derangement syndrome is getting out of hand
One can only wonder why Palestinian activists are so incensed by a chain of bakeries
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/15/the-lefts-gails-derangement-syndrome-is-getting-out-of-hand/
Archived copy just in case: https://archive.ph/du4fT
Interesting. I was listening (in the UK) midday today to a brilliant presenter on ‘Times Radio’, Rod Liddle. Half way through the show I was puzzled as to why he suddenly went into an unprompted ad for ‘Gail’s Bakery’. Highly praising the quality of product, not least their ‘cinnamon bun’! He’s a fantastic ‘antidote’ to the tosh that ‘the Guardian’ constantly spouts here in the UK and it is especially gratifying knowing that he was, in his youth, a former member of the British ‘Socialist Workers Party’! Who has ‘grown up’.
His opinions are always worth listening to and reading.
And today I saw an article bemoaning the rising anti-Muslim attitude in the US, but not a word about the anti-semetic attitude that has been around for years but has been more blatant of late, while there has been greater sympathy for many Muslims (e.g., Palestinians).
Meanwhile (and this is on-topic since it involves a Palestinian student), a student from Gaza was given a visa to study at a British university.
The courts have just ruled that this student can now bring their family to the UK because it would be “unreasonably harsh” to deny them that (e.g. link.)
Of course, once here, the student’s family can claim asylum and will then be given housing and can simply live on the British welfare state for the rest of their lives. And they can then ask the courts to rule that their extended family also be allowed to migrate.
They will, of course, all be rabidly anti-semitic and adhere to one of the worst versions of the world’s worst religion.
Julia Hartley-Brewer is great, I enjoy watching her on Youtube. She’s a lone voice of sanity amongst most of the UK media. And The Spectator had a good piece on the Guardian’s bakery piece, which is archived here: https://archive.ph/GGhje
Put this in the category of “we don’t hate Jews only Zionists/Israelis– or anyone who has any association with Israelis, has been to Israel, sent funds to anything in Israel (for instance, Yad Vashem), ate Israeli food or enjoyed Israeli culture–in other words, Jews.”
So is any business allowed to open up near a “Palestinian” business? If yes, who are the approved competitors, and what criteria is being used?
The Guardian must be losing viewers and is now engaging in tabloid style idiocy to try to drum up some clicks.
A drop of Jewish blood is enough to rally up the Guardian crusaders. From TGIF: → This bakery feels a little Jewish, if you ask me: There’s a bakery chain in England called Gail’s, founded by an Israeli British woman, and later bought by Bain Capital. But it was founded by an Israeli British woman. So it is constantly protested, splattered with red paint, windows smashed and such. And still Gail’s has the gall to expand, even expanding to an area with a Palestinian-owned café. Here’s how The Guardian described that: “Even though Gail’s describes itself as ‘a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK,’ its very presence 20 meters away from a small independent Palestinian cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.” That’s exactly what I think when I see a pain au chocolat made by someone who once knew a Jewish person.
Goes without saying to anyone who has been paying attention….but it turns out that the ones who have been so frantically accusatory with labeling people as “Nazis” in the most McCarthyiste, witch-hunt like manner possible, have turned out to be most akin to Nazis themselves. If Hitler were alive today, he would easily exploit this loophole. “It’s not anti-Semitism, it’s anti-Zionism. It’s not bigotry, it’s social justice”. I am seeing this pattern time and time again, the Left is guilty of the very things they claim they stand against.