It was reported in The Times that the high street bakery, Gail’s, has been repeatedly targeted with “anti-Zionist vandalism”. The Met Police are now treating this as a hate crime.

Before I go on, let me give three pertinent bits of information. I will give you two quotes from The Times report to highlight them:

The campaign against Gail’s, which has almost 200 UK branches, has been encouraged by online claims that the brand has close ties to the Israeli government and military.

Originally a baked goods wholesaler founded by the Israeli baker Gail Mejia, Gail’s was turned into a cafe chain by Ran Avidan, an Israeli entrepreneur, in the early 2000s. Neither Mejia nor Avidan are still associated with the business.

Bain Capital, the American investment firm, bought a majority stake in Gail’s in 2021 in a deal that valued the business at about £200 million. They have supercharged the chain’s growth, with around 40 new openings per year.

And further:

In a 2024 interview with The Times, [Tom] Molnar [co-founder and chief executive of Bain] called the allegations that Gail’s supports Israeli policy “completely ridiculous”.

“Gail’s proudly has Jewish roots and there’s plenty of stuff out there celebrating our heritage and history, but it’s not true it’s Israel-owned,” he said.

“There’s some just crazy stuff on the web thinking we are funding Israel, which is just completely ridiculous. We’re a wholly UK-based business, paying UK taxes, it’s just ludicrous and I think it needs to be called out.”

So, the relevant points of context are these: (1) Gail’s was started by an Israeli baker and became a chain through an Israeli entrepreneur; (2) Gail’s is no longer Israeli-owned; (3) Gail’s is a UK-based business that neither funds Israel nor proactively supports the Israeli government.

The reason I highlight these particular things is that this vandalism isn’t only racist, even if one thought racism was ever acceptable, it is also thick. It is not just racist, but the most stupid form of racism. Let me explain.

Let’s start with the straightforward fact of the matter: this is racist. It is racist on two possible counts. First, let’s just say that its original Israeli baker still owned the bakery. In what world is it anything other than racist to target Israeli people’s businesses simply because they are Israeli? Just imagine we took issue with the government of Nigeria, how could it be anything other than racist to then go round vandalising Nigerian-run businesses purely on the basis that the owner is Nigerian? It has nothing to do with what they support, what they believe, what they endorse, their ethics of anything else. Targeting people and businesses based purely on the nationality of the owner is racist, irrespective of what you perceive about the government in their country of origin.

Second, (and we’ll return to this in the explanation of why this is thick), Gail’s is no longer owned or run by Israelis. It is an American-owned, UK-based business. Now, let’s just imagine it is still Jewish owned and run. Not Israeli anymore, but owned by British Jews. In what world is not racist to hold British Jews to account for the actions of an Israeli government to which they don’t belong and most probably have no specific ties? Again, imagine we targeted business run by black Brits on the basis that they are of Nigerian heritage – even though they’ve never been and have no links there anymore – but we have a beef with something the Nigerian government are doing. It is hard to imagine we (rightly) wouldn’t consider that overtly racist.

So, on both counts, the intent here is clearly racist. Just imagine if British-owned businesses were repeatedly vandalised because people took issue with the actions of the Starmer government. How would it be anything other than racist to target Brits because of that? How deeply unfair would that be, particularly (though this shouldn’t ultimately matter) if they don’t even support the government? They could be Tory-voters all day long, but it wouldn’t matter because they’re British and, therefore, complicit in whatever it is you have taken exception to. If we can see this is fundamentally racist, why is it any different when we replace the word ‘Brit’ with ‘Israeli’?

But let’s also be clear why this is exceptionally thick. Even if you think this kind of racism is acceptable (and it isn’t!) and you think somehow Israelis (or, let’s be honest, more likely, Jews) have it coming, Gail’s isn’t owned or run by Israelis. It is a UK-based, American-run high street chain. Which makes targeting them even for entirely antisemitic reasons pretty thick.

But maybe you say, it’s not that Gail’s is Israeli (or Jewish) owned that’s the problem, it’s that they fund the Israeli government. We’re holding them to account for their actions not their ethnicity or nationality. Except, of course, they don’t fund Israel. Quite why a national government would need funds from a bakery, how they could fund the nation privately and what the mechanism would be for doing so is beyond me. It bears saying, if that is where the Israeli government are at economically, the Palestinian solidarity guys can rest easy the nation is on the verge of collapse! But even at the level of being a matter of accountability for what Gail’s allegedly fund, it isn’t true and seems likely to do more PR damage to the supposedly righteous cause in whose name they have vandalised a bakery than it will to accomplish anything to effect whatever change they deem necessary in Israel.

In fact, so stupid are these racists, they have managed to vandalise a UK-based business that pays UK tax and creates UK jobs. They have done absolutely nothing for the cause of Palestinian solidarity and effected nothing even in the racist pursuit of Jews and Israelis. They have done no more than make a tiny dent in a local economy, and an even tinier one in the UK economy, intimidated a load of working people and proven themselves racist in the process. Which, when all is said and done, seems especially thick to me.