The Telegraph’s desperate, antisemitic attack on Zack Polanski stinks

Last Updated on 9 June 2026 by Ed Sykes



Polanski Telegraph

Notorious pro–Israel bigot Stephen Pollard has written a desperate, antisemitic article trying to smear Zack Polanski. He did this in response to the Green leader backing calls to hold potential war criminals to account. And he did so in the Telegraph, which has joined other right-wing rags in publishing antisemitic Polanski caricatures.

Lobby backlash as Polanski backs accountability calls for potential war criminals

Zack Polanski, along with many other Jewish people in the UK, has been vocal in his criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And hardline Zionists (whether Jewish or non-Jewish) don’t like this. So they’ve thrown their toys out of the pram following Polanski’s backing of an open letter calling on the government to start:

monitoring the entry of British-Israeli dual national citizens into the UK and investigating potential links to war crimes, in cases where they have served in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

Israel fanboys like Pollard have responded by antisemitically suggesting this means ‘monitoring all Jews’. As Jewish Voice for Peace has said, such treatment of “Jewish people as a monolithic group” is a ‘contemporary expression of antisemitism’. Even the controversial IHRA definition argues that one example of antisemitism is:

Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

Pollard’s desperate, antisemitic argument in the Telegraph

We’ll talk more about Pollard in a minute. But first, let’s look at his argument in the racist Telegraph, now under the ownership of the firmly pro-Israel Axel Springer. Pollard suggested that:

  • “Zack Polanski wants a Jew register”, because tracking people who have served in Israel’s occupation army during the genocide (and “just happen to be Jews”) means making a list “of bad Jews”.
  • “Polanski has said not a word” about “accusations of war crimes” elsewhere in time and space. The only example he mentioned was the horrific but distant “1971 Bangladesh war of independence”. He hinted that this was relevant because “many new Green voters are drawn from those communities” (Green deputy leader Mothin Ali, for example, is a British Bangladeshi). Then, in another casual conflation of Israel and Jewish people, he added “But no Israelis were involved (let’s be honest: no Jews).” That’s why Polanski was being silent about this, he argued, rather than because it happened 55 years ago.
  • Despite the overwhelming international consensus that Israel has been committing genocide, the word genocide was somehow “hotly contested” (it is by Israel and its allies, of course, but then genocidal criminals don’t tend to embrace that kind of label in public). Pollard contrasted this with the “well-founded allegation” (for which there is no overwhelming international consensus) that China’s controversial treatment of its Uyghur community may amount to genocide. (Roughly 200 people died during the July 2009 riots.)
  • Polanski showing interest in the suffering of the Palestinian people was just a “strategy” to get votes from people who “only” care about the genocide in Gaza.

Away from the Telegraph, and in reality…

Some relevant facts to counter Pollard’s assertions include that:

Pollard’s dangerous antisemitic rhetoric has always been all about defending Israel and smearing the left

Pollard has basically admitted previously that he thinks it’s ok to conflate Israel and Judaism. And he would, because he edited a right-wing pro-Israel rag for years that played a key role in vicious media efforts to keep Israel critic Jeremy Corbyn out of power.

The whole shtick of the Jewish Chronicle in the Corbyn years was basically to weaponise cynical antisemitism allegations against the left. And Pollard’s job was essentially to find antisemitism where it didn’t exist. The Peter Mandelson quote about working “every single day” to defeat Corbyn literally came from a chat with Pollard.

Nowadays, meanwhile, when Pollard isn’t hating on Polanski or spreading antisemitism in the Telegraph, he’s out defending actual racist Nigel Farage. That shows better than anything else that this is not about religion at all. It’s all about politics. And in particular, it’s about defending genocide and defending the war criminals behind it.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes





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