Tony Blair says the left is in ‘unholy alliance’ with Islamists. It’s a desperate last ploy to quell the anger over Gaza | Owen Jones

The left, claims Tony Blair, has forged an “alliance with Islamists”. He goes further: this is simply the latest mutation of antisemitism. Extraordinary accusations require extraordinary evidence. Yet unlike with his illegal war on Iraq, our former prime minister has not even troubled himself to assemble a dodgy dossier.

This latest tirade was published by the Free Press, a woke-bashing, pro-Israel publication founded by journalist Bari Weiss, now accused of pro-Trump censorship in her new role as editor-in-chief of CBS News. The substance of Blair’s charge is what he calls “opposition to Israel”. This has become an increasingly familiar allegation. As the popularity of the Green party of England and Wales surges, its opposition to Israel’s genocide is recast as sectarianism.

Let’s be clear. If there were not a single Muslim in Britain, the left would still oppose Israel’s actions just as forcefully. And what Blair will not confront is that this position reflects mainstream public opinion. A recent poll found as low as 12% of Britons support Israel’s actions in Gaza, while an overwhelming majority supports an arms embargo on Israel, sanctions and the arrest of its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes.

Blair insists that “parts of the left cast the Jewish community as supporters of the government of Israel”. Who, exactly? It is Israel’s most fervent champions who have laboured to collapse the distinction. Blair knows one of them well: Donald Trump, who declared during the 2024 presidential election that Jews who vote Democrat “hate Israel” and “hate their religion”. Given that 71% of Jewish Americans voted for Kamala Harris, that means the vast majority.

You will search in vain for a thunderous denunciation of this antisemitism. Instead, Blair has joined Trump’s Orwellian “Board of Peace” for Gaza, a grotesque, neocolonial fantasy of turning a shattered territory into a playground for developers. He praised Trump’s “bold and intelligent plan”, thanking him for his “leadership, determination and commitment”.

In the Free Press, Blair further argues that the “charge of genocide” is diminished by levelling it at Israel, claiming it is a “barb particularly aimed at Jewish memories of the Holocaust”. What of the pre-eminent Israeli scholars of genocide who have reached precisely that conclusion, such as Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, Daniel Blatman, Shmuel Lederman and Raz Segal? Are these distinguished Jewish academics, who dedicate their lives to studying genocide, diminishing the charge and targeting Jewish distress over the Holocaust?

What of the four in 10 Jewish-Americans who believe Israel’s military has committed genocide in Gaza, rising to half under the age of 35? What of Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who belatedly reached the same conclusion last year?

Blair even rebukes those who oppose the ongoing siege of Gaza unless they mention Israel’s security concerns. To be clear: intentionally starving civilians is a war crime, whatever justification is offered. Items blocked as “dual use”, meanwhile, have included bottles for baby formula, syringes for vaccinating children and vital components for water and sanitation systems.

And still the central claim hangs there, unsubstantiated: that the left has allied with Islamism. The Greens – now the main force of the English left – are led by a Jewish gay man. They oppose the assault on Gaza and they oppose Islamophobia. They also champion the most socially progressive platform of any major party, from LGBTQ+ rights to women’s equality. These hardly chime with “Islamism” as invoked by Blair.

Yes, many Muslim voters are turning to the Greens. But their motivations are neither singular nor mysterious: the cost of living crisis and the state of the NHS , for example, loom large. And if someone were genuinely an Islamist, as Blair suggests, rallying behind an ultra-progressive secular party led by a Jewish gay man would be an eccentric choice.

An adage commonly levelled by against Israel’s cheerleaders is that every accusation is a confession. Consider Blair’s own record: a longstanding alliance with the fundamentalist rulers of Saudi Arabia, among the most prolific exporters of religious extremism.

As prime minister, he supported arms sales to the Saudi regime and shut down a corruption inquiry into those deals. Since Blair left office, his institute has received millions from the Saudi government, a business relationship that endured even after it assassinated the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

We might also recall that Blair’s invasion of Iraq handed fundamentalist Islamist terrorism its greatest recruitment boon in history.

Blair’s opposition to what he describes as “radical Islam” has taken him to dark places. As prime minister, he declared it was “important that we support Russia in its action against terrorism” – a reference to Putin’s onslaught on Chechnya which, it was already evident, had led to the deaths of innocent civilians. In 2018 – years after Putin annexed Crimea – Blair argued that “we will have to ally with Russia” on fighting terrorism in the Middle East.

There is bigotry here, certainly – but not in the direction Blair suggests. Across the west, the left is increasingly smeared for receiving support from Muslim citizens. In France, the term is Islamo-gauchisme. What this really amounts to is a demonisation of Muslims participating in democratic life. Muslim voters having concerns they want addressed, and politicians listening to them, is portrayed as sinister, dangerous and a Trojan horse for extremism.

To equate opposition to Israel’s crimes with antisemitism, and to frame it as Islamist appeasement, is a last, desperate throw of the dice. Israel’s defenders know that they have lost public opinion in the west. They know that demands for governments to end their complicity in Israel’s crimes will become impossible to resist. Baseless smears are all that remain in their armoury. This poisonous strategy will fail, and deep down they know it.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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