Kemi Badenoch brands Guardian article 'disgusting' after it claimed Gail's bakery opening near Palestinian cafe is 'heavy-handed aggression'

The opinion piece by Jonathan Liew described how the Gail’s in Archway, North London, being just "20 metres away from a small independent Palestinian café feels quietly symbolic".

In recent weeks, the branch has suffered repeated attacks, with windows smashed and paint splattered across its walls.

In his piece, Mr Liew described such vandalism as among the "small acts of petty symbolism" stemming from Palestinian frustration.

Police have stepped up patrols in the area and are treating the incidents as criminal damage, though no arrests have yet been made.

"This is just a cover; it's antisemitism. It is disgusting. We need to stamp out this culture," Mrs Badenoch slammed.

“I think it was an utterly ridiculous column… appalling, actually.”

The Tory leader demanded tougher measures against those responsible for vandalism at the chain's outlets.

"We need more enforcement, more punishment for people who carry out these violent acts... they are trying to intimidate people."

“It is extraordinary that Gail’s bakeries are being attacked now, supposedly because they are Israeli-owned,” she told Jewish News.

Others have come out to condemn the column, with the Campaign Against Antisemitism saying it “manages to portray something as trivial as the opening of a Gail’s in north London as a microcosm of the newspaper’s warped view of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict”.

“It’s little more than repackaged Soviet antisemitism, where rapacious, capitalist, colonialist Jews are quietly victimising innocent, charitable Arabs who, the article ludicrously implies, are somehow indigenous to Archway.

“This is The Guardian's opinion page in its comfort zone: quietly and subtly encouraging anti-Israeli sentiment among its readers,” the group slammed.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews also spoke out against the vandalism targeting the bakery chain, warning that "targeting a business on the basis of alleged or perceived Israeli and or Jewish connections reflects a very worrying trend".

Alex Gandler, the Israeli embassy's spokesman in the UK, denounced the Guardian’s article as "an astonishing exercise in bigotry disguised as moral commentary."

"Beneath its surface lies a familiar and ugly trope: the repackaging of antisemitic prejudice in fashionable political language," Mr Gandler told the Daily Mail.

Gail's was established in the 1990s by Israeli baker Gail Mejia, who later expanded it with Israeli entrepreneur Ran Avidan in 2005.

Neither retains any connection to the company, which was acquired by Boston-based Bain Capital in 2021.

It led to a campaign of vandalism against Gail’s branches, like those seen in Archway, by activists who claim the parent company has links to Israel’s arms industry.

Gail’s has insisted that it has “no links with any country or government outside the UK”, with its chief executive branding the campaign against it “completely unacceptable”.

The Guardian article also included an interview with the Palestinian owners of Café Metro, Faten and Mahmoud, who insisted they had no involvement in vandalism at Gail’s prior to its launch.

“We compete with them (Gail’s) legally,” they said.

The couple added that they had previously been targeted in acts of violence by pro-Israeli activists.

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