Owen Jones dubs knife attacker who ‘hunted Jews at checkpoint’ as ‘hostage’

Guardian columnist Owen Jones used an image of a Palestinian terrorist who carried out a knife attack on Israelis in a video claiming that Palestinian prisoners are treated worse than Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.

The video, titled “Palestinians are hostages, too: the truth covered up by a racist Western media”, initially featured a thumbnail of Sara Abdullah, 26, who was arrested after stabbing Israelis at the southern Huwara checkpoint in June 2023.

Abdullah later told The New York Times: “Nobody told me to do it — I decided because I was so angry about what has happened [in the West Bank].

“I took a knife with me and chose Huwara because it’s close and there are many Israeli settlers and Jews at the checkpoint.”

She was released last November as part of a ceasefire deal in exchange for Israeli hostages held in Gaza. “I am very proud that Hamas forced Israel to release us,” she said at the time. “Who cares that a lot of their civilians were killed?”

She added: “We will continue to be knives in their necks. We cannot share the land.”

The image of Abdullah on Jones’s video, seen embracing another woman, sparked backlash online. Danny Morris from the Community Security Trust posted on X: “Sara Abdullah was certainly not a hostage."

Former spokesperson for Israel, Eylon Levy, said: “I know this is difficult for some people to accept, but when you get arrested for trying to stab someone... you're not a hostage. You're a criminal.”

Following the uproar, the thumbnail on Jones’s video was changed to an image of a Palestinian boy surrounded by Israeli forces.

In the clip, Jones claimed that Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have suffered “much worse” conditions than Israeli hostages in Gaza.

“There are far more Palestinian hostages than their unjustly imprisoned Israeli counterparts, and the conditions they've suffered are overall much worse,” he said.

“Western media outlets settle on hostage and prisoner exchange agreements, but this erases the fact that many Palestinians are themselves hostages,” he added, arguing that racism allows Israel to impose “unimaginable horror” on Palestinians.

“Racism is used in these situations... a Western ally subjugating an entire people,” he said.

Jones has spent the past 15 months since the Hamas attacks of October 7 criticising Israel and its supporters. He has also called for the Israeli hostages to be released by Hamas.

Jones's YouTube videos frequently discuss the war in Gaza (Photo: YouTube)[Missing Credit]

He previously triggered a wave of abuse towards Jewish BBC journalist Raffi Berg after accusing him of pro-Israel bias. Berg has been inundated with death threats and antisemitic hate after an article about him by Jones appeared on Drop Site News in December.

On YouTube, Jones has posted videos with titles such as “How Israel rewrites Jewish history to justify oppression”, “Israel’s Syria invasion”, and “We won’t vote for genocide”.

In response to the allegations, Jones told the JC: “The original thumbnail was used in error, and replaced with one which reflects the reality of thousands of Palestinian civilians held in administrative detention without charge or trial - who are hostages, often violently dragged from homes, and suffer systematic torture and rape - including children, and thousands of non violent Palestinian civilians convicted in sham military trials, also including children.”

He added: "Given the Jewish Chronicle’s history of printing extremist bile - including literal defamatory false claims - it tries to lecture me not from a moral high ground, but the moral abyss.”