ABOUT ME

Jake Wallis Simons is an award-winning British journalist and novelist. In December 2021, he was appointed Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, where he has become known for publishing a number of world exclusives about the Mossad, including the inside story of the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and a major three-part sabotage operation in Iran.
In addition, he is a writer for the Spectator, a commentator for Sky News and a broadcaster for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service.
Previously he was Associate Global Editor for the Daily Mail Online, and a features writer for the Sunday Telegraph. He has also worked for the Times, the Guardian, CNN, the BBC and other outlets.
Although his experience spans everything from features to columns, Jake has tended to focus on foreign news. He has reported from all over Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, covering breaking news, investigations and everything in between, often in hostile environments. His exclusive reporting on stories like the Bataclan attacks in Paris, the fall of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka made headlines in multiple publications all over the world.
Jake has also published a number of political scoops. In 2015, he was the first journalist to expose Jeremy Corbyn’s links to extremists and conspiracy theorists. Among other key disclosures, in August 2018 he revealed Mr Corbyn’s comments that British Zionists ‘don’t understand English irony’, which dominated international headlines.
Jake has presented numerous radio documentaries for the BBC on a variety of subjects, including private detectives and Interpol, as well as television for BBC Breakfast. In addition, he has appeared regularly on BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent.
As a Features Writer at the Sunday Telegraph, Jake wrote Meet the Settlers, a longform multimedia story that won and was shortlisted for a range of awards, including the British Press Award. His work has appeared in international outlets including CNN, POLITICO, Newsweek, Haaretz and La Repubblica.
Jake has written four novels, including the bestselling The English German Girl, which tells the story of the Kindertransport. It won the Fiction Uncovered prize and received widespread critical acclaim.
Jake holds a First in English from St Peter’s College, Oxford and a PhD in Creative Writing from UEA, and has lectured at Oxford and elsewhere. He is a judge for the Reuters News Fixer Award, and a Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University.

Israelophobia

Israelophobia:

The newest version of the oldest hatred and what to do about it

This is an important and necessary book by a superb and subtle writer. There’s no one more qualified to write it than Jake Wallis Simons, both as ground-breaking Middle East security correspondent and Editor of the Jewish Chronicle. It analyses the often prejudiced coverage and intense scrutiny of Israel that so often veers into obsession and outright demonisation; and traces its origins from Medieval European and Stalinist antisemitism to the present day. It discusses why this nation is judged so differently from others in a supposedly rational and progressive era.
A companion in some ways to David Baddiel’s Jews Don’t Count, it is a book that fascinatingly analyses the dark sides of our world today – political, national, cultural and digital – and exposes uncomfortable truths’ SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE'”I can’t be antisemitic: I have nothing against Jews individually, I only hate them by the country.” Such is the delusion that Jake Wallis Simons sets out to discredit in this excellent and fearless book, dismantling its mendacities with a scholarly and logical thoroughness that makes you wonder if there will ever be an Israelophobe left standing again.
Buy copies to distribute to your kindergarten groups and universities, anyway, just in case. And then buy another copy for yourself. It does the heart good to see one of the greatest expressions of collective animus exposed for the sanctimonious posturing it is. Israelophobia is a book we all need’ HOWARD JACOBSON’Timely and important’ TELEGRAPHIn the Middle Ages, Jews were hated for their religion. In the twentieth century, they were hated because of their race. Today, Jews are hated for something else entirely, their nation-state of Israel. Antisemitism has morphed into something both ancient and modern:
Israelophobia. But how did this transformation occur? And why?Award-winning journalist Jake Wallis Simons answers these questions, clarifying the line between criticism and hatred, exploring game-changing facts and exposing dangerous discourse.Urgent, incisive and deeply necessary, Israelophobia reveals why the Middle East’s only democracy, which uniquely respects the rights of women and sexual and religious minorities, attracts such disproportionate levels of slander. Rather than defending Israel against all criticism, it argues for reasonable disagreement based on reality instead of bigotry.Through charting the history of Israelophobia – starting in Nazi Germany, travelling via the Kremlin to Tehran and along fibre optic cables to billions of screens – and using it to understand contemporary prejudice, this timely book will restore much-needed sanity to the debate, creating the space for mutual understanding, tolerance and peace.

PORTFOLIO

Here is a selection of my favourite exclusives.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: TRUTH OF IRAN NUCLEAR SCIENTIST DEATH
Top
INSIDE STORY: HOW THE US MESSED UP IRAN NEGOTIATIONS
Top
EXCLUSIVE: MOSSAD RECRUITED IRAN SCIENTISTS
Top
EXCLUSIVE: CORBYN SAYS ‘ZIONISTS’ DON’T GET ENGLISH IRONY
Top
CORBYN’S LINKS WITH HOLOCAUST DENIER REVEALED
Corbyn
Sri Lanka: First pictures of suicide bomber brothers
Nairobi: The essay factories that sell papers to UK students
WEST BANK: MEET THE SETTLERS
Features
HONDURAS: ‘LOST TRIBE’ OF BRITONS ON ISOLATED ISLAND DISCOVERED
ISRAEL-SYRIA BORDER: SAVING JIHADIS
Features
REVEALED: How China drove a wedge between US and Israel
Top
FIRST CCTV OF NOVICHOK MURDER SUSPECTS
Reportage
ZIMBABWE: MUGABE’S SECRET MANSION
Reportage
CATALONIA: FASCIST SALUTES IN BARCELONA
Analysis
HUNGARY: HERO WHO SAVED SOROS REVEALED
Reportage
ARGENTINA: FATE OF EICHMANN’S NAZI SONS REVEALED
Top
CORBYN ‘MISLED MPs’ OVER MEETING WITH HOLOCAUST DENIER
Corbyn
TUNISIA ‘PEACE CONFERENCE’ WAS HAMAS HATE-FEST
Corbyn
CORBYN SAYS ISRAEL DICTATES SPEECHES MADE BY MPs
Corbyn
CORBYN MEETS TERRORISTS IN PARLIAMENT
Corbyn
JEWISH WOMAN NEEDS POLICE PROTECTION AT CORBYN EVENT
Corbyn
ST MAARTEN: FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT
Radio
ISRAEL: FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT
Radio
PARIS: FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT
Radio
30-MINUTE PROGRAMME: LIFE AS A DETECTIVE
Radio
THREE-PART SERIES: ‘WAITHOOD’
Radio
30-MINUTE PROGRAMME: INSIDE INTERPOL
Radio
VENEZUELA EXPOSES THE DEPRAVITY OF FAR LEFT
Analysis
THE WORLD HAS TURNED ON THE LADY OF BURMA
Analysis
DRUG LEGALISATION: A QUESTION OF TIME
Analysis
LABOUR’S HAMAS CONNECTION
HOW INTERPOL GOT INTO BED WITH FIFA
Analysis
HOW WASHINGTON OWNS THE UK’S NUKES
Analysis
SIERRA LEONE: DOWNTON ABBEY CHARITY FAIL
Features
CARIBBEAN: THE HORROR OF HURRICANES
Reportage
CARIBBEAN: TRUMP’S MANSION DESTROYED
Features
CARACAS: INTERVIEW WITH A KIDNAP GANG
LYON: WHO POLICES INTERPOL?
Features
MACEDONIA: CROSSING WITH ILLEGAL MIGRANTS
Reportage
VENEZUELA: COLLAPSE OF A SOCIALIST UTOPIA AS FOOD RUNS OUT
NIGERIA: BOKO HARAM THREATENS EUROPE
Features
FINLAND: MEET THE MIGRANT HUNTERS
Reportage
PARIS: THE SILENCE AFTER THE BLOODSHED


2

Awards



6

BBC docs presented



4

Novels


1

PhD


 

TV SHOWREEL

Includes clips from BBC Breakfast, Sky News, Fox News and Daily Mail Online.

MODUS OPERANDI

WRITING

First and foremost, I’m a writer. Over the years, I’ve written reportage, features, columns, blogs and reviews for all the UK’s broadsheets.

PRESENTING

I’ve presented six docs for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service, and appeared regularly on From Our Own Correspondent. I’ve presented TV for the BBC too.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Taking my own pictures makes me a more agile journalist. I also use a GoPro camera to capture dramatic footage that complements my stories.

ONLINE

I created an award-winning digital feature at the Telegraph, and I’m a senior editor at Daily Mail Online – the biggest newspaper website in the world.

NOVELS

‘THE ENGLISH GERMAN GIRL kept me up at night… Amazing’ –Guardian

‘THE ENGLISH GERMAN GIRL is fascinating and moving’ –Monica Ali

‘JAM is a skilful road rage novel that looks at Britain through a motorway microcosm… Wallis Simons is so good at the drama of car interiors’ –Telegraph

‘Jake Wallis Simons will surely prove a name to remember’ –Beryl Bainbridge



JAM
A contemporary novel set entirely in a traffic jam on the M25, 2014



THE ENGLISH GERMAN GIRL
Bestselling WWII novel, 2011



THE PURE
A thriller about Mossad and the Iranian nuclear programme, 2012


Contact

For enquiries concerning my novels, please contact my agent, Andrew Gordon at David Higham Associates. For anything else, please use the contact form below.

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All rights reserved. Background picture by Gustavo Valiente, Barcelona 2017. JWS portrait by Oren Ziv, Ramallah 2017.