JNS
The “antisemitism” of John le Carré
by Melanie Phillips
December 18, 2020

John le Carré, the acclaimed grandmaster of the spy novel who died last weekend at the age of 89, was dogged for years by allegations of antisemitism. The plot of his 1983 novel The Little Drummer Girl, which involves the Mossad recruiting an English actress with radical sympathies to infiltrate a Palestinian terrorist faction, presents Israel and the Palestinian cause as morally equivalent. But the media watchdog CAMERA UK, which has criticised The Guardian for identifying le Carré’s Palestinian sympathies as the source of the antisemitism charge, notes correctly that the accusation was more broadly based. READ MORE