Tom Gross is a British-born journalist, international affairs commentator,
He now works as an opinion journalist and has written for both Arab
His politics are mixed. The German newspaper Die Welt described Gross as "A liberal in the fight against left-wing liberal hypocrisy".
Long involved in discreet behind-the-scenes bridge-building meetings between officials and activists from Israel and nations throughout the Arab world,
Gross has also been interviewed by Israeli newspapers including Haaretz
In 2014, former Pentagon official Michael Rubin wrote that "Tom Gross is probably Europe’s leading observer of the Middle East".
Education and family
Gross was educated at
Wadham College at Oxford University,
where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). His father,
John Gross, was a distinguished author and critic,
and his mother,
Miriam Gross, and sister,
Susanna Gross, are literary editors. His step-father Sir
Geoffrey Owen was editor of the
Financial Times. His brother-in-law is the novelist and author John Preston. His uncle was Tony Gross, a pioneering fashion optician.
He has a daughter, Sivan.
Gross's maternal grandfather, Kurt May, was a German-Jewish lawyer who fled Nazi persecution to Jerusalem, where Gross's mother was born.[Ferencz, Benjamin B. Less than Slaves. 2002, page 40-1] Gross's maternal grandmother, Vera Feinberg, also escaped Nazi Germany for pre-state Israel, but her parents were deported to Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp and later to Treblinka where they were gassed to death upon arrival.
Gross has also cited the strong influence during his childhood of his godmother,[The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: Volume 1: An Age Like This, 1920-1940 Edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (reissued June 2019)] Sonia Orwell, widow of the writer George Orwell and the model[Spurling, Hilary. The Girl from the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell. p131. London: Hamish Hamilton. |2002|]
Gross discussed his upbringing growing up surrounded by cultural and literary luminaries in London and New York, as well as his later career and work with Roma and human rights, in an interview in 2020.
Journalistic career
Gross was formerly the Jerusalem correspondent for the London
Sunday Telegraph and for the
New York Daily News. He has been a contributor to
The Wall Street Journal,
,
and
Huffington Post in the United States, to
The National Post in Canada, to
The Australian in Australia, for the Saudi paper
Asharq Al-Awsat and to
The Times of India.
In Britain, he has written for The Guardian,
In a series titled “Conversations with friends about their lives,” Gross has interviewed pianist Evgeny Kissin,
Human rights activism
He has criticized the UN for not doing more to promote freedom in countries such as North Korea
[ “The true face of human rights at the UN,” March 16, 2012, The National Post] and Mauritania.
[ “The UN Promotes a Slave-Owning Nation,” Feb. 25, 2013, The Huffington Post] He has also conducted various on stage interviews, including with a French hostage kidnapped by Islamic State
in Syria, a Nigerian schoolgirl kidnapped by
Boko Haram in Nigeria, and with the wife of the imprisoned Saudi liberal blogger and political prisoner
Raif Badawi.
Gross has advocated for the rights of the Roma,["Obituary of Milena Hubschmannova, Czech champion of the Roma", The Guardian, 19 Sep 2005 [3]] Domari, Kurdish,[ “Is New Zealand really such a tolerant country?,” March 19, 2019, The Spectator]
Media criticism
Much of his work has concerned the way the international media covers the Middle East. He has been cited on the subject in papers such as
The New York Times and interviewed in
Haaretz and on television
about this. He has been critical of the
BBC, arguing that their Middle East coverage is often slanted against
Israel,
["The BBC discovers 'terrorism,’ briefly: Suicide bombing seems different when closer to home", The Jerusalem Post, 12 July 2005 [5]] and has subjected the coverage of Reuters,
[ “The Case of Reuters,” The National Review] The Guardian and CNN
and what he termed the "cult of
Rachel Corrie”
to scrutiny.
He has also been critical of The New York Times, both for their general foreign coverage,["All The News That’s Fit To Print?” The National Review, 14 March 2003 [7]] and historically for what he terms their "lamentable record of not covering the Holocaust."["Reporting Auschwitz, Then & Now: The lamentable record of The New York Times", The Jerusalem Post, 2 February 2005 [8]]
Israel-Palestine
Gross has consistently supported the creation of an independent Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel.
[“ Could Donald Trump unexpectedly triumph in his bid for peace in the Middle East?,” The Spectator, 4 April 2019 [9]] Gross, however, has stated that "to be viable and successful it is not only a question of what Israel will give the Palestinians, but of the Palestinians themselves engaging in good governance." He warned that "there is no point in creating a new Palestinian state if it will primarily be used as a launching ground for armed attacks on Israel, which would be likely to in turn only lead to a much bloodier war between Israelis and Palestinians than anything we have witnessed in the past."
["A nice new shopping mall opened today in Gaza: Will the media report on it?” [10]]
Gross has also written about the Arab Jews, specifically about the forced removal of Jews from Arab countries.
Prague
Gross has also lived and worked in
Prague, where he served as correspondent (covering the
Czech Republic,
Slovakia, and
Albania) for the (London)
Daily Telegraph and
Sunday Telegraph. He helped launch the Czech edition of
Elle magazine, the first international glossy magazine in post-communist central and eastern Europe.
In addition, he wrote a regular op-ed column for
The Prague Post and op-eds for the Czech daily
Lidové Noviny. He has acted as a consultant to the Prague Jewish museum.
In
The Guardian Gross has been critical of the fact that Prague still has no central state-funded Holocaust memorial, unlike most other European capital cities from which Jews were deported.
Work on Roma
Tom Gross has also campaigned on behalf of the
Romani people. "This is one of the most painful and disturbing problems in Europe today, though it is often neglected or misreported by the mainstream media", he wrote.
["A Forgotten People, a Terrible Ordeal, ” The Wall Street Journal, 19 January 2000 [11]]["Obituary of Milena Hubschmannova, Czech champion of the Roma", The Guardian, 19 Sep 2005 [12]]
For two years, based in Prague, he served as a special advisor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on the plight of Czech Roma, mainly relating to citizenship issues arising as a result of the breakup of Czechoslovakia. He criticized the internationally renowned liberal icon and playwright Václav Havel, in columns in The Spectator and The Prague Post,
Television and radio
Tom Gross has worked on a number of television programs and documentary films, including
BBC TV specials on Czech Roma, and on
Sudeten Germans. On the Middle East, he has appeared as a commentator on
BBC World news,
,
Fox News, and
NPR. He has been interviewed on international politics on Sky News Arabia,
i24 News,
Russia Today,
TRT World Turkey,
Israel Channel 13
and BBC Arabic.
Books
Gross is co-author of
Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine (Warner Books, New York, 1998) and of
The Time Out Guide to Prague (Penguin Books, London, 1995).
Out of Tune was named the most important biography of a troubled genius by
The Huffington Post in April 2011.
Public service
Gross is a voluntary director of the
Raif Badawi Foundation
named after the imprisoned Saudi liberal dissident, and a member of the International Advisory Board of
NGO Monitor,
of Mideast Dig
and of Keren Malki, a charity helping special needs children in Israel.
He is a founding signatory to The Henry Jackson Society's Statement of Principles in London.
[ Henry Jackson Society signatories]
External links
