Gross, Tom

Tom Gross is a British-born journalist, international affairs commentator, and human rights campaigner specializing in the Middle East. Gross was formerly a foreign correspondent for the London Sunday Telegraph and New York Daily News. He now works as an opinion journalist and has written for both Arab and Israeli newspapers, as well as European and American ones, both liberal and conservative. He also appears as a commentator on the BBC in English, BBC Arabic, and various Middle Eastern and other networks. His politics are mixed. The German newspaper Die Welt described Gross as "A liberal in the fight against left-wing liberal hypocrisy". In a profile of Gross in the Saudi-owned pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat in 2019, it was noted that he started as a non-political entertainment and feature journalist before becoming a political commentator. Long involved in discreet behind-the-scenes bridge-building meetings between officials and activists from Israel and nations throughout the Arab world, Gross was the first journalist sympathetic to Israel to be favorably profiled in a Saudi newspaper, at a time when Saudi outreach to Israel was in its infancy. Gross has also been interviewed by Israeli newspapers including Haaretz and by Iranian opposition media. His call for good relations between Israelis, Jews and (anti-regime) Iranians was viewed on Instagram in Iran more than 2.4 million times the day after the Iranian regime fired 350 missiles and drones at Israel in April 2024. In 2014, former Pentagon official Michael Rubin wrote that "Tom Gross is probably Europe’s leading observer of the Middle East". Gross was similarly described in Toronto's National Post in April 2019.