Jennifer Louise Tonge, Baroness Tonge (née Smith; born 19 February 1941) is a British politician. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond Park from 1997 to 2005. In June 2005 she was made a life peer as Baroness Tonge, of Kew in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, which entitled her to a seat in the House of Lords.
Critical of Israel and vocal in support of the Palestinian cause, controversial acts and comments led to accusations of antisemitism and to her eventual suspension from the Liberal Democrats group in the Lords in 2012, then her suspension and resignation from the party itself in October 2016. She sat as an independent in the Lords from 2012 until her retirement in 2021.
Born in Walsall, Staffordshire, her parents were both schoolteachers. She attended Dudley Girls High School from 1951 to 1959. She trained to be a doctor at University College Hospital, gaining an MB and BS in 1964.
She is also MFFP (Membership of the Faculty of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care of the RCOG). She holds an honorary FFFP. From 1968–78, she worked in General Practice and Family Planning. From 1980 to 1985, she worked as Senior Medical Officer in Women's Services in Ealing. She was a manager of Community Health Services in Ealing from 1992 to 1996.
Tonge was a councillor in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames from 1981 to 1990, and served as chair of the Social Services Committee. She stood as the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Richmond and Barnes constituency at the 1992 general election. It was considered to be the party's most winnable seat, but Tonge was not elected.
At the 1997 general election she was elected to Parliament, representing Richmond Park. While in the House of Commons, she was Liberal Democrat spokesperson on International Development from 1997 to 2003, and then the party spokesperson for children from 2003 to 2004.
In 2002, during the Emmanuel College creationism controversy, she asked Prime Minister Tony Blair whether he was "happy to allow the teaching of creationism alongside Darwin's theory of evolution in state schools". Blair replied that he supported a "diverse school system", and praised the teachers at Emmanuel College for their commitments to "deliver[ing] better results for our children". Tonge was concerned about Blair's response, because it implied the government was "prepared to accept money from anybody, regardless of the doctrine or religious beliefs of the donor".
In 2003 Tonge and the Labour Party MP Oona King visited the Gaza Strip. At a subsequent press conference after their return, Tonge compared living conditions for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to conditions Jews had suffered in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. Tonge said "You are almost getting a situation like the Warsaw ghetto. People can't get in or out. They can't work, they can't sell anything. There is this gradual squeeze", adding, "It was an apartheid system." Tonge recommended economic sanctions be applied against Israel and for European Union or United Nations troops be sent to Gaza. Tonge and King claimed that an Israeli soldier wielding a grenade had confronted them when they tried to leave the Gaza Strip.
Yad Vashem museum chair Avner Shalev criticised Tonge and King for making the comparison with conditions under Nazi rule.
In January 2004 Tonge was dismissed as the Liberal Democrat children's spokeswoman by the party leader, Charles Kennedy. At a pro-Palestinian parliamentary meeting, Tonge had said of Palestinian suicide bombers: "If I had to live in that situation – and I say that advisedly – I might just consider becoming one myself". She repeated her comments on Sky News, but added, "I do not condone suicide bombers, nobody can condone them". Tonge refused to apologise, commenting "I was just trying to say how, having seen the violence and the humiliation and the provocation that the Palestinian people live under every day and have done since their land was occupied by Israel, I could understand".
Kennedy said her comments were "completely unacceptable" and "not compatible with Liberal Democrat party policies and principles", adding "there can be no justification, under any circumstances for taking innocent lives through terrorism". Tonge said that suicide bombers' actions are "appalling and loathsome" but that "we have to try and understand where they are coming from and understand the situation in which they live."
Tonge retired from the House of Commons at the 2005 general election, and was made a life peer and member of the House of Lords later in the year.
Allegations about the Israel lobby
Tonge remarked at a Liberal Democrat Conference fringe meeting in September 2006: "The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the Western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party". In response the party leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, wrote to Tonge, commenting that her unacceptable assertion had "clear anti-Semitic connotations". An all-party group of peers led by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, said, in a letter to The Times, that "the language deployed by Baroness Tonge, as a member of the House of Lords, was irresponsible and inappropriate". At a later meeting at Edinburgh University the following November, Tonge said that professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's article "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy", which appeared in the 23 March 2006 issue of the London Review of Books, supported her assertion that the "Israel lobby had a disproportionate voice in Anglo-American foreign policy". She said her comments "were about the Israeli lobby in politics. They were a big distance from being about Jewishness or anti-Semitism".
The Gaza strip and other issues
In November 2008 Tonge visited the Gaza Strip again, this time with Lord Ahmed, Clare Short and members of the European Parliament.
From 8 January 2009 to 12 February 2010 Tonge was the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Health. On 12 January 2009 she asked in the House of Lords about investigations into alleged Israeli war crimes in the December 2009–January 2010 Gaza War, saying:Is the Minister aware that Mrs Pillay, the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has spoken of war crimes being committed in Gaza? Will the Government, therefore, show leadership and call for the immediate—and I mean immediate—establishment by the United Nations Security Council of an independent fact-finding commission to Palestine to investigate all breaches of international law?
In March 2009 Tonge joined a six-person delegation of British politicians which met with the Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria. Tonge told an interviewer that their goal was to force the British government to talk to Hamas and press the United States to do likewise. She stated: "You don't make peace by talking to your friends. You make peace by talking to your enemies", and said she knew that her meeting with Meshaal might be considered illegal and lead to her arrest. "That is one of the risks that you take", she said.