Jewish Chronicle ‘in crisis’ as made-up Israel articles are deleted

Rag disowns Elon Perry after string of ‘fabricated’ claims and has ‘due diligence under scrutiny’ – but persisted for years with libel-machine Harpin and others

The right-wing Jewish Chronicle is ‘in crisis’ after being forced to delete a string of articles by one of its journalists, Elon Perry – because they were made up. The right-wing Jewish Chronicle is ‘in crisis’ after being forced to delete a string of articles by one of its journalists, Elon Perry – because they were made up. Three of the paper’s other writers – Jonathan Freedland, David Aaronovitch and Hadley Freeman have resigned today. The rag issued a two-paragraph statement with minimal detail, but including the interesting claim that it holds to the ‘highest journalistic standards’:

The Jewish Chronicle has concluded a thorough investigation into freelance journalist Elon Perry, which commenced after allegations were made about aspects of his record. While we understand he did serve in the Israel Defense Forces, we were not satisfied with some of his claims.

We have therefore removed his stories from our website and ended any association with Mr Perry.

The Jewish Chronicle maintains the highest journalistic standards in a highly contested information landscape and we deeply regret the chain of events that led to this point. We apologise to our loyal readers and have reviewed our internal processes so that this will not be repeated.

The deleted articles involved a series of sensationalised claims about Israeli military activities in Gaza and supposed ‘intel’ about Hamas figures including a claim that new leader Yahya Sinwar was planning to flee to Iran, all potentially part of Israel’s notorious and deeply-discredited ‘hasbara’ propaganda campaign designed to further its interests and those of its far-right government.

But Elon Perry’s nonsense is hardly the Chronicle’s first experience of wholesale fabrication. For years, when Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the party, it churned out a string of lies and played a prominent role in the ‘Labour antisemitism’ smears – usually but not always penned by Starmer fan and ‘dauphin of phone-hacking‘ Lee Harpin – that cost it huge sums of money in damages and legal costs to wronged left-wingers and earned it a rebuke from IPSO for its arrogance, shoddiness and failure to cooperate during an investigation into its serial smears.

Despite having to pay out compensation repeatedly, the right-wing rag kept Harpin on its books and churning out bile for ages before he eventually left and moved to Jewish News.

Jake Wallis-Simons, the rag’s current editor, is on record dismissing Israel’s genocide in Gaza as ‘disinformation’ planted by Hamas as:

a supply of videos of civilian casualties and the credulous journalists, sneering diplomats, jihadi sympathisers and useful idiots will do the rest.

The latest crisis is no worse than it deserves, but as usual the reporting of it in the ‘mainstream’ media fails to include any of this context and tries to create the impression that this is a disaster at an otherwise spotless ‘newspaper’.

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