A chronicle of failure: Shifts, secrets, and fake news of the world's oldest Jewish newspaper

“There’s never just one thing, there’s always a sort of backstory. There’ll be the latest thing, but that’s only the latest thing.”

This is how former Jewish Chronicle columnist Jonathan Freedland opened his sole interview regarding his recent resignation from the London-based weekly newspaper. Following his announcement, columnists Hadley Freeman and David Aaronovitch jumped ship, while author-comedian David Baddiel made it clear he would no longer contribute. 

Freedland declined to speak to the Magazine, but directed us to his podcast, Unholy, where he dedicated a segment to the revelation.

Freedland makes it clear in the podcast that there are layers to this story, and that the “latest thing” – a series of falsified articles written by a man named Elon Perry – was part of a much larger jigsaw puzzle involving political affiliations, secret ownership, editorial stances, and a lack of accountability.

But this latest thing most certainly acted as a catalyst, raising questions as to whether the publication of the bogus scoops was a matter of editorial oversight, or whether it was a result of a shifting ideological agenda. All sources – we reached out to multiple, to get the fullest picture – who spoke to the Magazine had slightly different responses to this query.

One source, B., who did not want to be identified, said “as far as I see it, there are four different issues that overlap: Elon Perry, the matter of funding, the editor Jake Wallis Simons, and the political shift from Left to Right.”

So what’s going on with the world’s oldest continuously published – and esteemed – Jewish newspaper?

The Elon Perry debacle

All sources, as well as Freedland in his podcast, agreed that Elon Perry’s dubious credentials should have raised alarm bells. Perry – a pseudonym; real name: Eli Yifrach – claimed to be an IDF veteran, said he was present at the famed 1976 Entebbe raid, and stated he had been a longtime academic at Tel Aviv University.

These claims “did not survive further examination,” says Freedland, and B. to the Magazine. As Freedland states, all you need is to “spend five minutes with Google to check out this guy and to see that it did not all add up.” A video interview Perry did with CNN in June has been removed pending editorial review.

The JC’s Editor Jake Wallis Simons called it “every newspaper editor’s worst nightmare: to be deceived by a journalist” in his X/Twitter tweet addressing the situation – and he subsequently removed the pieces and cut ties with Perry.

The Magazine reached out to Wallis Simons on more than one occasion to get his take on the general affair and the allegations, which he declined to provide. He did state that Perry was recommended to him by a colleague. Several journalists who spoke to us said they believed the colleague in question was former editor Steven Pollard, who remains somewhat involved in the JC’s machinations.

Perry’s wife runs an Anne Frank charity in London and there was some speculation that she may be known professionally, if not socially, by Pollard.

The Magazine got the impression that the vetting of Perry was limited, and his contact with Wallis Simons was minimal.

Why then was Perry nevertheless published in the Jewish Chronicle in a series of what were headlined as exciting and exclusive “scoops”?

The last of these scoops was a report stating Hamas mastermind Yahya Sinwar planned to smuggle the Gaza hostages out of the Strip and into Egypt via the Philadelphi Corridor. Freedland insinuates that the timing of the JC’s publication of this story was not a coincidence; in the weeks preceding it, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had stressed that the IDF’s presence in the corridor was a dealbreaker in negotiations.

“As if on cue, this story appears in the Jewish Chronicle,” Freedland says. Several Israeli media sources picked it up.

The IDF responded to the report soon after, claiming they had no knowledge of the intelligence mentioned, and calling it a fabrication.

Freedland then mentions “speculation” from “informed people” who spoke to him, saying the JC piece was a product of “the Netanyahu orbit.”

“It doesn’t have to be an on-the-record briefing from the prime minister for team Netanyahu to get things out into the world.”

PERHAPS THE most interesting part of the whole debacle was, as both Freedland and other sources put it, the “convenient timing.”

The insinuation among those the Magazine spoke to was that Perry was a plant, fed false information by people within the prime minister’s circle with the intention that it would reverberate back to Israel. This, by proxy, was intended to influence the tide of opinion, justifying the PM’s intractability over retaining the corridor as a term of the hostage deal.

The JC, though well-known among the British Jewish community, is barely on the radar of non-Anglos in Israel. Even so, the Sinwar scoop reached all echelons of Israeli society. One source told the Magazine that it was quoted in a meeting with hostage families; the idea of captives being smuggled through Philadelphi was used as a reason for why Israel should not accept a deal that excluded IDF control of the corridor. 

Freedland ponders whether Perry took his story first to Israeli media outlets, some of which are “sympathetic to Netanyahu.”

And Perry did in fact first offer several “exclusives” to the Post, whose editor declined the pieces each time, suspecting them of being unreliable.

“He [Perry] made claims in stories with zero proof or explanation,” the editor said. “One of the things that pricked my instinct was when he opened a piece saying, ‘Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh,’” something that Israel has never admitted to doing.

Following the rejection of his article on Mohammad Deif – the al-Qassam Brigades leader whom Israel claims to have assassinated in July – Perry sent the Post a strongly worded message confirming he had taken his work to the JC.

Editor-in-Chief

Mirroring the initial reaction of the Post editor, B. said they immediately thought Elon Perry’s article was made-up.

B. also confirmed that from “as early as the middle of August, questions were asked from high places” about the doubtful veracity of his pieces.

It is the job, B. said, of any editor to verify claims. Asked whether they thought the decision to publish Perry’s tall tales was an oversight or a deliberate stance, B. noted, “To slip up and publish something foolishly is one thing, but to publish something eight or nine times is another thing.”

“Jake Wallis Simons has sensationalized the newspaper massively. There has been a big shift, meaning the JC has lost nuance and lost sophistication.”

Asked if they felt the resignation of the four journalists was a way of putting pressure on Wallis Simons to exit, B. said it was possible. “So many [journalists] stopped writing for the JC without announcing it.”

B. questioned what “actual contact the editor had with the writer.”

“At such a difficult time for the Jewish people, it was the editor’s job not to let this happen.”

According to some of the sources, the Elon Perry incident, though dramatic, was not entirely surprising, given what they felt were ideological shifts in recent years. 

Multiple sources who spoke to the Magazine were critical of Wallis Simons’ “self-aggrandizing” style of editing the JC.

WALLIS SIMONS writes for The Telegraph quite frequently, among others. The Magazine was under the impression that some readers and writers found this to be at odds with his job as editor.

One example given was that, after his book Israelophobia was published, Wallis Simons dedicated several front pages to promoting it, which some felt was not professional.

The sources added that editor also dedicated a lot of time to going after litigious figures, picking fights that weren’t necessary.

One such fight was with former UK secretary of state for defence Ben Wallace, who, as several people attested, is relatively Right-leaning and pro-Israel. Yet, following Wallace’s December 2023 comments about Netanyahu’s “killing rage” in Gaza, Wallis Simons ran a scathing piece which claimed, “The cynical, blatant propaganda campaign by Hamas appears to have claimed another scalp.”

It appeared, from both the conversations with the Magazine and statements from former journalists themselves, that the more truculent nature of Wallis Simons’ editorial stewardship made the more Left-leaning feel unwelcome at the JC. Founded in 1841, the publication had long been seen as leftist before he came on board.

The sources suggested that, in pursuit of a platform for his own work, Wallis Simons neglected to do his due diligence.

However, it is worth noting that in multiple Facebook groups, members of the British Jewish community were critical of the columnists’ resignation, and supportive of Wallis Simons and the JC.

One commenter said, “The JC’s honesty about Israel was harming Freedland’s leftist street cred with his Guardian besties.” Another said, “I think Jake Wallis Simons is a much better journalist than Jonathan Freedland.”

Someone wrote that although they don’t agree with Wallis Simons on everything, “he is a highly successful writer and journalist and has my immense respect.”

A British Jewish journalist posted that the resignations were “completely out of touch with public opinion and reality.”

The issue of politics

B. was similarly critical of the columnists leaving, echoing views of some other people the Magazine spoke to – that their resignation had less to do with the Perry scandal, and more to do with their own [Left-leaning] disagreements with the JC’s editorial shift to the Right.

David Collier, who has written for the Chronicle, called the incident a “transparent politically motivated attack” in a recent piece in Arutz 7.

“It’s self-fulfilling,” B. said. “By leaving, all they are ensuring is that it makes [the JC] more Right. It seems they are very in favor of a large variety of views – unless they disagree with them.”

The political motivations behind the resignations of the four were evident in Freedland’s interview. Firstly, in the way he buried his answer to the question of why he continues to work at The Guardian – a Left-leaning British publication with a decidedly anti-Israel stance – with the following statement: “It’s one thing running stories you don’t like, opinion columns you don’t like, even news stories where you would have written it differently” but it’s another running “wholesale fabrications: bogus stories.”

However, The Guardian has published such items in the past. In 2016, it found that one of its journalists, freelancer Joseph Mayton, who had written over 60 pieces for them, was guilty of “fabrication.” They subsequently removed 13 articles from their website, after “sources claimed that they had not spoken with the writer of the piece they were quoted in.”

But Freedland, Baddiel, and Freeman did not resign from The Guardian after this debacle. Why?

As Collier writes, why, when the BBC has been shown to have breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times during the Israel-Hamas War, did Hadley Freeman use their platform to talk about her issues with the JC? Counter-terrorism researcher Khaled Hassan corroborated: “The JC took responsibility for this horrible situation. Compare that with the BBC, which quite literally platforms terrorists... At its lowest, the JC is, in many ways, far better than even our national broadcaster.”

So, why did Freeman not leave the BBC? 

THE ANSWER potentially lies in Freedland’s own words: “The JC has been written about everywhere as sort of a pro-Netanyahu paper – and it’s definitely true that the Jewish Chronicle in its most recent incarnation has been much more hawkish than me and more sympathetic to Netanyahu than me.”

It would seem that the big difference between The Guardian mishap and the JC’s is their stance on Netanyahu: The former largely stands against the Israeli PM; the latter is less critical.

Someone listening to Freedland’s podcast may notice a Freudian slip of sorts when he made the above statement: Before saying “the Jewish Chronicle,” he very audibly says “Jake” before correcting himself with “Jewish” – “the Jake Chronicle.”

Rather than disapproval over a series of articles, it appears that Freedland’s qualms lie more with the politics of the editor, politics that he said are not echoed by “a big, big chunk of the British Jewish community.”

B., however, criticized claims by both Freedland and Hadley Freeman that British Jewry is anti-Netanyahu and Left-leaning, saying there is no concrete evidence to suggest this.

As Collier writes, “in the eyes of the Left, the ‘unforgivable’ crime of the Jewish Chronicle is that it has a pro-Israeli outlook.” Several sources did speak of their issue with an anti-Muslim shift at the newspaper, something corroborated by David Aaronovitch in a substack piece he wrote after his resignation – mentioning specifically a piece by conservative commentator Douglas Murray soon after Oct. 7, where he referred to Hamas as worse than the Nazi SS.

“[The piece] was polarizing with a purpose,” Aaronovitch wrote, “which was to paint Britain’s Muslim minority as an unassimilable enemy within [British society], tolerated by a liberal elite, as Murray’s books had warned.”

‘Mystery’ ownership

Freedland states, however, that “the secrecy of the ownership is the central [issue].”

As a result, he says he has considered leaving many times in the last few years.

“The heart of the matter is the issue of the secrecy of the ownership; you can have all the disagreements you like with The Guardian, but at least I know who owns the newspaper. In The Guardian’s case, it’s a charitable trust, and there is no secret money man or woman behind it. But it is very, very hard to hold an institution to account if you don’t know who hires and fires the person at the top. It means you don’t know what is motivating those decisions.”

B. told the Magazine that they felt the secrecy of the JC’s ownership did not have nefarious motivations, saying they always felt the owner was a private person who simply didn’t want the media attention that comes with owning a Jewish publication. Indeed, many within the British Jewish community believe this owner is a wealthy community member who stepped in as the head of a private consortium of political insiders, broadcasters, and bankers to save the JC when it was in danger of folding in 2020.

Freedland disagreed, calling it a “benign reading.” “I think the other reading is that the owner has a very distinct political agenda and knows that the credibility of the Jewish Chronicle would be diminished if people knew who owned it.”

“D.”, a source close to the JC, called the paper “a portal to and from the rest of the country.” 

“We want to know they have the [community’s] best interests at heart; we want to know they hold up to scrutiny.”

While D. added that the JC has made some “serious lapses,” this was by far the most egregious and warranted a serious and thorough investigation. That, D. continued, “is the only way to enact change. But the incident was wrapped up quickly, there was no evidence of a thorough review, and the lack of known ownership prevents accountability.”

However, in Wallis Simons’s post on X, he very clearly takes “full responsibility for the mistakes,” adding that he also will “take equal responsibility for the task of making sure nothing like this can happen again.”

The editor said he had “cut all ties with the freelancer in question and his work has now been removed from our website. Readers can be assured that stronger internal procedures are being implemented.”

Wallis Simons also expressed gratitude to the columnists for their contributions and hoped that at some point they would “feel able to return.” To an external reader, the statement reads as contrite and apologetic, which is opposite to the views of some of the sources.

Writer and influencer Hen Mazzig, who has written for the JC, replied with “thank you for demonstrating the moral courage to address this issue transparently and for your commitment to safeguarding the paper’s longstanding reputation for integrity and reliable journalism.”

Meanwhile, a well-regarded Israel-based journalist who freelances for the JC (and asked not be identified) has pledged to continue writing for the paper, noting, “The JC remains an important publication in the wake of the controversy surrounded one of its freelance writers. The Jewish community has a spectrum of political views and a spectrum of views in general, which means that while some may be nonplussed by the developments at the JC, many others are pleased with its current posture. The fact that the JC was deceived by a writer is not unique, it has happened to many other quality publications. 

“The important thing is to learn from this and make sure it does not happen again. I think many people will forgive the publication for this oversight and continue to read it and hope that it does better in the future.”

So, who is telling the correct story?

It became clear throughout the conversations carried out by the Magazine that different people held diverse views on what the real issue at hand was. For some, the ideological and political shift was the crux of the problem; for others, it was Wallis Simons’s editorial lapses in judgment.

But some beliefs were generally unanimous: firstly, that an editor of a newspaper should be focused more on the community it represents and the integrity it upholds than their own self-aggrandizement; and secondly, that a shift occurred, both ideologically and politically within the outlook of the JC that was at odds with what they say is a significant part of the British Jewish community. This, in turn, led to skepticism about the content the paper was putting out, with people asking who and what certain pieces are serving.

However, what was concerning was the way in which certain comments and criticisms about the paper had the hallmarks of antisemitic tropes. Though perhaps unintentional, the mentions of shady ownership, the “money man,” the media orbit, Netanyahu’s octopus of control: All of these echo the same rhetoric of those who self-define as Israel’s sworn enemies.

It begs the question of whether, in order to be seen as an acceptable British Jew – and indeed, an acceptable British Jewish journalist – they have to posit themselves as the antithesis of everything represented by Netanyahu, the Israeli political echelon, and indeed, the British Jewish Right.

Then, and only then, are they acceptable.

As Khaled Hassan wrote, “the threat to Israel and Jews in the Diaspora is the virtue-signaling Jews who would do anything to be seen as the ‘good Jew.’”

The JC, as Freedland, Freeman, Aaronovitch, and more said, is the heart of the British Jewish community. But in such a corrosive and politically divided time, perhaps it is no longer possible for the paper to be a voice for all.

The JC, as a synecdoche of British Jewry, should not undermine its people, but uplift, inform, and empower them. Now, at a crossroads, the esteemed newspaper should return to its roots as the publication at the heart of its community, working to be a tool used in the right way, not as it was here. This might involve some courageous decisions. 

But just looking through comments from people reminiscing over the Jewish Chronicle’s good old days, it would appear that the past is the place to start. 