Recent events at the Jewish Chronicle may prove to be its undoing as it faces controversies over a fake journalist, its secretive ownership and shady involvement in the attempted smear of Palestinian academic and activist Dr Shahd Abusalama by her former employer Sheffield Hallam University.

Part One

Just last month the Jewish Chronicle withdrew nine sensationalist articles by journalist Elon Perry (real name Eli Yafrich). Except not only was Yafrich using a fake name, he was also a fake journalist with a mostly fabricated resume. The kind of resume easily outed by a child’s Google search. The articles claimed to be based on Israeli intelligence sources except they weren’t.
One article claimed Israeli intelligence existed that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar planned escaping to Egypt taking Israeli captives with him. It was published the day after Benjamin Netanyahu made the same claim at a foreign press conference. He stressed Israeli military control of the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt was necessary to prevent Sinwar’s escape. The timing was convenient and now appears deliberate.

Official military sources in Israel proved this intelligence to be “wild fabrications”. Although the paper has distanced itself from Perry/Yafrich it has offered little in the way of explanation of how he was recruited, and why his explosive claims were not vetted by Jewish Chronicle editor Jake Wallis Simmons.

In fact the Jewish Chronicle was not the only publication publishing fake news. Bild, Germanys most widely read newspaper also ran a story claiming Hamas had no urgency to reach a ceasefire deal, based on a document found on Sinwar’s personal computer. It was again quoted by Netanyahu at a cabinet meeting, but yet again the document was proven to be a lie.

It is not a leap to question whether Perry/Yafrich and others were in fact working directly for the Israeli government and planting fake propaganda across the European press to influence opinion and bolster the Zionist state’s decisions. These lies were used to further delay ceasefire negotiations and continue a genocidal war on Palestine and now Lebanon.

Appalling oversight and a bad apple? Or was its rightwing Zionist editor fully aware of what was going on? The question of how much the editorial team knew and whether it was an active participant in the promotion of false Israeli propaganda remains unanswered.

What is clear is the Jewish Chronicle’s credibility and reputation are in tatters.