I've posted several times before about the Jewish Chronicle's increasingly ambivalent attitude toward Israel. Gina in Golders Green has an interesting post about the Chairman of the JC (Anthony Julius) defending free ads posted by the Palestine Solidarity Committe on the JC website. Julius spews out the usual 'freedom of speech' mantra (pretty bizarre in this case) which, together with the words 'need for balance' has been used by numerous JC editorial staff in my own dealings with them to justify, for example, the frequent articles posted by writers who are openly hostile to Israel. I have never understood the notion of 'need for balance' in this context. The analogy I like to use for this is to imagine that a shop sells dozens of different Arsenal football club calenders but never stocks a single Spurs calender. Finally, someone produces a Spurs calender but is told they cannot sell it unless - in the interest of 'balance' - at least 3 out of the 12 pictures are of Arsenal players. Insane of course, but that is exactly the game the JC is playing. The fact that anti-Israel articles dominate every other main stream newspaper and magazine does not seem to have registered in the minds of JC editors.
Ihave also noticed that almost every article about Israel in the JC is now written by Anschel Pfeffer who is not only a typical left-wing Haaretz hack, always desparate to see things from the 'other side', but is actually remarkably ill-informed about everything he writes. On last week's front-page article "Bombing back, but not as we know it" which carried over to page 2, Pfeffer insultingly claimed the recent spate of Palestinian terrorist attacks were really nothing to worry about and nothing to do with Hamas (compare his plodding lack of incite about this with real experts such as Barry Rubin, Sultan Knish or Caroline Glick). Pfeffer has two other massive articles in the same edition - the titles of which tell you everything you need to know about his attitude: "IDF braces for Arab Spring" on page 18 and "Nakba law prevents free expression" on page 23.
At a time when Israel is under unprecedented assault physically and spiritually, and when not a single national UK newpaper or TV News programme is prepared even to let somebody tell Israel's side of the story, UK Jews expect the Jewish Chronicle at least to make a stand. Instead, in the shop of 100 Arsenal calenders the Jewish Chronicle is offering the one Spurs calender, but with Arsenal pictures on 7 of the 12 pages 'for balance' and 'free speech'.
Chances are "The Jewish Chronicle" only chronicles secular and political affairs and is devoid of anything genuinely Jewish, despite its namesake.
ReplyDeleteJCWatch has in fact in the past had reason to comment on the total Judaic illiteracy of a JC reporter entrusted with reporting on sensitive Jewish subjects such as "gay liberal weddings" (sic).
ReplyDeleteSee our article "Who Raped The Virgin Mary" at
http://jcwatch.wordpress.com/articles/who-raped-the-virgin-mary-2/