The Jewish Chronicle has seen three of its prominent columnists resign in protest following allegations of fabricated articles on Israeli operations in Gaza. Writers Jonathan Freedland, Hadley Freeman and David Aaronovitch announced the end of their work with the London-based newspaper over the “great disgrace” of the claims. The publication said that it had carried out “a thorough investigation” into one of its freelance journalists, Elon Perry. The JC expressed dissatisfaction with some of the claims made by Perry, deleted his articles and ended its association with him.
Freedland, who labelled the articles as fabricated, claimed that the paper had only expressed the “thinnest form of contrition”. Aaronovitch said that he had left the paper, while Freeman said that the recent events made it impossible for her to stay. Jake Wallis Simons, editor of the JC, thanked the columnists for their contributions, saying that he took full responsibility for mistakes and was working on implementing stronger procedures in future to prevent repetitions of such incidents.
In recent months, Perry had written several articles for the paper. The most contentious alleged that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning to leave Gaza with surviving hostages by smuggling themselves into Iran via the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land on the Gaza-Egypt border. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were apparently to be blamed. The IDF subsequently claimed no knowledge of the alleged document. Perry claimed that the JC had made a mistake and that it was conducting a witch-hunt against him.
The ties between Freedland and the paper ran deep. Starting in 1998, his father had also written for the JC. Yet Freedland claimed the paper had departed from traditional journalism to become a “partisan, ideological instrument”. His post was shared by Aaronovitch, who had resigned from the paper in protest. Freeman also left the newspaper citing the recent claims.
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