Since June 2024, right-wing UK corporate media outlet the Jewish Chronicle (JC) has employed a pro-Israel journalist who appears to have falsified his credentials. Moreover, alongside faking his own history, the journalist put out multiple stories based on fabricated intelligence.
Jewish Chronicle employs journalist with a made up bio
On 11 September, independent Palestinian-Israeli news magazine +972 exposed the dubious credentials of the author of a fake intelligence report for the Jewish Chronicle (JC).
Self-described journalist Elon Perry has been writing for the right-wing news site since June. In that time, he has put out nine articles under his name. In fitting with the outlet’s editorial position, these have taken a pro-Israel stance.
His JC bio states that he:
is a former commando soldier of the elite Golani Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces, which he served in for 28 years. He was a journalist for 25 years covering wars and terrorist attacks. Since 2010, he has been lecturing in the UK and USA about the 100 years of terror in the Middle East, with an emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He lives in London.
Perry’s own website expands on his experience. As +972 reported:
His website additionally claims that during his military service he was part of a unit of mista’arvim, or soldiers who go undercover as Palestinians, and that he also participated in Operation Entebbe, Israel’s 1976 raid of a passenger plane hijacked by Palestinian and German militants. Perry also professes to be the author of two books, and is described by the publisher of the second, which came out in April of this year, as having been a professor at Tel Aviv University (TAU) for more than 15 years.
What’s more, +972 pointed out he’d repeated his supposed role in Operation Entebbe in both an article and interview for different outlets within the last month.
However, the magazine has found that the majority of this is patently false.
A trail of fabrications
Firstly, an investigation by Israel’s Channel 13 news programme Hazinor found no record of Perry having worked at TAU. Moreover, there was no credible evidence he’d been involved in Operation Entebbe as his website claimed.
And this was just the beginning. Hazinor called into question a photo on Perry’s website. He had posted it as proof of his undercover work at a protest. Notably, Perry had captioned it as a photo taken in 1992, when in reality it was from 2015.
Therefore, when Hazinor grilled Perry over all this, his bio and website claims promptly fell apart. He denied the undercover role, working at TAU, and participating in Operation Entebbe altogether.
Then, tech journalist Simi Spolter demolished his Jewish Chronicle bio’s claim to over 25 years of journalism experience. Crucially, Spolter found no “documented history” of this at all. There were simply his nine recent JC articles, and two blog posts for the Times of Israel in 2021.
Despite Perry’s bio on the Times of Israel declaring how he’d reported for “several Israeli national newspapers” – Spolter could find no body of work. Separately, Perry had also said to the Jewish Telegraph that he’d previously worked for the Hebrew daily newspaper Maariv. Again, Spolter and +972 found no record of his purported work for it.
Fake ‘intelligence sources’
Given the potted history of Perry’s falsehoods, it perhaps no surprise too then that his articles on the Jewish Chronicle are also riddled with fabrications.
In particular, +972 Magazine highlighted one notable recent example of this. Specifically, the JC published a Perry article on 5 September titled:
Sinwar’s secret plan to ‘smuggle hostages to Iran’
As the name suggests, the premise was that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning to smuggle out the remaining hostages to Iran. Specifically, anonymous “intelligence sources” Perry cited had said Sinwar would do this via the Philadelphi Corridor. But curiously, Perry and the JC wrote on the purported evidence from them just a day after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had held a press conference with international media driving this exact narrative.
Yet, by all accounts, the story was a lie. Multiple Israeli media outlets, various Israeli intelligence sources, and even IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari dismissed the story as entirely fabricated. In fact, the IDF has even opened an internal investigation into this and another fake news story in German right-wing outlet Bild to hunt down the source for the fake intelligence.
Jewish Chronicle has done the damage
However, it was hardly the only Jewish Chronicle article Perry had littered with politically-motivated fictions. In another article too, Perry had cited unnamed “intelligence sources”. This was from his 28 August article which again made false claims about Hamas and the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Of course, +972 and other outlets’ findings suggest that either the JC is aware of Perry’s falsified bio, and fake sources, but has actively ignored them. Alternatively, the right-wing news outlet may not have known any of this about Perry or his reporting. However, this would then bring the JC’s editorial verification and basic journalistic standards into question.
Moreover, the JC has already done the damage. As +972 noted, numerous right-wing Israeli outlets repeated the fake intelligence in Perry’s 5 September article. Needless to say then, Perry’s articles at the JC have only added to the thriving ecosystem of pro-Israel propaganda and misinformation circulating across the internet.
The Canary contacted the Jewish Chronicle for comment, but it hadn’t responded at the time of publication.
Feature image via YouTube/the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.