Peter Beaumont & Matthew Weaver
The Guardian / September 20, 2024
A run of scoops from a writer who came ‘out of nowhere’ has led to intensified questions about the paper’s ownership.
Elon Perry gave the impression he was a mover and a shaker.
There are the photos of him alongside Michael Gove – and taking selfies in Downing Street. And there are interviews too.
In 2014 he told the Jewish Telegraph he was a former commando turned television journalist who had set up his own production company and rubbed shoulders with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
He suggested the door to Downing Street was open to him as he met influential Tory politicians behind the scenes to improve the image of Israel.
But Perry is now at the heart of a scandal that has shaken The Jewish Chronicle to its core. The journalist is accused of fabricating stories that have since been taken down, and misrepresenting himself in his résumé.
It has been a humiliation for the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper, which is reeling from the resignation of some of its leading writers – and is now facing renewed questions over its ownership.
Perry, however, is the focus of the immediate crisis.
On his website he described himself as a lecturer and historian and highlighted his involvement in the Israeli hostage mission to Entebbe in 1976.
And while The Guardian found some of his claims contained a kernel of truth, the reality of Perry’s claimed high-profile connections and career seems embellished at best.
As well as containing contested claims about his military experience, the blurb on his website for one of his books features a quote from Stephen Greenblatt, a professor of humanities at Harvard. The praise also appears to be a crude fabrication.
“This is not my endorsement or my words (or, for that matter, the way my first name is spelled),” Greenblatt told The Guardian. “To the best of my knowledge, I have had no contact with Elon Perry.”
The lectures by Perry that The Guardian was able to identify were low-key affairs, in golf clubs and on short cruises in British waters.
There was also less than meets the eye to the intimate political connections that Perry suggested.
Instead, they appear to have largely been encounters at events organised by his wife, Gillian’s charity, the Anne Frank Trust UK, whose branding is prominently visible in some of the pictures.
Perry set up a media company – Perry Media – in 2011, which last filed accounts in 2012 before being dissolved in 2015.
Perry’s name is now familiar in the British and Israeli media, but for all the wrong reasons.
In Israel, one of his stories was officially denied and called “baseless” and others were called wild fabrications in off-the-record briefings.
Israeli critics, in particular, have pointed out how helpful Perry’s stories were to the negotiating position of Netanyahu, whose family members, including his wife and son, repeated some of the claims.
Suspicions that Perry’s articles may have been placed by someone close to Netanyahu remain unproven. And Perry himself has previously insisted his sources were legitimate, although he declined to answer further questions for this article.
What has shocked close observers is how little curiosity and due diligence The Jewish Chronicle applied to Perry, a writer who “appeared out of nowhere” – and who most staff had never encountered – with a series of extraordinary “intelligence scoops” despite having no visible track record in journalism.
Although the Guardian has asked The Jewish Chronicle’s editor, Jake Wallis Simons, how Perry came to be introduced to the paper and what checks were made about his stories, Wallis Simons and other staff have declined to answer, leaning on two perfunctory statements on the inquiry into Perry and his firing.
“We deeply regret the chain of events that led to this point,” one said. “We apologise to our loyal readers and have reviewed our internal processes so that this will not be repeated.”
The issue has renewed focus on long-simmering concerns about both the leadership of The Chronicle – not least the role of Wallis Simons – and who owns it.
Wallis Simons has been the most high-profile editor in recent memory, writing columns and appearing on television panels in which he has promoted right-wing opinions that have alienated some liberal British Jews.
Yet critics say this has resulted in him being less involved in a newsroom that has cycled through several news editors in recent years.
“All newspapers make mistakes and run articles by writers that people on the paper dislike,” wrote Jonathan Freedland in a post on X announcing his resignation as a columnist for the paper. He added: “Too often, the JC reads like a partisan, ideological instrument, its judgments political rather than journalistic.” Freedland also writes for The Guardian.
On Thursday, Colin Shindler, a prominent UK academic, disclosed he had become the latest contributor to sever his connection with the paper, sharing his resignation letter to Wallis Simons with The Guardian. It said: “My name first appeared in the JC in 1966 and I have contributed to the paper for over 50 years.
“During your editorship, the JC has become sensationalist and unbalanced in its coverage. The Elon Perry incident was an accident waiting to happen.”
That view was amplified last week in a column in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz by Etan Nechin arguing that the real issue was not so much that Perry had “deceived The Chronicle, but the newspaper was, in a sense, predisposed to deception”.
“Its editorial focus,” he added, “was not on journalistic integrity, but on seemingly aligning itself with what its editors deem a ‘pro-Israel’ stance.” By a “pro-Israel stance” Nechin meant one more aligned with Netanyahu and his inner circle.
“The Chronicle has increasingly abandoned journalistic integrity in order to champion being ‘pro-Israel’. Nine times out of 10, this is a version of Israel that resonates with the Israeli right.”
In the fallout from the affair, the dearth of any meaningful answers from Wallis Simons and other senior editorial figures at The Jewish Chronicle has highlighted other transparency issues around the publication, including who actually owns it, a fact referred to by several of the columnists who resigned last week, who insisted there could be no accountability without clarity around ownership.
Formally owned by the Kessler Foundation, The Jewish Chronicle was bought in 2021 by a consortium led by Theresa May’s former spin doctor and now BBC board member Robbie Gibb, who was listed at Companies House as the sole person with significant control.
Amid long-running, and unaddressed, suspicions that Gibb was acting as a front for an unknown person or persons investing in the paper, on 2 July this year The Jewish Chronicle announced it was converting to a “charitable structure”, apparently in the hope of drawing a line under the issue.
That was reinforced last weekend, in an email to The Guardian in which Wallis Simons described the process as having already taken place.
“In its reporting of the ownership,” said Wallis Simons, “[the Guardian] appeared to omit the fact that the JC was converted to a charitable structure back in July, which seems to me rather a misleading omission?”
Despite Wallis Simons’ claim, however, there is no evidence that The Jewish Chronicle has become a charity, even if that is the ambition.
Asked about the claim, the Charity Commission told The Guardian this week that it had no record of an application for charitable status from the Jewish Chronicle.
The Companies House listing for Jewish Chronicle Media Ltd also suggests no change in its status from a private limited company.
Instead, the only change that appeared to have been made was to remove Gibb as a person with significant control, replaced by Jonathan Kandel, a former tax lawyer whose LinkedIn page says he now works as a senior consultant for the Starwood Capital Group, an international private investment firm.
The issue of who owns or has the ability to influence a charity is not arcane. Under legislation introduced in 2016, charities or entities wishing to claim charitable status are legally required to disclose not only any person who has a significant financial interest but also who has any significant influence on the organisation more widely.
Despite repeated questions from The Guardian regarding both the Jewish Chronicle’s handling of the Perry scandal and questions over its ownership, it declined to reply.
Peter Beaumont is a senior international reporter
Matthew Weaver is a Guardian reporter
with Sam Hudson
