Jewish Chronicle editor argues his case…
JVL Introduction
On 28th May Jeremy Corbyn tweeted on the occasion of Victor Orban’s visit to Downing Street, urging Johnson to challenge him on his Holocaust revisionism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and more.
In response to this tweet Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, responded with a grotesque, vulgar and abusive attack on Corbyn calling him a Jew baiting racist…
It is surely a line crossed, and JVL is happy to endorse the draft letter of protest to MPs, circulated by Julia Bard (below).
You are asked to feel free to adapt it. Many we know will wish to do so, perhaps calling on Pollard and the JC to apologise to Jeremy Corbyn for this offensive tweet and to withdraw it.
Others may have darker thoughts, wondering how what was once a newspaper of substance should come to have such an undignified buffoon as its editor.
Draft letter to MPs
At the end of May, Boris Johnson invited Hungary’s authoritarian, Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, to a meeting at Downing Street. Orban’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, persecution of Roma, and attacks on LGBT rights and all democratic norms are well-documented.
A number of MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, protested about this meeting. Far from welcoming those protests, the Jewish Chronicle editor published a vulgar, abusive attack against Jeremy Corbyn on Twitter. This has been widely condemned on social media and we hope parliamentarians will add their voices to that condemnation.
Here is a model letter to write to your MP. Please feel free to adapt it. You can find out how to contact your MP here.
Julia Bard
Dear [name of MP]
At the end of May, Jeremy Corbyn MP, along with a number of other MPs and many anti-racists and anti-fascists, protested about Boris Johnson welcoming Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Prime Minister to a meeting at Downing Street. Orban is an authoritarian who has used the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to introduce an Enabling Act (a term with sinister echoes), giving himself powers to rule by decree. He is using those powers to stir up hatred against Roma people, Muslims and Jews, to impose draconian and deadly measures against migrants (calling them “poison”) and refugees (describing them as “Muslim invaders”), and to attack LGBT rights and civil liberties.
In contrast with the fulsome praise with which Boris Johnson welcomed Orban’s re-election as Hungary’s PM in 2018 – after an election campaign based on relentless antisemitic propaganda against Hungarian Jew George Soros – Jeremy Corbyn has consistently warned of the dangers of a growing populist right wing in Europe. He has been proved correct as a reconstituted right wing bloc in the Council of Europe currently includes extreme racist parties such as Orban’s Fidesz party, the AfD in Germany, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Poland’s Law and Justice party, Vox in Spain and Italy’s Lega Nord, alongside the British Tory Party.
The editor of the Jewish Chronicle has responded to Jeremy Corbyn’s protests against Orban’s visit by posting on social media foulmouthed, defamatory abuse which many people have reported to Twitter.
Whether or not you are in agreement with Jeremy Corbyn’s politics, I hope you will publicly condemn this threatening and damaging abuse against a Member of Parliament and by implication against all the constituents he represents, as well as against fellow MPs who have any concern about standards in public life.
I see Pollard has been honing his debating skills!
Well done, Corbyn!
The Jewish Chronicle is just a ‘Jewish’ version of the Sun now (and I assume Pollard is responsible for taking it way down into the sewer), or perhaps it would be more pertinent to equate it with the Mail, given that Pollard wrote for it at one time.
Anyway, I just checked the wikipedia entry for him, and here’s a clip from it:
Stephen Pollard started at the Evening Standard.[1] He then worked at the Daily Express, leaving in 2001. In his final article for the paper, he used the first letter of every paragraph to spell out the phrase “Fuck you Desmond”.[7][8][9]
He has been a political columnist with The Times and the Daily Mail[6] as well as writing for The Independent and Sunday Telegraph.[1]
In November 2008, he became editor of The Jewish Chronicle.[10] During his editorship, as of October 2020, the Press Complaints Commission and its successor IPSO have made fourteen rulings against the paper.[11][12] The publication has also been forced to pay damages for libel on several occasions throughout his tenure…..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Pollard
PS And isn’t it odd how Jeremy only became a ‘Jew-baiter’ AFTER he was elected leader??!
But as Pollard and Co have made crystal clear, they just lurve to bully people, and ESPECIALLY empaths.
Mr Pollard could at least learn to spell even if his vocabulary is more appropriate to a football terrace. “Bating”?
How much money has the Jewish Chronicle paid out recently for libel?
It is time now for Mr Corbyn to start taking these vile people to court, and prosecuting them for every penny they have.
Mr Pollard sums up his politics and those he represents perfectly.
Thanks for alerting us to this outrageous comment by editor of a rag I have personal experience of . I have emailed Merseyside MPs.
Pollards comment is utterly appalling and completely out of context to the nature of Corbyn’s tweet. It is also factually incorrect.
I imagine Starmer will be spitting feathers.
Elsewhere Pollard refers to Corbyn as the ‘UK’s leading antisemite.’ I fail to understand how remarks like this are not actionable.
I was just doing a search for something and came across the following in the results:
‘What is the Labour Party thinking?’: Jewish newspaper editors say Jews fear life under Corbyn
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/antisemitism-jeremy-corbyn-jewish-newspapers-180491
Yes, and WHO can blame them. I have little doubt that most Jews in the country soon realised why he wanted to nationalise the railways, and had he become PM his very first priority would have no doubt been to round them all up and transport them to a concentration camp, probably on The Isle of Wight. So thankyou to all the heroic people who stood up to him and risked life and limb in doing so, and who would very likely have been turned into toothpaste had he realised his dark, macabre dreams.
Dear Mr Pollard
Vexatious claims of anti semitism are hate crimes and should be prosecuted