Revisiting the case of Emily Honchowicz, the young American Jew blinded in one eye by Israeli Police Thugs
Emily Honcowich - Democracy Now
It’s not every day that the CEO of
the Jewish Chronicle, Jo Bucci, writes to me begging for a handout. Jo informed me that:
In the weeks since the war
broke out in Israel, our journalists have been working non-stop to bring you
the latest news from the front lines as well as closer to home.
Our coverage, which has been
read by millions since October 7, has shone a light on the conflict and given
our readers stories that matter to them in these difficult times.
I'm writing to you today to
ask if you'd consider being a donor to the Jewish Chronicle.
The Jewish Chronicle is the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper, founded in 1841. It has always been the paper of the Jewish Establishment.
Now you will understand dear reader
that I am in a dilemma when it comes to giving to good causes. Should I donate
my hard earned cash to those ‘anti-Semites’ at Medical Aid for the
Palestinians, who will only spend my cash on things like bandages and medicines
for Palestinian children in Gaza or should I hand it over to the Jewish
Chronicle in order that it can continue to shamelessly lie in the cause of
Jewish Supremacy?
Well of course I would like to give
a helping hand to the non-Jewish racist who currently edits the JC, one Jake
Wallis-Simons but needs must. It’s not that I don’t understand Jo Bucci’s
plight. I really do.
Bernard Joseph, unlike 'liar' Lee Harpin and Marcus Dysch, was able to write a fair and balanced article
According to Wikipedia from a high
of 55,000 in 1941, former editor Stephen Pollard managed to reduce this from
30,000 when he was appointed
in 2009 to 20,141 in 2018 and over a third of those were free copies.
But in August 2010 things were so
different. Pollard, who should be called the gravedigger of the JC, was telling
readers
I am thrilled to be able to report that the JC's
year-on-year ABC circulation figures (30/6/09-30/6/10) are up 3.67%. In June
2009, circulation was 30,436; this June it reached 31,556 – an increase of 1,120.
In other words the obsessive,
dishonest anti-Corbyn campaign of Pollard between 2015 and 2019 turned off
one-third of its readers.
But if you thought that things
couldn’t get worse you are wrong. According to
ABC, the auditor for the media industry, circulation has fallen to 12,420
in May-June 2023 and of those nearly half are given away. In other words just
6,371 people are prepared to fork out to buy a copy of the rag.
Clearly the JC is in big trouble
and its not difficult to understand why. It’s boring, unreadable and a
propaganda rag that is at odds with youth culture and political awareness
amongst the young. Zionism is irrelevant to all but a handful of zealots. Most
Jewish kids know that things are wrong in Israel but according to the JC it is as
if the election of neo-Nazis like Ben Gvir and Smotrich to Israel’s government never happened.
The JC was an early adherent of the
Zionist movement or rather they bought it out but in the early days it could be
very critical of Zionism. During the Hitler period when the Zionists were
looking to take advantage of the Nazi state in order to build their Jewish
state, the JC was very critical of the policies of the Zionist movement, and in
particular of Ha'avara, the trading agreement between the Nazis and the Zionist
movement. Today it is an anti-Palestinian propaganda rag.
In an editorial of 27 December 1935
the JC railed against Ha'avara. It accused the World Zionist Organisation of
aiding and comforting one of the most savage oppressions
even in Jewish history. It dishonours and defiles us. It shame us in our own
eyes and un-mans us. It is a blow to our pride and a shock to our morale and
self-respect at a time when we are most direly in need of the strengthening of these
qualities. It also disheartens us, for it breaks the united Jewish boycott
front, a front, let it not be forgotten, with which Gentile sympathisers are
also aligned.
… The boycott offered Jews the first real weapon they-have ever had,
thanks to the modern development of international trade. The Haavarah dashes
that weapon from their hands. The Haavarah has actually exerted itself, if our
information be correct, to promote an increase of the purchase of German
products in Palestine…
But, at least, let not our critics try to fool us with the argument- that
if the Ha'avarah helps Jewish national reconstruction it does not transgress
against Jewish national dignity. Building the new Judea on an “unclean "
transaction is not our idea of preserving Jewish dignity!’
Today the ‘JC' is a ‘newspaper’ that Goebbels would have
given his eye teeth for. Its mission is to keep British Jews in ignorance of
the reality of what is happening in Israel and Palestine and line them up in
support of genocide. Strangely enough many Jews are not happy with being fodder
for a ‘Jewish’ state that seems to be anything but Jewish.
The reality is that the Jewish Chronicle, whilst purporting
to be horror stricken at the alleged increase in anti-Semitism does its best to
increase anti-Semitism by constantly associating Jews, all Jews, with the war
crimes of the Israeli state.
Although one should resolutely oppose attacks on Jews because
of what Israel does, at the same time one should recognise that people are
justifiably angered by the scenes of carnage and war crimes from Gaza. When the
JC goes out of its way to stress Jewish support for Israeli war crimes is it
any wonder that some people take them at their word and attack Jews as a
result?
One of my favourite headlines in the JC
The JC is unrepresentative of British Jews
The JC is also increasingly unrepresentative of the Jewish
community. In the last authoritative survey of the British Jewish community in
2015 The Attitudes of
British Jews Towards Israel it was found that the number of Jews who
identified as Zionists had dropped from 72% in 2010. A quarter of Jews
supported sanctions against Israel and to the question do Palestinians have no
legitimate claim to the land, as right-wing Zionists argue, just 14% supported
this proposition as opposed to 72% who were opposed.
Yet the JC has consistently supported the right and far-right of the Zionist movement. It brooks no criticism of Israel and as I show below actively censors anything tending to put it in a different light. In short the JC has become increasingly unrepresentative of British Jews and more of a shrill Zionist voice lecturing and hectoring. The appointment of another far-right editor, Jake Wallis-Simons, formerly of the Telegraph merely accentuates this trend.
The exclusion of non-Zionist and anti-Zionist voices from the
JC has contributed to its irrelevance. Most young Jews today come into contact
with Palestinians and Jews who are not Zionists yet this reality has never
entered the JC's ecosphere. The pretence that the West Bank is a haven of
tranquility punctured only by anti-Semitic Palestinians is simply at odds with
what people learn from other sources. They know that Israel is now considered
by most people as an apartheid state in which messianic Jews rule the roost.
The growth of non and anti-Zionist Jewish groups has passed
the JC by. Na’amod, Jews Against Genocide, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, Jewish
Voices for Labour, Jewish Network for Palestine, Jews for Justice in Palestine,
Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, have sprung up yet the JC relates to the shrill loudmouths
and far-right Zionists such as Jonathan Hoffman with his coterie of Tommy
Robinson supporters.
My own experience of the Jewish Chronicle
I have been in conflict with the JC for most of my political
life. I am the only person to have successfully taken the JC to the Press
Council, the forerunner of today’s Independent
Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). When PSC organised a Conference on
Anti-Arab Racism in 1985, with funding from the then Greater London Council,
the JC attacked the conference implying that PSC was anti-Semitic. When I wrote
to them on behalf of PSC, the JC refused me a right of reply. The Press Council
upheld my complaint that I should have had a right of reply.
One of a number of letters the JC printed from me
Although its editor the late Geoffrey D Paul and I never saw
eye to eye, he nonetheless invariably allowed me access to the letters columns
of the paper although of course there was usually in reply a deluge of angry
Zionists.
My letter to the Guardian challenging Chaim Bermant's Obituary
Geoffrey Paul allowed, by Zionist standards anyway, a wide
range of debate in the paper. He repeatedly defended the maverick columnist
Chaim Bermant who supported negotiations with the PLO, something that was
considered beyond the pale in polite circles at that time.
Bernard Joseph did not set out to distort or twist the truth unlike JC 'journalists' today
This was a time when the JC employed journalists as opposed
to Zionist political hacks like David Rose. For example when I spoke at the
2007 UNISON Conference in support of BDS, the only Jewish person to do so, I
took apart the usual Zionist accusations that supporters of Palestine were
anti-Semitic supporters of Hamas. I got a rousing reception from the delegates
and the motion passed overwhelmingly. The first person who came up to
congratulate me on my speech was Bernard Josephs, the JC reporter. Bernard was
an old school Zionist and certainly not a supporter of BDS but he appreciated
the way I had dealt with the accusations of anti-Semitism.
Fast forward 13 years and under Stephen Pollard all was
different. Professor Geoffrey Alderman, a Zionist who had written for the JC
for nearly 46 years, being a weekly columnist for 14 years, criticised
the IHRA because its 11 examples ‘embed
numerous internal contradictions’. This was during the anti-Corbyn smear
campaign which the JC was leading, with the IHRA as its main weapon. Such
criticism was considered by Pollard as nothing less than sabotage.
Alderman then went on to blot his copybook even further when
he wrote an article
for The Spectator Is
Jeremy Corbyn really anti-Semitic? reaching the conclusion that far from being
anti-Semitic ‘The fact of the matter is that Corbyn
has an impressive record of supporting Jewish communal initiatives.’
Under Geoffrey Paul Alderman would have been defended. Pollard
however was incandescent with rage. Zionist ideologues such as Pollard don’t do
debate. He was running a campaign of hate and the last thing he wanted was a
cool, analytical look at Corbyn’s actual record in relation to Jews. What did
Pollard do? He sent
a curt email at the end of January 2020 to Alderman saying ‘“as editor I no longer wish to have you in
the paper.”
Pollard adamantly
refused, in a telephone call, to give his reasons for the decision but they
are not hard to discern. Pollard, a hard-right Zionist and founder of the
Islamaphobic Henry
Jackson Society, would brook no dissent. It was an iron rule as far as he
was concerned that Corbyn was anti-Semitic.
Pollard was perhaps one of the most dishonest figures to
grace public life in Britain in the last 20 years. He was also a disaster as JC
Editor taking the circulation from over 30,000 to under 20,000 and bankrupting
the paper in the process. It was only because the JC was seen as too valuable
to go under during the anti-Corbyn witchhunt that the JC was rescued, amongst
others by John Ware, who produced the serially
dishonest Panorama programmeIs
Labour Anti-Semitic?
But I have another reason for detesting Pollard. So much so
that when he announced that he had cancer I thought that there might be divine
justice after all.
The Case of Emily Honochowicz
On 3 July 2010 I wrote to Pollard about the case of
an American Jewish art student, Emily Honochowicz. Emily had gone to study in Jerusalem for
one year as part of her art degree. There she had met anti-occupation activists
from the International Solidarity Movement and she had been particularly moved
by the terrible things that the Palestinians were experiencing in the West
Bank.
On hearing of Israel’s murder of 9 activists on the Mavi
Marmara and Gaza Freedom Flotilla she and others had gone to stage a
protest at the main gateway from Jerusalem to the West Bank, the Qalandiya
checkpoint. This was being policed by
the Border Guard, a notoriously violent Israeli police unit. All of a sudden
one of them shot, in breach of all regulations, a tear gas cannister directly
at Emily with the result that she was blinded in one eye.
Emily was rushed, first to a hospital in Ramallah and then to
Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital where doctors were unable to save her eye. I was
particularly moved by how a young Jewish girl had taken part in the kind of
protest which is normal in any country calling itself a democracy and she had
lost an eye as a result. How could this be in a state that calls itself Jewish? Where were its Jewish values?
I wrote an articleThe Day
an American Jewish Art Student Emily Henochowicz Lost an Eye and it occurred to me that perhaps the JC would consider this
newsworthy. I knew that the evils perpetrated against Palestinians never made
the JC columns, especially under Pollard, because it was an iron rule that
British Jews should be kept in ignorance of what was happening in the occupied
territories.
Much fun was had when we were stewarding the TUC Conference in Brighton - after everyone had gone home we dumped the Zionist propaganda in the nearest bin!
But Emily
wasn’t a Palestinian. She was a Jewish girl. Surely this story merited a place
in the JC? I had read an article in Ha’aretz Israel
Refuses to Pay Medical Bills for American-Jewish Protester Who Lost Eye and
found it outrageous. The Pig who had blinded Emily in one eye had broken all regulations
and yet the Israeli government, which can spend
thousands of pounds on takeaway meals for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his
corrupt wife, didn’t have the decency to at least pay for the medical bills
caused by its thuggish police force.
I wrote
that
Emily, the daughter of an
Israeli born father and granddaughter of holocaust survivors has learnt the
hard way that Israel is an oppressive and racist regime.
The final insult of
course is that Israel refuses to pay the medical bills for her treatment in
hospital. Literally they want their pound of flesh.
The
latter being a reference to Shylock and the Merchant of Venice.
I sent an email to Pollard suggesting that he might
want to run this story, noting that
Instead of
being an echo chamber to Jonathan Hoffman isn't it about time you actually started
reporting the more uncomfortable facts? When people look back this period of
the Jewish Chronicle it will come to be seen as one of its darkest and least
glorious chapters.
Pollard immediately
responded
‘Thank you
for your email, which will make a fine addition to my 'delete' folder.’
In other words nothing
that could upset the myth of Israel as the Middle East’s Only Democracy would
be allowed to grace the pages of the Jewish Chronicle, even if it was someone
who was Jewish who had experienced violence or discrimination.
I wrote a blogJewish Chronicle Editor, Stephen Pollard says the blinding in one eye, by Israeli Border Guards of Emily Honchowicz, "will make a fine addition to my 'delete' folder." and to this day I consider Pollard, who learnt his trade under the pornographer and one-time owner of the Daily Express, Richard Desmond, as the human equivalent of dog waste. A man without a single redeeming feature.
Emily, in a fascinating interview
with Democracy Now, described
how she was cared for and looked after by Palestinians, despite their
many worries, exploding the myth that Palestinians are gripped by a fatalistic
and obsessive anti-Semitism. (see above)
In the pre-Pollard era the letters columns were relatively open
Emily came across in the interview as a wonderful and likeable girl who
was trying to put her experiences behind her whilst displaying empathy and
understanding for the Palestinians of Nabi Saleh
Pollard, who
looks every bit as detestable as he is, proved that when it comes to the
Zionist press in this country, lies and deceit always trump honesty and truth.
The tragedy is that too many Jews are too blind to see that they being conned
by a narrow Jewish nationalism that at the current time is perpetrating genocide in Gaza.
Instead many
Jews whine about a non-existent ‘anti-Semitism’, whilst keeping company with
vile racists like Suella Braverman and then wonder why it is that some people
assume that Jews and Genocide go together.
So no, I
shall not be contributing to the Jewish Chronicle anytime soon. The sooner it
dies the better for everyone but especially Britain’s Jews.
As for
Stephen Pollard, I am reminded of the last stanza of Bob Dylan’s masterpiece, Masters of War:
And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead
Tony
Greenstein