In 2016, the Guardian took down 13 stories from its website after learning that freelance reporter Joseph Mayton fabricated quotes and invented items passed off as facts. The outlet then "resolved to more stringently vet freelancers…and vowed to apply greater scrutiny when sources quoted in articles go unnamed."

The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland, David Baddiel, and Hadley Freeman didn't resign from the Guardian after that row. Yet, all three recently resigned as columnists at the Jewish Chronicle after the outlet cut ties with, and retracted articles by, Israeli freelance journalist named Elon Perry, when it turned out that stories he published containing 'exclusive' accounts of IDF operations, based on access to military intelligence material, were likely fabricated.  The JC assured readers it would introduce safeguards to assure that greater scrutiny would be applied to such articles.

These reports, which the JC took down, include one alleging a document had been uncovered in Gaza proving that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning to smuggle himself and some of the remaining hostages out of Gaza, via the Philadelphi Corridor, to Iran – a claim previously made by Benjamín Netanyahu. Another one of Perry's articles published and then pulled by the JC purported to describe, again, in remarkable detail, the IDF's rescue of Israeli hostage Noa Argamani.

Israeli media outlets had investigated and refuted these claims, which led the JC to conduct its own investigation. Perry also appears to have lied about much of his background. Freedland, a former Guardian executive editor, and now a columnist and podcaster at the outlet, Baddiel, a Guardian contributor, and Freeman, who worked for the Guardian for over 20 years before leaving to take a job with the Sunday Times, citing the outlet's coverage of the trans issue, suggested that it wasn't merely the row over Perry.

As Freedland wrote in his letter to the JC's editor Jake Wallis Simons, while the current scandal brings "disgrace on the publication", the world's oldest Jewish newspaper, it's also, the veteran Guardian journalist complained, illustrative of the fact that the paper has become a "partisan ideological instrument, its judgements political, rather than journalistic."

A letter with a greater lack of self-awareness would be hard to find. To observe that the publication he's been associated with for decades is itself a "partisan ideological instrument" whose "judgements" are "political, rather than journalistic" is a profound understatement. The Guardian, we've demonstrated day after day over the past 15 years, is arguably the most institutionally Israelophobic mainstream English language outlet in the world. The outlet's malign obsession with Israel, most British Jews believe, fuels antisemitism in the country.

Did any of these journalists consider resigning about the Guardian after, for instance, their cartoonist Steve Bell published antisemitic cartoons – particularly one about "Jewish power" that could have appeared in a modern-day Der Sturmer? Did they do any soul-searching when the outlet legitimized the toxic libel that Israel steals Palestinian organs?  Were they at all uneasy about the fact that their outlet endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party in two elections?

Also, how did they feel when the outlet listed, among their worst editorial mistakes over their 200-year history, their early support for the creation of a Jewish state? In other words, even knowing what happened during the Holocaust, and how many more Jews would have been saved had Israel been created earlier than 1948, in retrospect, they would have preferred that the state had never come into existence in the first place!

Finally, did they reconsider their relationship with the Guardian, when, following Oct. 7, the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust, the outlet began cruelly doubling-down on their hatred of Israel, publishing piece after piece that were effectively pro-Hamas?  This includes three pieces approved by editors and published at the outlet that evoked the antisemitic Israel-Nazi analogy.

In fact, one of the first opinion pieces at the Guardian on the Hamas massacre, published on Oct. 11, by Dafna Baram, effectively blamed Israel's treatment of Palestinians for the massacre, and referred to Gaza as a "concentration camp".  The Guardian defended Baram's use of this antisemitic language in response to our complaint, citing the fact that Haaretz commentator Gideon Levy once used the term in reference to Gaza!

Even we wouldn't have thought, we wrote on Oct. 24 about the outlet's early coverage of the war, that even the Guardian, when confronted with a modern-day pogrom where Jewish babies were murdered in their cribs, children tortured and killed in front of their parents, the young and old burned alive by antisemitic death squads, some of whom boasted of how many Jews they killed, and who then decapitated and mutilated corpses, would react by publishing content inciting even greater revulsion towards Israel.

So, how do we explain these journalists' double standards, especially given that all three are Jewish, are proud of their Jewish identity, and have spoken out about antisemitism?

We believe it relates to their (at best) ambivalent attitudes towards Israel. Baddiel, for instance, who wrote a book about antisemitism called Jews Don't Count, calls himself a "non-Zionist," a strange formulation which he defines as not caring any more about Israel's existence than the existence of any other country. About Israel, a country, let's remember, where nearly half of the world's Jews live, he writes, "meh".

In our review of Jews Don't Count, we argued that his unwillingness to explore the connection between hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews qua Jews is a serious failure of imagination and a troubling intellectual and moral abdication.

We believe the decision of Freedland, Baddiel, and Hadley to quit the Jewish Chronicle had more to due with virtue signaling – the desire to maintain their standing within the 'community of the good', where Zionism is considered anathema to progressivism – than real ethical or moral concerns. All three have likely been uncomfortable with the JC's more unapologetic pro-Israel stance in recent years, and uneasy with their association with the JC's Zionist brand. So, the outlet's mistake with Elon Perry presented an opportunity to exit the publication while claiming to be motivated by ethical principle.

Make no mistake: When, as a Jew, amidst the largest surge of antisemitism in recent history, most of it motivated by hatred of Israel, you're more troubled by a mainstream, pro-Israel British Jewish publication – even if it's right of center – than a global media institution notorious for its pathological hostility to the Jewish state and willingness to trade in anti-Jewish tropes, you've, by definition, forfeited the moral high ground.

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"Psychological treatises will one day be written on the moral degeneracy which has taken hold of so many Western minds, which credulously take the word of Hamas, a terrorist organization, as true whilst regarding anything said by Israel, a democratic nation state, as by definition false," wrote Stephen Pollard, editor-at-large of the Jewish Chronicle, in a December op-ed about the atrocious British media coverage of the war.

Among the worst offenders has been Sky News. To cite just a few examples:

Sky News presenter Anna Botting abandoned any pretense of objectivity or even of journalistic curiosity in her hostile interview with Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev in the aftermath of the Al-Ahli hospital explosion in Gaza in October.  Botting was viscerally angered by Regev's denial of Israeli responsibility for the blast, a denial that was of course later vindicated when evidence emerged that it was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that struck the hospital area.

In mid-November, their reporter Mark Stone retweeted someone falsely claiming that 'all ICU patients' died at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza in the aftermath of an IDF raid.  The story was so blatantly false that even the PIJ affiliated Quds backtracked and deleted their tweet which initially made that same claim.

In late November, their International Affairs Editor Dominic Waghorn posted a Tweet suggesting that, contrary to all accounts, Hamas was treating the Israeli hostages well. We've of course since learned that at least some of the hostages have been sexually assaulted and tortured – on top of those who have been murdered by the terrorist group.

Now, let's turn to more recent events.

Within 48 hours of Iran's unprecedented drone and missile attacks on Israel on the night of April 13, which included at least 170 attack drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles, Sky News's international editor, their Middle East correspondent, and one their most high profile presenters effectively came to the defense of the Islamist regime.

Here's Dominic Waghorn, Sky's International Affairs Editor, on April 15:

Worth asking what any of these leaders would have done had a hostile state flattened one of their consulates killing more than a dozen of their nationals. Probably not a drone/missile barrage but some kind of military retaliation surely? pic.twitter.com/YOaX8B9SWA

— Dominic Waghorn (@DominicWaghorn) April 15, 2024

Here's Alistair Bunkall, Sky's Middle East correspondent, also on April 15.

After an Israeli air strike collapsed an Iranian consulate building in Damascus and killed seven Iranian military officers, violating the Vienna Convention.

Sure, Iran's response might have been disproportionate, but this strike was why Iran attacked Israel. https://t.co/pPRXTtdcTX

— Alistair Bunkall (@AliBunkallSKY) April 15, 2024

Here's an interview by Sky presenter Kay Burley with Foreign Secretary David Cameron on the same day

'I would argue that there is a massive degree of difference between what Israel did in Damascus and Iran's attack on Saturday.'

Foreign Secretary @David_Cameron and @KayBurley discuss Iran's response to Israel hitting their sovereign territory in Syria.https://t.co/NebMGlSyAD pic.twitter.com/BO4yOo8Z7o

— Sky News (@SkyNews) April 15, 2024

There are three common denominators to the Sky journalists' words: 1) That Israel struck an Iranian consulate. 2) That this violates the Vienna Convention. 3) That Iran's attack was arguably a legitimate response to the initial Israeli 'provocation' of their strike on the building in Damascus.

1. Was it a consulate?

Though all Sky journalists accept Iranian claims that the building that the IDF hit in Damascus on April 1 was a consulate or some kind of diplomatic facility at face value, that's not the position of the US State Department.  A spokesperson stated, on April 8, when asked about Tehran's characterization of the target hit by Israel, that "It is our position that we are still attempting to answer that question, whether it was a consular facility or not."

As far as we can tell, that's still the US position.

Further, lets remember that at least six of those killed were from the IRGC, Hezbollah, and Syrian militias, or were known terrorists. While Syria reportedly has refused to disclose the identity of seven others who died in the strike, there's no evidence that they were diplomats or ordinary civilians – casting more doubt on the 'diplomatic' nature of the building.

In fact, one of those killed in the strike on IRGC officials, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, was the commander of the IRGC-QF in Lebanon, plays a key role in in providing Iranian-made missiles to Hezbollah, was a member of Hezbollah's Shura Council and, according to Iranian sources, was personally involved in the planning and execution of the October 7 massacre.

Further, Iran's assertion, wrote Israeli journalist Amos Harel regarding "the building's diplomatic status" is "aimed at laying the groundwork in the international arena for the Iranian case that the facility was under Iranian sovereignty, and tantamount to an attack on Iranian soil".

2. Did Israel's attack on April 1 violate the Vienna Convention

An analysis in the Economist ("Why are embassies supposed to be inviolable?", April 9), included the following:

There are exceptions to inviolability under international law, too. The Vienna Convention [on Diplomatic Relations] only refers to the responsibilities of the host state but says nothing about a third-party attack. Also, under the laws of armed conflict, embassies lose their protections if they are used for military purposes. That may mean that the recent strike on Iran's consulate in Damascus was legal; a spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces called the annex that was destroyed a "military building [...] disguised as a civilian building". Iran may try to claim, falsely, that the same is true of Israeli embassies, and that attacks on them would be similarly justified.

A reading of the Vienna Convention can be found here and confirms the Economist's reading of it.

3. Was Iran's attack on Israel justified, as it represented retaliation for the IDF's attack on Iranian 'consulate' in Damascus?

The suggestion that armed conflict between Jerusalem and Tehran only began on April 1st is absurd. Iran, through its proxies – such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, groups which are part of Tehran's so-called 'Axis of Resistance' – has been directly striking Israel nearly every day for the past six months.

Hamas carried out the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians in the country's history, representing the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust, while Hezbollah forces, and assorted other Iranian-backed militias, have bombarded Israeli cities with thousands of projectiles over the past six months – forcing the displacement of at least 70,000 Israelis in the north, killing nine civilians and 11 soldiers while badly injuring dozens of others.

If the Mullahs wanted to, they could have of course prevented Hezbollah and its other proxies in the region from entering the war.

Western observers and reporters observed Matti Friedman, engage in "increasingly ludicrous contortions…guided chiefly by their own politics and imaginations" in order to tiptoe around Islamist extremism in the Middle East while maintaining that "a pocket of Jewish sovereignty on 0.2 percent of the land of the Arab world" represents the greatest threat to peace in the region.

It would be hard to find an outlet that resorts to such moral and empirical contortions in an effort to reach their desired anti-Israel conclusions more often than Sky News.

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Kenneth Stern, who helped write what is now known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, naturally has every right to oppose President Donald Trump's executive order last week requiring universities to consider IHRA when assessing if, per Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Jewish students' rights have been violated.

However, Stern, who was the anti-Semitism expert for the American Jewish Committee for 25 years, does not have the right to dishonestly frame support for Trump's order as exclusively coming from the Jewish "Right," as he did in a Guardian op-ed published on Dec. 13 titled, "I drafted the definition of anti-Semitism. Right-wing Jews are weaponizing it."

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"Starting in 2010," Stern writes, "right-wing Jewish groups took the 'working definition', which had some examples about Israel (such as holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of Israel, and denying Jews the right to self-determination), and decided to weaponize it with title VI cases."

He goes on to state that "As proponents of the executive order like the Zionist Organization of America make clear, they see the application of the definition as 'cover[ing] many of the anti-Jewish outrages … frequently led by … Students for Justice in Palestine, including … calls for "intifada" [and] demonizing Israel.' As much as I disagree with SJP, it has the right to make 'calls.' That's called free speech."

Anti-Zionists, wrote Stern, have the right to free expression, especially on campus.

"I'm a Zionist. But on a college campus, where the purpose is to explore ideas, anti-Zionists have a right to free expression."

Stern's message is clear: The ones "weaponizing anti-Semitism" are right-wing Jews, such as Kushner, and right-wing Jewish groups, like ZOA.

However, he fails to mention that Trump's executive order was enthusiastically embraced by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), one of the oldest Jewish advocacy groups in the country, and an organization that nobody with any knowledge of the US Jewish communal landscape would describe as "right-wing" – and where, as we noted, Stern himself worked from 1989 to 2014.

In response to Trump's executive order, the AJC issued a press release, in which AJC CEO David Harris stated that the "American Jewish Committee (AJC) welcomes President Trump's Executive Order to strengthen efforts to combat anti-Semitism on college and university campuses. We trust that a careful application of this directive will enable university administrators to avoid running afoul of free speech protections as they seek to root out anti-Semitism on their campuses."

The situation of Jewish students at America's universities, writes Harris, is "most worrisome." Citing a recent AJC survey on anti-Semitism in the US, Harris notes that "nearly half of those between the ages of 18 and 29 have been victims of anti-Semitic acts over the past five years, compared to just over a third of American Jews overall. More than a third of Jewish young people said they either had experienced anti-Semitism on an American college campus themselves or know someone who has."

With regard to the issue of free speech, Harris states explicitly that the AJC does not view Trump's order as designed to suppress criticism of Israel:

"AJC does not consider the [executive order], or longstanding Department of Education guidance, to be designed to suppress rational criticism of Israel or its policies, and we will speak out against any attempt to do so. AJC also recognizes that there will be hard cases where it will be necessary to decide whether the speech in question is constitutionally protected or not.

"To date, though, responses to anti-Semitism on many campuses have often fallen short, leaving Jewish students vulnerable. Existing federal policy has not been fully enforced and today's order merely gives Jews what other groups have long enjoyed – the right not to be subject to a hostile environment on campus. There is nothing inconsistent with protecting freedom of expression and providing Jews the same protections accorded other minorities."

Another US Jewish group which can't possibly be described as "right-wing" – and that in fact is frequently quite outspoken in its opposition to Donald Trump – and that supported the executive order is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the largest and arguably most influential Jewish group in the country.

Here's the passage of ADL's press release which specifically refers to IHRA:

"Today's announcement that the US will adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism is an important step acknowledging the growing concern about anti-Semitism on American college campuses."

Support for the order also came from the American Jewish Congress and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (the umbrella group comprising 51 US Jewish organizations).

Moreover, if anything is routinely "weaponized" it's the term "right-wing," which is often cynically used – by The Guardian, among others – to discredit arguments about Jews and Israel that aren't approved of by the Left. As even Nicholas Watt, The Guardian's former chief political correspondent, once acknowledged: "Quite often on the Left, the term right-wing is just used to mean 'bad.'"

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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