Why did the Jewish Chronicle publish fake Israeli intelligence?

This article was originally published in +972 Magazine.

On Sept. 4, Benjamin Netanyahu called a press conference for foreign media in order to explain his stubborn insistence on keeping Israeli forces in Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor, even at the expense of a hostage deal. To his well-worn claim that the Gaza-Egypt border has historically been “porous” to the smuggling of weapons, the prime minister attached a new argument: if the Israeli army is not in control of the area, Hamas could “easily smuggle hostages out … to the Sinai desert,” and from there to “Iran or … Yemen.” After that, he added, “they’re gone forever.”

The following day, the Jewish Chronicle, Britain’s oldest Jewish newspaper, published an exclusive report that brought Netanyahu’s hypothetical argument to life. It purported to reveal evidence from Israeli “intelligence sources” proving not only that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar intended to smuggle out the remaining hostages via the Philadelphi Corridor to Iran, but that Hamas’ surviving leaders in Gaza, including Sinwar himself, would be going with them.

Such a plan, the article stated, “was reportedly revealed during the interrogation of a captured senior Hamas official, as well as by information obtained from documents seized on Thursday, August 29, the day the six bodies of the murdered hostages were retrieved.” It went on: “To Sinwar, the Philadelphi corridor has turned out to be the only option available to fulfill his plan.”

The Jewish Chronicle’s scoop quickly gained traction and was picked up and amplified by a plethora of right-wing Israeli media outlets and influencers, including Netanyahu’s son Yair. On Sept. 9, the prime minister’s wife, Sara, met with the parents of remaining hostages and reportedly told them: “There is no choice with the Philadelphi Corridor — there are reports that [Hamas] will flee to Iran [with the hostages].”

There’s only one problem: the story is totally made up. 

The day after it was published, Israel’s Channel 12 refuted the article’s claims, stating that “all of the relevant sources in the security establishment” are unaware of the supposed intelligence, whether from an interrogation or a written document. Two days later, Ynet journalist Ronen Bergman quoted four sources from Israel’s intelligence community and the Israeli army’s prisoners and missing persons division, who described the Jewish Chronicle’s claims as a “wild fabrication” and stated that no such document exists. Another described it as “one hundred percent lies.” IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari also officially dismissed the story as being baseless.

This wasn’t the only article that raised red flags last week about the spread of fictitious Israeli intelligence. On Sept. 6, an exclusive report in Germany’s most widely read daily newspaper, Bild, purported to reveal the contents of a secret document found on Sinwar’s personal computer in Gaza earlier this year. That document, Bild claimed, contained Hamas’ strategy vis-a-vis the hostage negotiations as approved by Sinwar himself, revealing how the group is “manipulating the international community, [psychologically] torturing the hostage families, and seeking to rearm.” 

Crucially, the report stated, the secret document provides evidence that Hamas does not view reaching a ceasefire to be an urgent priority. According to Bild, the letter contains the sentence: “Important clauses in the agreement should be improved, even if negotiations continue over a longer period of time.”

Remarkably, that story — which was parroted by Netanyahu in an Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday — was also based largely on fabrication. Israeli military sources told Ynet that the army did discover a document in Gaza earlier this year bearing some likeness to the one described by the German newspaper, but it was merely a proposal drafted by a junior operative. Contrary to Bild’s claims, it was not an official strategy document, nor was it penned by Sinwar or any other senior Hamas leader. And as for the line about Hamas being willing to prolong the negotiations — that didn’t appear in the real document at all.

So what on earth is going on? 

The Israeli army seems to be treating the two articles, in the Jewish Chronicle and Bild, as connected, and has opened an internal investigation to try and find the source of the leaks and fabrications. According to Bergman in Ynet, the military suspects that whoever is responsible is seeking to influence Israeli public opinion in favor of Netanyahu, just as mass Israeli protests for a hostage deal threaten to scuttle his attempts to keep the war raging. As a military official with knowledge of the army’s investigation told Bergman definitively: “This is an influence campaign on … the Israeli public … and we are determined to find the person or entity behind it.”

Some in Israel are pointing the finger directly at the prime minister. It is widely inferred that Netanyahu has for months been selectively leaking information to the Israeli media under the guise of a “senior Israeli official,” but this would mark a new stage in his attempts to deceive the public. The divisions in recent months between Netanyahu and the security establishment, including on the issue of the Philadelphi Corridor, have also been well documented. 

“How is it possible that right after the six living hostages came back dead and public outrage grew and the protests intensified, a letter was written that answers all of Netanyahu’s problems?” the veteran Israeli journalist Shlomi Eldar tweeted, referring to the doctored document revealed by Bild. “For half a year, the ‘Sinwar document’ … was waiting on Sinwar’s personal computer for publication? And surely it makes sense that Sinwar sits in a tunnel thinking and thinking and arrives precisely at a document that matches Netanyahu’s slogans?”

“It was clear to me,” Eldar went on, “that this was a leak from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, which is manipulating the foreign press … to further tear apart Israel’s divided society and save Netanyahu from the intensifying protests. The sad bottom line is that this is a well-timed campaign against the hostages’ families.”

Who is Elon Perry?

But the story gets even stranger. The author of the Jewish Chronicle article is a man by the name of Elon Perry, who has published a series of scoops in the newspaper since the war began — including revealing new details about the Israeli army’s recent assassinations of Hamas’ military commander Mohammed Deif (whose death Hamas has denied) and political chief Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza and Tehran respectively. 

Perry’s bio on the Jewish Chronicle’s website states that he served as a commando soldier in Israel’s Golani Brigade for 28 years, that he has 25 years of journalism experience, and that he lectures on the Middle East in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

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.

Except almost none of this is true. An investigation by Hazinor, a program on Israel’s Channel 13, revealed on Sept. 9 that there was no record of Perry having worked at TAU, nor did he participate in Entebbe. What’s more, the photo on his website purporting to show him undercover at a protest dressed as a Palestinian — which he labeled as being from 1992 — was actually taken in 2015.

In what appears to have been a sting interview, Hazinor’s reporter challenged Perry regarding all of these discrepancies. Under pressure, Perry denied having been an undercover operative, despite this claim also appearing in his second book. He also denied having worked at TAU, saying “maybe the publisher got it wrong,” and he denied having participated in Entebbe. When asked why his website claimed otherwise, Perry responded: “I don’t go on my website. I didn’t check it.” 

But the Entebbe claim isn’t only from his website: +972 found that it is also the basis of an article that appeared in Soldiers of Fortune magazine in his name three weeks ago, and was included in the introduction to an interview he gave to the Orthodox Jewish magazine Ami just last week.

Simi Spolter, a tech journalist with Israel’s The Marker, was also suspicious about Perry’s identity and did some digging. Perry’s bio on the Times of Israel’s website, where he wrote two blog posts in 2021, claims that he reported for “several Israeli national newspapers as well as for radio and television”; he also told Britain’s Jewish Telegraph in 2014 that he worked for Maariv — another apparent lie. 

“Personally, I have not found any article or mention of him in the Hebrew media … not in Maariv nor in any [other] media organization,” Spolter tweeted. “Apart from nine articles in the [Jewish Chronicle], all of them from recent months, there is no documented history of Elon Perry as a journalist of 25 years.”

In his exposé for Ynet, Bergman further revealed that it is not just Perry’s latest article in the Jewish Chronicle that contains falsehoods, but also the one that preceded it: an Aug. 28 report titled “The real reason Hamas can’t free the remaining hostages.”

Again citing unnamed “intelligence sources,” Perry claimed that Hamas is currently holding only around 20 of the roughly 100 Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza — many of them allegedly handcuffed in the vicinity of Sinwar — and that the rest are in the possession of other militant groups, hence delaying a hostage deal. But an officer in the Israeli army’s prisoners and missing persons division told Ynet that the army knows such claims to be “bullshit.” 

To those familiar with the Jewish Chronicle’s coverage in recent years, revelations that it has published inaccurate and politically motivated reporting will not come as much of a surprise. Following a murky takeover in 2020, the paper’s output and editorial tone — which was already right-wing — has become increasingly sensationalist under the stewardship of editor Jake Wallis Simons, who is a frequent guest on Britain’s biggest news and politics shows. But these revelations point to something far deeper than straightforward partisanship and a bit of sloppiness. 

Serious questions remain over what the Jewish Chronicle knew or didn’t know about Perry’s fake identity, as well as how much both the British newspaper and Bild were aware of the apparently deceitful origins of the intelligence that their reports presented as fact. Even if they weren’t, there is no excuse for both newspapers failing to do basic verification prior to publication. The result, whether wittingly or unwittingly, was to gift Netanyahu the perfect silver bullet to continue staving off public and international pressure for a hostage deal that would end the war. 

The Jewish Chronicle and Elon Perry did not respond to +972’s requests for comment.

This article was originally published in +972 Magazine. Since then, the Jewish Chronicle has released a statement announcing an investigation into Elon Perry, and Perry has deleted some of the references to Entebbe and the mista’arvim from his website.

Ben Reiff is a senior editor at +972 Magazine and a member of the editorial collective at Vashti Media.