The Kafkaesque Trial of Allison Pearson
Last updated 3 May 2025
Allison Pearson of the Daily Telegraph gained a huge amount of attention in the media following the visit of two UK police officers to her home on Remembrance Day, 11th November 2024. While I agree that the notion of “non crime hate speech” is absurd, Pearson had the nerve to claim that her contact with police was an attack on free speech and resembled a ‘Kafkaesque’ trial.
I suggest that what is Kafkaesque is the utter failure of Pearson and others to look beyond the Zionist propaganda version of the events of 7 October 2023 to what actually happened on that day, and its historical context. As the great Jewish novelist Franz Kafka wrote in ‘The Trial’:
No', said the priest, 'it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.'
The contentious tweet (or tweets) which Allison Pearson posted were on the subject of the events on and since 7th October 2023 in Israel/Palestine. So what was her position on that topic?
On 8 October 2023 she posted on X that
“Hamas will not be appeased if the West plays nice. Israel is now going to have to wipe out every last one of them in a non progressive manner.”
Then on 22 October 2023 Allison Pearson was one of the most prominent voices in the “October Declaration”, whose signatories were also founding members of British Friends of Israel. Pearson wrote in The Telegraph:
“It’s time to take a stand for civilisation. We must support British Jews and their right to live their lives in this country without fear. Otherwise, barbarism beckons.”
On 7 November 2023 Pearson was the guest speaker at an event
“organised by the National Jewish Assembly (NJA) on the subject of the October Declaration and the formation, last month, of British Friends of Israel. Pearson’s message to the audience was that there is profound outrage among many in the non-Jewish community following the massacre in Israel on 7 October, and that the formation of British Friends of Israel, with many prominent figures in different walks of life in the UK demonstrably proves that British Jews are not alone on fighting antisemitism.
“Gary Mond, Chairman of the NJA, said ‘… it was reassuring to know that the Jewish community has many vocal non-Jewish friends. We are not without supporters, and I am confident that, as the barbaric nature of Hamas and its allies becomes obvious, our support will grow. The NJA looks forward to working with all who champion Israel in the court of public opinion, and Allison’s impressive new group of British Friends of Israel is one important example.’
“Pearson’s cautionary message, that ‘the famous British tolerance is being stretched to the breaking point’ by pro-Palestine protesters, emphasised that their actions have created a profound sense of unease in the country.”
And who is Gary Mond?
“Gary Mond is a British Zionist agitator. He is a Jewish conservative politician … Among Zionist lobbyists in the UK, Mond is distinct in that he has operated among a large variety of UK Zionist groups, acting at times as a coordinator between right-wing and centrist Zionist lobbies.
“Mond is currently the founder and chairman of the National Jewish Assembly (NJA). The UK-based group focuses on the constant intimidation of any group or individual that expresses anything that goes against Israeli national interests.
Other than the NJA, Mond’s other past and present positions include:
Advisory board member of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) since 2007. (Important note: CFI is the main lobby group within the UK’s Conservative Party).
Honorary treasurer of the Jewish National Fund UK and chairman of its charity accounts subsidiary. JNF is another international Zionist lobby focused on accumulating funds for Israeli and Zionist projects worldwide.
Senior vice-president of the Board of Deputies of the British Jews
In July 2024 Gary Mond left the Tory Party after 47 years after it declined to censure Sir Alan Duncan on allegations of antisemitism. Mond said that “the language used against Lord Polak and Lord Pickles is a classic antisemitic trope, namely that of accusing them of dual loyalty and acting for a foreign power [Israel]”.
Note 1: Lord Pickles is not Jewish.
Note 2: Alan Duncan was acquitted:
“At a press conference in Central London, former Foreign Minister Sir Alan Duncan reiterated his support for Palestinian people and announced that he has been cleared by the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) of any wrongdoing following an internal investigation resulting from a baseless accusation of antisemitism.”
It was Laura Dodsworth who initiated the 2023 ‘October Declaration’ in support of Israel against Hamas. On 24 October 2023 she wrote:
“It’s been two weeks since the horrific terrorism of October 7th. Within days, the balance of sympathy in the West tilted rapidly away from the atrocities and towards pro-Hamas sympathies. Antisemitism has skyrocketed here in Britain, which has been a safe home for Jews for hundreds of years.
“A small group of us urgently felt the need to redress the balance and show support to British Jews. The result was the October Declaration… What we all share is the belief that antisemitism has no place in British life and firm solidarity with British Jews.
“Sadly the response to the attacks in some quarters was extraordinary and shameful…. To some academics in the West, Hamas’s blood-soaked pogrom was a fine example of decolonisation.”
Dodsworth wrote about “the worst examples of terrorism I’d ever heard”, giving as evidence a statement from the National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel.
Dodsworth accused the media of siding with Hamas by “quickly replicating Hamas’s false report that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza.”
“On Tuesday 10th October [2023] - just 3 DAYS after the 7th - Israel launched an air strike on the al Ahli hospital in Gaza, a Christian-led hospital run by the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, which has been operating in Gaza since 1882. Medical staff look after all patients, regardless of ethnicity, religion or ability to pay. In peace time, the hospital treats more than 45,000 patients each year. The Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Revd Graham Usher [who is now being mentioned as a possible candidate for Archbishop of Canterbury], was visiting the hospital at the time.
“On his return to the UK the bishop spoke on BBC Radio 5 (17th October, 22:11 GMT) confirming first hand that Israel had hit the hospital on Saturday, destroying the cancer unit. This was the second strike, the first being the previous Tuesday, and when members of the Anglican Church linked to the hospital protested to the Israeli Government the response was ‘We told you to get out.’”
But - continuing Laura Dodsworth’s article:
“The BBC and other media organisations around the world chose to put due diligence and restraint to one side and believe Hamas, an organisation which butchers babies and parades desecrated corpses through the streets.
“The refusal of the media, including our national broadcaster to call Hamas what it is in fact and law – a terrorist organisation – has not helped. This misleads the public and creates a false impression that the state of Israel and a terrorist group are moral equivalents. They are not. It’s also an abominable affront to the dead, the bereaved and those living under the threat of terrorism. It is shameful that the media are being dragged kicking and screaming to call Hamas a ‘proscribed terrorist organisation’. Monsters would be better.”
And more than 6 months later, on 11 May 2024, Laura Dodsworth wrote that
“I am a Zionist. It's not an insult. We should all be Zionists.”
Having read Laura Dodsworth’s book ‘A State of Fear’ during the Covid hysteria, I was very disappointed to see her turn towards virulent denunciation of anyone daring to express dissent from mainstream orthodoxy on the latest round of Israel’s decades-long war against the Palestinians. As a British Jew myself, I resented the fact that interviewers always asked questions such as "Do you accept Israel's right to exist?" and "Do you condemn Hamas as a terrorist organisation?" I'd have hoped that someone who'd written critically about covid propaganda might have spotted Hasbara.
Those who organised the October Declaration show remarkable ignorance by casually equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. In the UK many prominent Zionists, such as Michael Gove, Eric Pickles and Baron Walney (John Woodcock) are not Jewish. And as Whitney Webb wrote in 2019
“The largest pro-Israel organization in the United States is not composed of Jews, but of Christian evangelicals, with a total membership of 7 million, more than 2 million more members than the entirety of the American Jewish community.”
Shortly before the US Presidential Election of November 2024 an article appeared in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz about
“the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank's Project 2025 – a 922-page blueprint outlining conservatives' plans to fundamentally alter the government – and its advocacy for Christian nationalism…. Project 2025 was created [in 2023] after the Heritage Foundation was advised by more than 100 conservative groups over the past several years, with the aim of concentrating presidential power and installing long-desired conservative priorities….
Then in October 2024, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas' October 7 attack, the Heritage Foundation launched Project Esther which is described in Wikipedia as
“a project of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank [founded] to suppress what it classifies as antisemitism. The effort has received support from several evangelical Christian organizations but no major Jewish ones.”
According to the Israeli paper Ha’aretz Project Esther
“depicts antisemitism as inseparable from anti-Zionism. While it calls for a ‘national task force to combat antisemitism,’ it effectively calls for a crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters. The 33-page document's underlying thesis is that ‘America's virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American “pro-Palestinian movement” is part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN)…
“It further says that the purported network ‘seeks to achieve its goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, co-opting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community's complacency.’…
“Project Esther also alleges that ‘anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Jew-haters’ are a threat not just to American Jewry, but to all Americans…. The document suggests how a potential Trump administration would crack down on protesters – something he has promised, notably calling for deporting protesters present in America on student visas and targeting universities' tax-exempt status… In the document, the Heritage Foundation singles out ‘Hamas Support Organizations’ within the network.”
These organizations listed include Jewish Voice for Peace.
Project Esther continues:
“‘The indispensable support network of activists and financial supporters that allows the HSN to succeed in its operations has a parallel goal of eliminating capitalism and democracy … Making common cause with the HSN furthers the goals of these anti-American organizations along with those of America's other enemies. Thus, the HSN poses a threat not simply to American Jewry, but to America itself’”…
“…Another participating organization named by Project Esther is the Philos Project, a pro-Israel group with a stated mission of promoting ‘positive Christian engagement in the Middle East’… Trump's running mate, JD Vance, notably chose a Philos Project commemoration to mark the October 7 anniversary earlier this month. It was one of six evangelical Christian groups to be included in the original task force's announcement out of 12 total organizations.
“Project Esther attacks the American-Jewish community's ‘complacency,’ saying that ‘while a strong, capable element has mustered financial, political and moral support both for the Jewish state of Israel and for efforts to counter academic intolerance [sic] in some select institutions, particularly at the administrator level, significant components of the community remain disengaged…
“Project Esther does not address antisemitism on the right. ‘White supremacists are not my problem,’ Heritage task force leader James Carafano told Jewish Insider about the omission, ‘because white supremacists are not part of being conservative’”.
In March 2025, Jewish Voice for Peace issued a statement “Rejecting Project Esther”:
“The JVP Rabbinic Council is proud to identify as part of the Palestinian Solidarity movement. We welcome and support the Academic Council’s in-depth scholarly response to the malevolent designs of Project Esther, “Rejecting Project Esther: Understanding Christian and White Nationalism as Racism and Antisemitism.”
“Our Torah teaches us that safety and security are found in the collective protection of those most vulnerable. The genocide in Gaza; violent attacks and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank; and repression of Palestinians’ rights within the 1948 borders of the State of Israel, policing even their right to read about their own history, are all egregious violations of our deepest moral values. These heinous actions do not, and will never, protect Jews as Project Esther disingenuously claims. Our own government’s proposed move toward full liquidation and occupation of Gaza is but a preview of the violent ends of these plans. Any claim that violence against Palestinians is necessary to protect Jews is itself antisemitic, hijacking us in opposition to our own core commitments to the work of pursuing justice. There is no possible justification for the violence Israel has, and continues to, inflict on Palestine.
“We do not and will not accept the claim that the right-wing Christian Heritage Project represents us. As Jews, we advocate for ourselves.
“No religion, including Judaism, speaks in a single voice. We reject the false conflation of anti-Zionism, or the Palestinian national struggle, and antisemitism; we condemn those who question the Jewishness of anti-Zionist Jews like ourselves. Jewish anti-Zionism, as our colleagues point out, has been a political stance rooted in Jewish humanistic and rabbinic traditions since well before the establishment of the State of Israel.
“The story of Esther, a diasporic Jewish woman who rose to a seat of great power in historic Persia, is our inheritance. It is our right to join the unbroken chain of thousands of years of Jewish interpretations of this story, in line with our rabbinic ancestors.
“We resonate with the academic council’s vision of Esther as a wise political and spiritual leader who skillfully navigated gendered and sexualized institutions. Her bravery enabled the survival of the Jewish people against powerful men who sought our destruction. We see echoes of those oppressors, Haman and his ilk, in the Christian Zionist authors of Project Esther.
“As our colleagues suggest, we cast our lot with Queen Esther, a woman who lived among other peoples, not apart from them. Antisemitism is not a separate “international conspiracy” but one bigotry among many within white supremacy, all of which we must fight together across lines of difference.
Like Esther, we are not afraid.”
As this statement by JVP asserts, from its beginning in the late nineteenth centuryb Zionism has been opposed - especially in its political, ethno-supremacist forms - by many Jews, and that is very much the case today. Jewish individuals and organisations participate in demonstrations against the current genocide in Gaza, the violent expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, and the bombing of civilians in Lebanon.
Jews have written and spoken extensively about the history of Zionism. Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, a professor at Exeter University, is the author of "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine", documenting in horrific detail the atrocities committed by Zionist terrorists during the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel when “over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred, and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint.”
The continuation of Israeli terrorism and atrocities over subsequent years has been widely documented, including by Norman Finkelstein in Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom. Finkelstein’s own family were wiped out in the Holocaust.
And in 2009, during one of Israel’s bombing campaigns, the British Jew Sir Gerald Kaufman, formerly a lifelong Zionist, declared in Parliament that Israel was "acting like Nazis in Gaza".
When Allison Pearson made her initial post on X on 8 October 2023, among the replies was a link to a post from Israel by Efrat Fenigson @efenigson, who put the same content on her blog:
“Oct. 7th, 2023, This is Efrat Fenigson, and I’m here to share an update from Israel-Hamas War which started this morning.
I’m going to share some key details and concerns, mostly based on Israeli citizens’ voices from the ground, and on official statements.“This morning, around 6am, sunrise, Hundreds of Hamas terrorists, at least 300, breached the border fence in multiple places, completely unimpeded, leading to terror attacks and kidnappings in Israeli towns or villages.
“Apparently Israeli Defense forces that were supposed to be around Gaza were placed around the West Bank because of security concerns so the Gaza envelope was left unoccupied with military.
“Mainstream media apparently admits that IDF spokesperson is forbidding to tell the complete truth, highlighting a lack of transparency. Only now, 6pm Israel time, 12 hours after the event started, we received the first formal announcement from IDF spokesperson..
“A year ago there was a military operation in Gaza to prepare for such events, and ongoingly there are trainings for these kinds of scenarios. This raises serious questions about Israeli intelligence. What happened?
“Two years ago there was a successful deployment of underground barriers with sensors - to alert terrorists breaches. Israel has one of the most advanced and high tech armies, how come there was zero response to the border and fence breaching??
“I served in the IDF 25 years ago, in the intelligence forces. There’s no way Israel did not know of what’s coming. A cat moving alongside the fence is triggering all forces. So this??
What happened to the “strongest army in the world”?
How come border crossings were wide open??
Something is VERY WRONG HERE, something is very strange, this chain of events is very unusual and not typical for the Israeli defence system.”
On 6th December 2023 the British investigative journalist Iain Davis wrote a long, detailed and balanced analysis of the Al-Aqsa Flood event of 7th October 2023, including evidence that the Israeli authorities were pre-warned but chose to allow the incursion (sacrificing many Israeli lives) in order to justify a pre-planned genocide in Gaza.
The immediate stories that on 7th October 2023 Hamas slaughtered 1400 Jews, beheaded 40 babies, threw a baby in an oven, and raped women in ‘the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust’ were Hasbara (propaganda): all these allegations have been withdrawn or disproved. It has been acknowledged in Israel itself that many and perhaps most of the deaths on 7th October were inflicted by the IDF. By December 2023 video evidence including interviews with Israeli army officers documented that mass killings were inflicted by tank shells and helicopter gunships
On 29 April 2024 Boltzmann Booty published a long and meticulously documented piece on Substack:
“In this post I argue that Israel intentionally provoked and facilitated the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023 to create a pretext for its ongoing US-backed ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza. Israeli officials knowingly pushed Hamas toward violence with a series of inflammatory actions and statements while the IDF amassed a mountain of detailed, concrete intelligence that Hamas was planning a major cross-border multisite massacre and hostage-taking operation.
“The IDF left the Gaza border unusually vulnerable and allowed an enormous festival to take place undefended in an area of maximal danger despite multiple warnings from inside and outside the security apparatus. During the attack, a large and indeterminate number of Israelis were killed by the IDF under official orders to prevent the kidnapping of hostages no matter the cost (the Hannibal directive).
“Almost immediately, Israeli officials fabricated a series of allegations of grotesque atrocities supposedly committed by Hamas, including systematic mass rape and targeted mass beheadings and burnings of infants. Since then, the events (real and fake) of October 7th have served as public justifications for the actions Israel has taken to achieve its long-standing goal: the elimination of the Palestinian people.
On 7 October 2024 - the first anniversary of the Hamas incursion - Asa Winstanley published a detailed summary of the evidence that “Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October”. Later Winstanley reported that this was confirmed by Yoav Gallant:
“Israeli troops were ordered to shoot and kill captive Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, Israel’s then defence minister admitted. The order to carry out Israel’s so-called Hannibal Directive was issued ‘tactically’ and ‘in various places next to Gaza, Yoav Gallant told Israel’s Channel 12.”
Yet on 12 November 2024, Tim Black in Spiked Online condemned Gary Lineker for expressing sympathy towards the many thousands of women and children who have been victims of Zionist genocide for over 13 months. Black wrote that “the genuinely Nazi-like Hamas butchered and raped Israelis on 7 October” and condemned Lineker for “endorsing a tweet accusing Israel of ‘genocide’ for defending itself.”
On 18 November 2024 Jon Sopel of The News Agents podcast, posted on X:
“A word on @AllisonPearson free speech row and what she describes as a ‘Kafkaesque’ threat to it. Today on @TheNewsAgents we asked her to appear. She said ‘No. And if you get any aspect of the story wrong my lawyers will be watching.’ You gotta love a free speech warrior.”
Pearson has named her solicitor as Luke Gittos. He is the Legal Correspondent of Spiked Online.
On 21 November 2024 Our Fight UK and British Friends of Israel held a public meeting: their main argument was that “to defend civilisation's gains, we need to stand with Israel--the only country prepared to fight for its values.” Pearson shared the platform with Mick Hume, “launch editor of Spiked Online from 2001… He worked in communications for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party (2019) and for Reform UK in the 2024 General Election”.
The report of the Our Fight meeting states:
“The packed audience was a mix of Jews, Israelis, non-Jews, and non-Israelis, all united by the concern that anti-Semitism is on the rise, and that rise is a problem for us all…. We realised very soon after 7.10 [7 October 2023] that the main language of anti-Semitism today is against Israel and is anti-Zionist. But that understanding soon segued into a further realisation that the values many people are struggling to defend in the West are the very values that Israel is demonstrating in its existential wars.
“It is humbling to witness a society that has family, service, loyalty and nation at its centre, fighting to defend those ideals. And we felt that persuading people that Israel is on the frontline in the fight for civilisation–and so an ally, not a pariah–would be key to stemming the growth of anti-Semitism and the influence of the newly energised Islamoleft…”
The repeated mention of “civilisation” by these British groups and individuals is somewhat similar to that of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nomination as “the least qualified nominee for Defense Secretary in American history”, author of the book American Crusade in which “he compared modern-day ‘American Crusaders’ to Christians who ‘pushed back the Muslim hordes’ in the 12th century.”
Writing about the start of the First World War in 1914, Macgregor and Docherty write that
“Propaganda … was a powerful morale builder especially when it successfully justified the reasons for war, and … reassured people that they were fighting a holy war in a noble crusade for civilization. Propaganda is also a vicious master, for it seeps into the unconscious and lasts beyond its intended life-time. Propaganda can become the accepted version of events when it is represented as truth even one hundred years on.”
(Macgregor, Jim; Docherty, Gerry. Prolonging the Agony: How The Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-and-a-Half Years. (p. 33). Trine Day. Kindle Edition. )
On crusades, Michel Chossudovsky has written that
… the Crusades of the 11th to 14th Century are often presented as “a series of military-religious expeditions made by European Christians in the hope of wresting the Holy Land from the infidel Turks” their real objective had little to do with religion. The Crusades largely consisted, through military action, in challenging the dominion of the Muslim merchant societies which controlled the Eastern trade routes. And today the West’s “Crusade” in Central Asia and the Middle East is actually a Battle for Oil and Natural Gas.
More than a year after 7 October 2023, supporters of Israel are still blind to the truth of what really happened on that day and the IDF actions which have followed. The report of the Our Fight meeting continues:
“We saw the notion of truth spurned by everyone from newspapers to broadcasters, from trade union motions to international courts, with accusations of genocide, starvation, and civilian targeting–all of which would collapse under the most cursory of glances, were anyone to take the trouble to look…
“This first meeting has put down a marker, and sent a message to all those who think they can win the battle to isolate Israel, that there are people in Britain who know it is they who are civilisation's enemies, and Israel is our ally in its defence.”
These groups, of which Allison Pearson is a founder member and public figure, are active mounting counter-demonstrations which state that there is no genocide in Gaza. And they insist that the initial accounts of Hamas atrocities on 7 October 2023 are factually correct, even though they have been withdrawn or debunked, even in Israel.
In a piece in The Telegraph on 27th November 2024 Allison Pearson addressed the Essex Police:
“I understand you confirmed which tweet of mine supposedly caused offence and the identity of my accuser to The Guardian. Do you think that was ethical?”
I have found the report in The Guardian on 15th November and it’s worth quoting at length:
“Exclusive: Person who complained tells Guardian that columnist’s ‘Jew haters’ post was inflammatory.
“The Telegraph and Pearson say they are unaware which post caused two officers to knock on her door at 9.40am on Remembrance Sunday.
“But the Guardian believes it has found the post at the centre of the row. It is an alleged retweet by Pearson of a photograph posted several months ago amid heightened tensions over the policing of Gaza protests. It shows a group of people of colour posing with a flag on a British street, flanked by three police officers.
“The photograph angered Pearson, who allegedly wrote a tweet condemning the Metropolitan police: ‘How dare they? Invited to pose for a photo with lovely peaceful British Friends of Israel on Saturday police refused. Look at this lot smiling with the Jew haters.’
“In fact, the picture is from Manchester, sources confirm, and thus the officers pictured are from Greater Manchester police and not the London force.
“The implication that the Muslims pictured are antisemitic and supporting Hamas is undermined by the green and maroon flag they are holding. The flag is used by supporters of the Pakistani political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). It also, rather clearly, has the word ‘Pakistan’ written on it.
“PTI was founded by the former international cricketer Imran Khan, who became prime minister of Pakistan before being deposed and jailed.
“On Friday the Telegraph said Pearson had ‘deleted the post after the mistake was pointed out’.
“The person who complained to the police is not Muslim nor one of those pictured. They are a former public servant with training in criminal law. They wish to stay anonymous, fearing reprisals, especially from far-right elements, but told the Guardian the post by Pearson was “racist and inflammatory” – which she denies.
“They added: ‘Pearson tweeted something that had nothing to do with Palestine or the London protests: she tweeted a picture of two persons of colour holding a flag of a Pakistani political party standing next to some GMP officers … Her description of the two people of colour as Jew haters is racist and inflammatory.
“‘Each time an influential person makes negative comments about people of colour I, as a person of colour, see an uptick in racist abuse towards me and the days after that tweet are no different.’”…..
“The complainant first went to a different force, in April, which passed it on. Essex police initially did not wish to investigate, but then reviewed their decision and decided they should.
“The complainant said: ‘As a former public servant, I was concerned about the tweet that Pearson put out last year so much so that I reported it to the police … I have no political affiliation and will call out racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia when I see it.
“‘This is not a debate about free speech; this is about a journalist who tweeted something false during the height of the tensions in London following the 7 October atrocities.
“‘She could have tweeted an apology stating she was wrong. She didn’t.
“‘I am not a left-wing activist, I am a member of the public shocked by her original tweet, and her recent doubling down is not helping.’
“Neither Pearson nor the Telegraph responded to requests for comment.”
In March 2024 The Telegraph published an article by Jake Wallis Simons, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, which claimed that “Hamas is faking its death figures” and dismissed as lies reports that “Israel is deliberately targeting women and children” in Gaza.
Now a report has been prepared for the Henry Jackson Society by Andrew Fox, ex-UK miliary and now a “disinformation researcher” at the HJS. It claims that the number of civilians killed in Gaza - supposedly compiled by the “Gaza ministry of health” - has been “inflated in order to vilify Israel”. This report has been celebrated by Patrick Sawer and Zoe Strimpel, colleagues of Allison Pearson at The Telegraph, and also in the Jewish Chronicle by its Editor-at-large Stephen Pollard.
The Henry Jackson Society is an intelligence association named after US Senator Henry M. Jackson (1912-1983): “The political philosophies and positions of Jackson, a Cold War anti-Communist, have been cited as an influence on a number of key figures associated with neoconservatism including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle” (architects of the Project for the New American Century PNAC). Jackson spoke on "Terrorism as a Weapon in International Politics" at the 1979 Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism. He attended Bilderberg meetings in the 1960s and was also a member of the more exclusive Le Cercle, “an international coalition of right-wing intelligence veterans, propaganda assets and top politicians” which “since 1968 has met annually in both Washington DC and Europe. Leaked documents indicate that their activities include political subversion, arrangement of arms deals and fraud. Group members evinced great interest in ‘terrorism’ back in the 1970s.”
The Henry Jackson Society (HJS) was founded by a British Sephardic Jew, Dr Alan Mendoza, in 2005. It is described on Wikispooks as “a hard-line militarist strategy think tank, filled with former leaders of intelligence services and deep state operatives, especially connected to Israeli intelligence”.
Mendoza told The Jewish Telegraph that he leads a team of about 20 in Westminster and there are also staff in Cambridge, New York and Los Angeles. Mendoza described the HJS as pro-Israel, not on the basis of religion or nationality but
“it is more about Israel being on the continuum of democratic nations which we in the West know to be fundamental to our societies. Israel faces the same challenges as the West does. It is an embattled nation, so we believe that Israel should be given an easier time”. Dr Mendoza reckoned many had not realised that the Jewish State has a history of dealing with radical Islamism. "Hamas and ISIS are on the same continuum," he added. "They both believe in a caliphate, yet they may differ in how to get there. The more terrorism we face in the West, the more people will understand that Israel is in the same boat.”
Dr Alan Mendoza’s wife, Claudia Mendoza, is head of policy and research at the pro-Israel Jewish Leadership Council.
The Centre for Social Cohesion, founded by Douglas Murray in 2007, became part of the Henry Jackson Society, Murray becoming associate director from 2011 to 2018.
In April 2024 the Jerusalem Post reported that Murray
“was honored with special recognition by President Isaac Herzog and the Diaspora Affairs Ministry for his advocacy on behalf of Israel. A ministry statement acclaimed his ‘notable efforts since the October 7 massacre’….. His contributions include numerous articles, opinion pieces, social media posts, and extensive reporting, all advocating for Israel. ‘He has been a steadfast ally in countless international press interviews,’ the ministry said.”
I find the denial that a genocide is occurring in Gaza - as propagated by the Henry Jackson Society, the Telegraph, and many others - truly disgusting. On 24 December 2024 Jonathan Cook wrote that THREE expert reports - by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and Medecins Sans Frontieres - all conclude that there is a mountain of evidence that Israel is committing genocide. And the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé (now teaching at Exeter University in England) has written:
“The myth that Israel’s supporters around the world continue to embrace and repeat is that Israel’s attack on Gaza was a retaliatory military operation while the current assault on the West Bank is a pre-emptive attack against Iran’s proxies in the region.
“There is another layer to the myth, and that is the claim that Iran is motivated by the same objectives that have informed the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
“This is not a new line of propaganda, of course. Israeli academics, diplomats, and politicians have attempted to Nazify the Palestinians ever since 1948.
“The sinister comparison between the soldiers and citizens killed on 7 October 2023, and the six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis … is a total abuse of the Holocaust memory and, more importantly, an attempt to demonize the Palestinian anti-colonialist resistance, which began back in the 1920s—and will continue until Palestine is liberated.”
On the anniversary of 7 October Ilan Pappé wrote:
“What happened in the past 12 months falls within a much wider historical context, one that stretches back at least to 1948, and I would argue, even to the early Zionist settlement in Palestine in the late 19th century.
Therefore, what we can do as historians is place the past year within the long-term processes that have unfolded in historical Palestine since 1882.”
Update 31 January 2025
On 19 January 2025 the Telegraph gave extensive coverage to the exchange of hostages. Led by Allison Pearson, the paper focused on the release of Israeli women including the British-Israeli dual-national hostage Emily Damari. Pearson eulogizes the reunited Israeli families while labelling Hamas as “monsters” and opining that “far too many Palestinian killers” are being released.
Another released Israeli hostage, Romi Gonen, “was kidnapped as she tried to flee the Nova music festival in a car with friends (all of them murdered)”. It has been shown that these cars with their occupants were incinerated by IDF helicopter gunships.
According to Pearson, on 7th October “Emily told her mum she was petrified. Hamas terrorists had overrun her kibbutz and embarked on a merciless killing spree”. Emily’s mother “suspects that Emily must have met girls who have been sexually assaulted” - but after 471 days evidence is apparently lacking.
“More than 90 hostages still remain in dungeons with the monsters”, held “in appalling conditions” and being “starved by Hamas”.
The problem for “journalists” like Allison Pearson is that some of the released Israeli hostages have spoken publicly of their treatment during 15 months of captivity. For example this:
“I was worried to get r@ped but I was given Hijab to cover my body …. For them women are sacred, women are like Queens ...They first of all told us that they believed in the Quran and they wouldn't hurt us”
And this on Sky News from Tel Aviv:
Reporter: “Why did you shake the hand of a Hamas gunman when you crossed?” Elderly hostage: “Because they treated us very nicely”. Hostage’s daughter: “My mum is saying that they were very delicate and gentle with them ... They seemed really prepared … they had concealed [the tunnel] for a long time, and they took care of all the needs that women have …”
“Former Israeli captive Gadi Moses' son says his dad was treated with respect and lived in the same conditions as his captors. He was provided with books & reading glasses. The thing that scared him the most was Israeli bombardment. Netanyahu rejected his release for 13 months.”
A fitting repost to Allison Pearson and her Zionist associates was written more than 50 years ago by Arie Bober in his Introduction to The Other Israel: The Radical Case Against Zionism, (1972):
“According to the Zionist fairy tale, the state of Israel is an outpost of democracy, social justice and enlightenment, and a homeland and haven for the persecuted Jews of the world. This outpost, so the story goes, though earnestly seeking peace with its neighbours finds itself in a state of perpetual siege because of the greed of Arab rulers, the inherent ‘unreasonableness’ of the Oriental mind and the innate Gentile proclivity toward hatred of the Jews.
"The reality, this book demonstrates, is utterly different. The Zionist state was born in the violent expropriation and expulsion from their country of the Palestinian Arabs, and that process continues today. In open alliance with Western, especially United States, imperialism, and in scarcely hidden collusion with the most reactionary forces in the Arab world, the Zionist state actively sets itself against every step, no matter how faltering, taken by the Arab masses to alleviate the centuries' old misery imposed on them by colonialism and imperialism. Within the territories occupied since 1967, the Zionist state employs a system of direct military repression to expel Palestinian Arabs from their lands and secure Jewish colonization of them, and to crush every expression of Palestinian resistance.”