Following the now infamous Jewish Council of Australia’s fraudulent ad they published in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, those publications have reported how the JCA admits some fake names had “slipped through the cracks.”
Within hours of the ad’s publication, several signatories who appeared on the list claimed they never gave permission for their names to be included. Others claimed the list included an offensive phrase in Hebrew, as well as the names of dead people who were “kapos” – Jewish inmates forced by the Nazis to serve as “stand-in” guards in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
In response, the council said some “offensive and obscure historical references” and false names had “slipped through the cracks”, but they represented a “handful” of the hundreds of signatories.
“We are deeply offended by the fact that racist actors appear to have targeted us in this way through references to Nazis and the Holocaust,” the council said in a statement.
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The council said its members had carried out “a number of review processes in a short time frame to delete duplicates, antisemitic and offensive names which were submitted by malicious actors. We deleted a significant number of names through this process.
“Unfortunately, a handful of names with offensive and obscure historical references, and names of real Jewish people falsely submitted by others, slipped through the cracks,” the statement said.
“Some Jewish people were also included in the list who are genuine signatories, but have the same names as others in the Jewish community. The fact that someone shares a name with someone else, which is common in the Jewish community, should not disqualify someone from signing a petition or writing an open letter in their name.”
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The list of names has since been updated on the council’s website, with about 20 names removed by Tuesday afternoon. The advertisement in question has been removed from the digital edition of Monday’s Herald and The Age.
The council will explore ways to avoid “similar attacks” in future, but said the few “false names should not detract from the large numbers of Jewish people who are deeply offended by Herzog’s visit”.
Missing from the Jewish Council of Australia statement: an admission they lied when they claimed 1000 Jews signed the petition; or that many of the names were those of non-Jewish people; or an apology for including the names of people who deny having signed it – such as David Slade and his wife Tammie:
The names of David Slade, managing director of Slade Pharmacies and president of United Israel Appeal Victoria, and his wife Tammie, were both falsely included in the advertisement.
Slade said he was alerted to their names being included in the open letter when an acquaintance sent him a photo of the ad on WhatsApp.
He said the couple did not endorse or authorise their names to be included on the list, and they supported Herzog’s visit to Australia.
“Fabricating support isn’t activism, it is deception,” Slade said.
“It damages trust and damages community cohesion. We are very unhappy about this.”
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“If they (the JCA) had real support they wouldn’t use fake names.”
He questioned how such a mistake could have occurred, describing it as “very distressing” for Jewish Australians.
Not that we should expect any truth or apologies from this dishonest mob. Despite basically admitting they cannot really check the veracity of the names that are submitted, and having removed 20 fake names, they are still claiming with authority that 1,000 Jews signed the letter:
In other words, the JCA continues to hide behind the “malicious actors” excuse, yet they still cling to the “1,000” figure like a security blanket.
In the world of the JCA, “alternative facts” aren’t just a mistake. They’re the foundation of their entire existence.
