6 questions pour Le Roi Stephen Pollard..

Most readers of the Chronicle know the score by now, I mean surely no one reads this paper without realising it is far and away the most leftist/dovish/liberal Jewish rag available?

That said, I confess even I was a tad surprised they would refer to terrorist killers as "militants". Don't expect an answer on this any time soon.

The JC - leftist / dovish / liberal?!

Sorry Akiva - Purim was yesterday.

hilarious, exactly what i was thinking Ben.

Unless you consider leftist/dovish/liberal to mean total unwavering support for Israel policies, and a failure to ever be critical

Ben Abuyah - Your reading comprehension is astounding. "The MOST leftist/dovish/liberal Jewish rag available" isn't an opinion, it's a fact.

ibrows - Which planet can I get the Jewish Chronicle you read on, seriously? The JC is frequently critical of Israel, it's own editor having a penchant for ripping off it's politicians (especially if they are on the right). That's hardly the point however, any Jewish publication that refers to Hamas terrorists as "militants" is placing itself in the same category as the BBC and The Guardian, ie, is not favourable to Israel or reality.

Ben and iBrows you are absolutely right. But beware, Akiva and BD are none other than Avraham Reiss, formerly of this parish, who has been adopting many strange aliases since being offed. Ignore him. He'll go away eventually.

BD, I don't much like ad hominem attacks - and I can't understand your perception of Stephen Pollard (the best JC editor for years imho) as a dovish lefty. I do think the JC's use of "Hamas militant" and "Hamas official" to describe a man who was reputedly responsible for the murders of two IDF soldiers a tad eyebrow-raising, though.

moshetzarfati2 - Sorry to disappoint, but I'm neither BD nor Avraham Reiss. I'm one of the (shock) large majority of the UK's Jews who are Orthodox, Zionist and who find calling a Hamas murderer a "militant" as an affront to common sense.

Akiva, as my teenage son would say: Yeah…right…whatever. For a start, the majority of UK Jews is neither Orthodox nor Zionist. At a stretch, the majority of synagogue-going Jews in Britain might be described as Orthodox and/or Zionist, but the majority of Jews couldn't really give a monkey's about Orthodoxy or Zionism. Both are minority sports.

The majority of "Jews" couldn't give a monkeys about Jews or being Jewish (which this paper caters for), so your point is moot.

EDIT: That said, some of your comments around here lately demonstrate quite well you really don't give a monkeys about being Jewish either.

Akiva, why "Jews" in quotation marks? Are you an arbiter of who is a Jew? Could you please enlighten us as to who is a Jew (pace Akiva)?

You're rather good at conveniently overlooking the point. My previous statement had nothing to do with whether someone is a Jew and everything to do with whether they care that they are.

Liberal Jews are still Jews, but that doesn't change the fact that a substantial amount of them care as little about the Jewish people and being Jewish as they do Halacha. Of course you get the Jews who subscribe to the "self-hating" brand of Jewishness (such as yourself) but that's another story.

All in all, the JC would do well to remember that most of it's Jewish readers would be offended to read a Hamas murderer, who has killed our kith and kin, described as a "militant" ala BBC/The Guardian.

Halachah is an ancient legal system that was great for a nomadic desert tribe, but not really relevant to today.
And I hate to break it to you, but secular Jews are in the majority and they have far more bigger fish to fry and worry about than halachah.
Now, you can bandy about allegations of self-hating as much as you want, but to be honest, it's just a neat device to avoid discussing the issues at hand. It's a bit like those of the "Israel-can-do-no-wrong" brigade who attack everyone who criticises Israel as an anti-Semite while citing some unadopted and nonsensical "working definition". It's a great dodge. But that's all it is.

You present a very convincing and clinical argument demonstrating conclusively why intermarriage, assimilation and general apathy is causing each generation of non-orthodox Jews to have less and less Jewish identity.

Let the secular Jews fry their big fish, ignore the eternal commandments of HaShem and pretend like holding Israel to unfair and unparalleled standards isn't anti-semitism. The statistics show they won't be chirping long.

So, Moshe, you know for a fact that most Jews couldn't give a monkey's" about Israel. With the exception of the lefty as-a-Jew brigade and, as Akiva says, some of the Liberals, who seem to assume they are back in the Weimar Republic, I don't believe that this is so, though the Guardian and Al Beeb would doubtless wish it were.

Akiva, you are confusing Orthodoxy with Jewish identity. Secular, Reform, Conservative Jews have ways of celebrating the Jewish part of their identity no less than the Orthodox. To suggest otherwise is to take a negatory stand towards other Jews. What you do not seem to understand that there are far more strands to one's self than one's religious or ethnic identity.

Yvetta, most Jews in this country, Guardian/Indy and Torygraph/Daily Mail readers alike, don't belong to a synagogue -- let alone an Orthodox one -- can't read Hebrew, can't read a siddur, don't do any tzadaka work, don't keep kosher and don't simulate "outrage" when Israel is criticised. They are first and foremost English (or Scottish or Welsh or even Northern Irish) and like the vast majority of their non-Jewish counterparts avoid religion at all costs.

Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Moshe?
Have there been definitive recent studies of shul-membership/attendance, siddur literacy, etc in this country?

Yvetta, the Board of Deputies and JPR reports say that there are 90,000 synagogue members in the UK, including about 30k Haradim. That means there are about 180k Jews -- the vast majority out of 280k Jews in the UK -- who are not synagogue members. It's pretty safe to assume that if you are not a synagogue member, the lieklihood that you have any connection with other aspects of Jewish life is slim, especially since the majority of British Jews live in the golden triangle of LB Barnet or in the Ilford area and not in yennevelt like you or me.