Last week, we ran a story revealing that the Pears Foundation had funded an organisation, Forward Thinking, which invited an associate of the 7/7 bombers into Parliament and consistently works to sanitise the image of Hamas.

No one has disputed the truth of our account. This week community leaders have rallied round to support the work of the foundation and take the JC to task for running the story. This is a classic case of shooting the messenger. The undisputed good works of the Pears Foundation are not the issue. The issue is that it funded Forward Thinking. The duty of any newspaper is to report that facts, no matter how inconvenient.