Middle East Online is owned by a company and has a number of editors, based here and overseas, who are responsible for content. Nothing published on Middle East Online is exclusive; all of its stories have appeared elsewhere and it does not commission articles. It strives to provide a platform on which a wide range of views on current affairs concerning the Middle East may be aired. By virtue of this, inevitably not everyone will agree with all the views expressed, as is the case for any publication, including the Jewish Chronicle.

The suggestion that it is an anti-Israeli website is untrue and offensive. A number of Jewish or Jewish-Israeli writers have featured on the site. They include a government minister (the Deputy Foreign Minister Majli Wahbeh) and other political figures, university professors and peace activists, rabbis and writers and commentators, such as Alon Ben-Meir, Menachem Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Tom Engelhardt, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Melvin A Goodman and Jeff Cohen. They include writers who have also been published in the Jewish Chronicle. Middle East Online also features stories which are, for example, critical of Iran and other countries, as well as on issues such as the support of interfaith dialogue and the plight of the Yemeni Jews.

A recent example of a positive news story was the call by the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, for Muslims to learn co-existence as a minority in the West from the Jewish experience. This was reported as the main news article throughout the day in Middle East Online/Arabic on 6 November 2009.

Anglo Arab Organisation

The AAO sponsored a dinner earlier this year in support of the Viva Palestina convoy delivering humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. It is not the AAO’s policy to disclose the amount raised.

The AAO is not involved with the new convoy. Mr Auchi is not a funder of Viva Palestina.