LONDON

“THESE TALL TALES are clearly the product of Israeli Intelligence. And allegations that the paper will be published in *Farsi from next year are clearly black propaganda that can only be coming from sources close to the Netanyahu regime in Israel.”

The words of a Hamas spokesman, as he furiously checked his pager, are the latest in a series of exchanges which have crisscrossed the small publication which has been a focus for Britain’s Jews since 1841. Some readers are not pleased.

“It has the circulation of a student magazine. Why anyone would want to use it as a propaganda platform escapes me,” says Golda from Golders Green. “It’s virtually an in-house magazine. Let’s keep it that way.”

“The Chronicle used to be about matzah bread and Bar Mitzvahs,” says Rabbi Abu Hamshemite, a Palestinian Muslim convert to Judaism, who is a regular reader. “Now it’s all dark arts and morally outraged columnists, whom nobody reads anyway. The Chronicle’s about community and family. It’s about culture and recipes, and … Topol! It was Topol who made me covert, you know. ‘If I were a rich man ….’ We came to England to get away from all that Middle Eastern stuff. You know, maybe I’ll just become a Christian. Church of England. They have no real position on anything.”

*Iranian – ED