Jewish Chronicle: Kandel Light
NEW INFORMATION has emerged about the role of lawyer Jonathan Kandel in the Jewish Chronicle.
The paper recently announced that he is a person with “significant control”.
There has been speculation that Kandel is a figurehead.
Could the American billionaire Barry Sternlicht be the real owner of the Jewish Chronicle?
A few days after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 last year, Sternlicht organised a multi-million pound campaign group to help Israel “get ahead of the narrative” on its invasion of Gaza.
A Press Gang investigation has found links between Sternlicht and Kandel.
Connections
WHAT’S THE evidence that Sternlicht might be the ultimate owner of the Jewish Chronicle with Jonathan Kandel as his frontman?
It starts with the fact that Kandel was part of the original consortium that took over the paper in 2020.
It soon became clear that the group — which included major figures in British politics, journalism and finance — were not the real owners.
Kandel is independently wealthy — he lives in a £6m house in Hampstead, London — but the sums of money needed to buy and run the loss-making Chronicle probably exceed £10m.
The second clue is that, at the time of the purchase, Kandel was a tax and private equity lawyer with the London solicitors Kirkland & Ellis.
One of their major clients was the American private investment company Starwood Capital.
Starwood Capital, based in Miami, manages investments worth $115 billion.
Its co-founder and chief executive officer is Barry Sternlicht.
The American magazine Forbes estimates his net worth at $2.8 billion.
In 2017 it was reported that Sternlicht was a “self-described Trump friend and golf partner”.
Over the years Kirkland & Ellis have acted for Starwood in deals worth billions of pounds. Kandel was involved in many of them.
In February 2024, for example, the firm were the lawyers representing Starwood in an $850m investment in the Irish company, Echelon Data Centres.
Just before the deal was made public, Kandel left Kirkland & Ellis.
Last month the Guardian reported that Kandel’s LinkedIn entry said he had joined Starwood Capital as a senior consultant.
The third clue lies in the fact that when Press Gang checked Kandel’s current entry, it said he works for a business called Beechwood Consulting — and has done so since he left Kirkwood & Ellis on 31 January 2024.
There is no mention of Starwood Capital anywhere in the entry.
On Friday, a spokesperson for Starwood told Press Gang that Kandel
… is a consultant to a firm that serves as a consultant to Starwood.
You will need to ask him when he joined that firm as I am not sure on the answer to that.
He added:
… neither Starwood nor Barry {Sternlicht] are associated with this [Jewish Chronicle] investment in any way.
Kandel and Jewish Chronicle editor Jake Wallis Simons did not respond to our emails.
Face The Facts
BARRY STERNLICHT is a staunch supporter of Israel and its invasion of Gaza.
A few days after the Hamas attack on Israel, he sent an email to wealthy individuals worth over $500 billion.
He wanted donations to fund a campaign called Facts For Peace to “get ahead of the narrative” on Gaza:
Public opinion will surely shift as scenes, real or fabricated by Hamas, of civilian Palestinian suffering will surely erode [Israel’s] current empathy in the world community.
Sternlicht’s plan was to create a media blitz to “define Hamas” as “not just the enemy of Israel but of the United States”.
The Facts For Peace website supports Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Democracy dies in darkness
THE EVIDENCE presented in this article is circumstantial.
It’s possible that Kandel’s connections with Starwood and his bid to cover up his involvement with the company are nothing more than coincidences.
The magazine Prospect, for example, has speculated that another potential owner might be the American billionaire, Paul Singer. Singer also denies involvement.
There are many other pro-Israel billionaires who could have bought the paper.
The editor of Prospect, former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, explained why the ownership of the paper should be declared:
It’s hard to see why bailing out a newspaper should be a secret — and there lots of reasons why it shouldn’t be.
The Leveson Inquiry in 2011-12 did its best to work out how assorted owners and proprietors attempted to influence the news.
It didn’t get very far — but at least it was working with real faces and real names.
He added:
‘Democracy dies in darkness’ runs the slogan of one venerable American newspaper [the Washington Post]. It’s odd that a venerable British newspaper should choose to avoid the light.
If Sternlicht is the owner, then it raises an intriguing question.
Despite the seriousness of the Elon Perry scandal, there appears to have been no personal repercussions for Jake Wallis Simons.
Simons hired a freelance journalist and published a false biography of him.
This false biography is a breach of the accuracy provisions of the code enforced by the Chronicle’s regulator, Ipso.
Simons published a series of articles written by Perry culminating in one that senior Israel officials, as well as the Israeli Defence Forces, said was fabricated and designed to bolster Benjamin Netanyahu.
Simons sacked Perry but the damage was done — some of the paper’s high-profile columnists, including Jonathan Freedland, David Aaronovitch, Hadley Freeman and David Baddiel, resigned from the paper.
But Simons remains the editor, despite previous criticism.
In December 2023 he retweeted a video of a massive Israeli bomb killing scores of Palestinians in Gaza, adding the comment: “onward to victory”.
He later deleted the tweet.
He has also written an article for the right wing Spiked! magazine.
The magazine headlined the piece: “The BBC’s Israelophobia is out of control — its distrust of the Jewish state is bordering on pathological”.
ENDS
Note
This article is part of the series, The Great British Anti-Semitism Scare.
The investigation into the Jewish Chronicle continues. The articles already published are Dark Matter and Elongate.
Unbalanced reporting
TOMORROW MARKS the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel which led to the apocalyptic Israeli Defence Forces’ invasion of Gaza.
This cartoon, by the controversial Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Lutoff, captures the imbalance in the way Palestinians are treated by western media.
It was drawn in 2014.
CORRECTIONS Please let us know if there are any mistakes in this article — they'll be corrected as soon as possible.
RIGHT OF REPLY If you have been mentioned in this article and disagree with it, please let us have your comments. Provided your response is not defamatory, we'll add it to the article.