Obituary: Geoffrey Paul OBE

The much loved and respected former JC editor Geoffrey Paul, who has died aged 90, wrestled with many angels during his 13 year tenure. Between 1977 and 1990 Paul presided over some of the community’s most turbulent times, but always with diplomatic grace.

At the JC’s 175th anniversary in November, 2016, Paul recalled having been particularly troubled by Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in 1982. His outspoken rejection of Israel’s continued activities in Lebanon had generated an overwhelming backlash from the community. Key personalities threatened to withdraw advertising, encouraging the community itself to stop supporting the newspaper. It was a threat which Paul admitted could have had dire consequences.

In a tribute issue to mark his retirement in August, 1990, the editorial read: “There are not two Geoffrey Pauls, an editor for public consumption, holding beliefs, principles, attitudes that are foreign to the private man, but one man who declares in public the same principles that he holds in private and who, if faced with a clash between a deep sense of outrage and an equally profound sense of responsibility, will find a way of expressing the one without reneging on the other.”

Born in Liverpool to an Orthodox family of East European origin with strong Zionist leanings, Geoffrey’s education was disrupted by the Second World War but he developed a passion for journalism. His first job was on the Denbighshire Free Press from where he moved to the Barnsley Chronicle. As the Arabs attacked the emergent State of Israel, he quit his job and joined the Jewish volunteers. But the fighting stopped and, jobless in London, he was offered work in the Jewish Agency’s public relations department, followed by the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

He spent three years as assistant editor at The Jewish Observer and Middle East Review under the editorship of the fiery and controversial Swiss journalist-historian Jon Kimche. William Frankel, the then JC editor, recruited him in 1958 and he also became the London stringer for The Jerusalem Post, writing under the by-line David Saul.

Paul started as a sub on the JC’s foreign news desk and in 1964 was sent to Israel as foreign correspondent, accompanied by his wife Joy Stirling and daughter Clare. They divorced and he married Rachel Mann, then working as a secretary at Beit Agron, the government press office. They had a son, Joshua. Subsequently he became USA correspondent based in New York.

Back in London he was appointed JC foreign editor and then deputy editor. In 1968-69 circulation figures had peaked at around 63,000 but in the 70s they dropped to a steady 50,000, falling slightly lower by 1989. Paul wanted to reverse this trend by engaging younger talent. As experienced as he was congenial, Geoffrey Paul brought a generous, warm and caring, even avuncular attitude to the paper, treating every journalist with equal respect. He described the collegiate atmosphere as “a family affair”. Under the leadership of this jovial, red-bearded figure with twinkling eyes and a resonant voice, staff relations were generally happy, despite problems with the print unions. In the 1970s the paper replaced its expensive computerised typesetting programme method with an external arrangement which modernised the paper.

Demographic change was another issue to be faced. Between 1970 and the mid 1980s the proportion of religious Orthodox Jews doubled, squeezing out central Orthodoxy and generating readership controversy.

At the same time the rise of the extreme right won the National Front support in local elections in the Midlands and London. This was followed by one of the most dramatic episodes in the paper’s history: Soviet Jewry. Editorials went viral between 1978 and 1986, with the imprisonment of refuseniks and the freeing of Anatoly Sharansky who made his triumphant entry to Israel in 1984.

As editor Paul was also dedicated to restoring the rifts within Anglo-Jewry, deeply polarised by the JC’s role in the Jacobs Affair. The United Synagogue had challenged Rabbi Louis Jacobs, expected successor to Israel Brodie as Chief Rabbi, on his religious views published in his book We Have Reason to Believe. Forced to stand down, Jacobs launched the British Masorti movement.

Under Frankel, the JC had come out in full support of Jacobs. But in 1983 the United Synagogue challenged the validity of Jacobs’ marriages and conversions under Masorti process. According to an analysis by the late historian David Cesarani, Paul declined to take sides, fearing it could re-ignite the row which had torn Anglo-Jewry apart. Instead, he pleaded for calm and diplomacy.

Paul was as deeply concerned with the threats to Israel’s security as he was with the ethics of Israel’s stance towards the Arabs. He placed greater emphasis on Middle East coverage in the early 1980s followed by a link up with the Jerusalem Post press service.

A defining feature of Paul’s editorship had been the JC’s positive response to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s courageous peace initiative in 1977. But in various editorials he stoutly rejected the building of settlements on the West Bank under Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

After Begin won the 1981 elections ethnic tensions flared between Israel’s oriental Sephardim and the European Ashkenazim. Paul was appalled, recalling similar tensions from his time covering the Black Panther movement in 1969-70. He lent critical support to Israel’s difficult journey through its evacuation from Sinai, but wanted no truck with any recognition of the PLO.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982, Paul joined the delegation of Anglo-Jewish leaders flown to Southern Lebanon. The paper wrongly speculated that this incursion would be over soon. When this failed to happen Israel was almost unanimously excoriated by the media, followed by doubts expressed in the JC, too. Was the media biased against Israel? Editorials became defensive. A leader on August 31 said: “There is a terrible unease, an anguish of soul over the loss of civilian lives in West Beirut and the fact that, of whatever awful necessity, they were caused by the Israel Defence Forces.”

Anglo-Jewry became polarised once again. On September 10, 1982 the paper supported the Reagan Peace Plan for the occupied territories. But everything culminated in the Sabra and Chatilla massacre. In his editorial of September 24, entitled End of the Line Paul wrote: “The last remnants of credibility attaching to the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Menachem Begin and his Defence Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, disappeared somewhere into the rubble of the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut over the Rosh Hashanah weekend.” The editorial blamed the Israeli government and called for the resignation of both men. Ignoring a vitriolic readership response, Paul insisted that the occupation of the West Bank had brutalised Israeli society and aggravated social tensions.

Yet while condemning Israel’s increasing right-wing leanings, Paul energetically rejected the contacts between the British Foreign Office and the PLO, refusing to listen to younger, more left-wing voices on the paper who wanted to interview PLO representatives.

When the Palestinian Intifada broke out at the end of 1987, the JC took a more sympathetic stance towards Israel. But when Israel moved to suppress it, the British media once again turned against the Jewish state, forcing the JC into a defensive position.

Consistently fair and judicious on Israel’s morality — Paul condemned media double standards towards other, more brutal regimes. In 1990 Paul took early retirement and moved to America, editing American Affairs from 1991-1996. In 1991 he was made OBE for services to journalism. He returned to the UK and became director of the Anglo-Israel Association in 2001. He is survived by Rachel, Clare, Joshua and brothers Cecil and Bryan.

GLORIA TESSLER

Geoffrey Paul: born March, 26, 1929.
Died August 4, 2019

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