Remember how the Board of Deputies was forced to pay out a large sum to Interpal, after falsely accusing the Palestinian charity of funding terrorism? Presumably right-wing journalist Stephen Pollard has forgotten.

Commenting on George Galloway’s participation in the Big Brother reality TV show, Pollard writes: “Interpal, his ‘designated charity’ is described by the US Treasury as a ‘Hamas-related charity’ and has been listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. So a vote for Galloway is, quite literally, a vote for terror.”

Stephen Pollard’s blog, 15 January 2006

Update:  A new post (dated 18 January) on Pollard’s blog reads: “You might notice that a posting from yesterday on Interpal is no longer up. I removed it after a few minutes (although I understand that it remained visible for a little while afterwards). It concerned its nomination by George Galloway in the Big Brother programme. I want to make clear that the charity operates as an entirely legitimate organisation for the relief of suffering and no evidence has ever been produced to suggest otherwise.”

This defence is, to put it mildly, full of holes. Pollard posted his comment on “Big Brother’s terror drive” on 15 January, and we didn’t post on it here till 17 January, so the libellous attack on Interpal and Galloway had been online for two days by then. The original post contained the phrase “a vote for Galloway is, quite literally, a vote for terror”. Pollard’s initial response was not to remove the post but to amend it so it read “a vote for Galloway is, quite literally, a vote for an organisation described by the US government as terrorist”, and the title was changed to  “Big Brother’s warped fundraising” (see here). This version still hasn’t been removed from Pollard’s site.