Judgment Approved by the court for handing down. Ismaik v Fadaat Media 50. Turning then to the parties’ claimed meanings, I was able to recognise a measure of agreement between them, and correspondence with my own initial views, to the extent that Mr Ismaik was being suggested to have associated himself with an article promoting political views extreme in nature and contrary to Arab interests; and that these were ‘Zionists’’ views produced with ‘Zionists’’ money. But I thought both parties were proposing more literal and factual content to this allegation, which on my initial reading I thought more thoroughly polemical. And I learned that Mr Ismaik feared it was loaded with imputation in two further respects I had not initially picked up: that he was being accused of having personally betrayed or been disloyal to his country and heritage, and that there was an allegation of false presentation or deceptiveness in what he was said to have done. So I have thought about all these aspects again. But I have also reminded myself not to lose the perspective of the ordinary, reasonable reader who consumes writing like this swiftly and impressionistically before moving on, nor to over-labour the exercise. 51. On the question of whether there is an imputation of betrayal or disloyalty in this piece, Mr Munden, for Mr Ismaik, invited me to make comparisons with some of the allegations made in Rahman v ARY Network [2016] EWHC 3110 (QB), and the conclusions reached at [62] and [73]. He suggests in this case there is an equivalent imputation Mr Ismaik is ‘in bed’ with ‘Zionists’ – the enemies of his country and his people – and has taken funds from them in return for propagandising on their behalf. Closely associated with that is the imputation, he says, that his motives were exclusively mercenary: he allowed himself to be portrayed as articulating an opinion, including on behalf of a section of Palestinian/Jordanian thought, that he and they did not in fact hold; they were the views of ‘Zionist’ others all along. 52. I have reflected on this, and looked again at the article. I keep in mind that an ordinary, reasonable reader can read between the lines and pick up an imputation, and indeed they may be more ready to do so than the average lawyer. But they are not suspicious-minded, or avid for personal scandal. And they are reading an opinionated political comment piece. 53. So I have also kept in mind the piece’s political partisanship, and the background of the Arab-Israeli conflict. That is a long-standing tragedy, freighted with powerful components of mutual grievance in which entire national identities are at stake and which has proved chronically resistant to peaceful progress and workable outcomes around which consensus can be built. Debate about the way forward is characterised by vehemence and polarity, and often reduced to binary simplicities, but at the same time it encompasses issues of considerable complexity and deep historical and cultural significance. An ordinary reasonable reader of this article would not only be familiar with that context in at least broad terms, but can be taken to possess a degree of political awareness of, and familiarity with, its accompanying rhetorical tropes. I have broadsheet readership with an interest in politics in mind. 54. I am not, however, asked to assume that ordinary reasonable readers would necessarily identify completely with this journalist’s world view, or voice. Broadsheet journalism characteristically speaks in a range of political voices, even where it locates its editorial sympathies at one recognisable point or another on any political spectrum. I can infer that Al-Araby’s sympathies do not in general lie with Israeli foreign policy, but I cannot assume its ordinary, reasonable readership possess no critical perspective on an article of this sort. On the contrary, I am confident