According to the late journalist and farmer, Robin Page, Mark Avery was widely considered a ‘boorish bully’ during his time at the RSPB.
Some also consider him a chauvinist after his vindictive and spiteful attack on award winning curlew conservationist, Mary Colwell, in his review of her book Beak, Tooth and Claw.
Little has been said until now though about his antisemitism and the hotbed of anti-Israel propaganda his website has hosted over the years.
As an outspoken Labour activist, he campaigned for Jeremy Corbyn in the last leadership race and championed him throughout his period as leader, never questioning or criticising the deeply hostile environment he created for Jewish people in the UK and around the world.
However little could have prepared us for the shocking antisemitic and anti-Israeli slurs found scattered across his website, which many readers would find deeply offensive, particularly in light of the developments in recent days. Hamas terrorists have slaughtered hundreds of Israelis, including women and children in their beds, as wells as young adults dancing the night away at a peace festival.
In advance of a Birdwatching trip to Israel in 2016, one reader – Murray Marr commented on his blog: “There won’t be much fun around those illegally fenced off olive groves. Never mind. Your birds can flit back and forth even if the Palestinian farmers can’t.”
The reader then apologised for the comment calling it a bit of a ‘cheap shot’, at which point Mark Avery told him ‘not to worry the comment was fine’.
However, in the same forum things began to rear their ugly head further with some of Mark’s friends using it as an opportunity to further display their antisemitic views.
Paul V Irving, one of Avery’s most regular commentators, said: “Israel is no place for a politically aware birder. There is no difference between the old apartheid South Africa and the current Israel and its illegal occupation and persecution of the Palestinians. When they get off other people’s land and stop blockading Gaza I might, and it’s a big might, change my mind.”
In a subsequent blog, after Avery’s trip to Israel, he writes: “Should I have gone to Israel or should I have boycotted the event as a political protest?” before boasting to his readers: “By the way, I was a drain on the finances of the state of Israel whilst taking part”, as if his presence in the country was in some way an effort to financially harm the country.
In a subsequent blog in 2019, in which Avery criticises former GWCT Communications Director, Andrew Gilruth, after he penned an article reminding readers that raptors are ‘living through a golden age’ [they are, numbers are now higher than at any other time in the last 200 years], one of his readers ‘Spry’ left a shockingly antisemitic comment.
He said: “They [the GWCT] remind me so much of the Israelis and their supporters. Lie upon lie repeated because if they admitted the truth they would be finished. Pure propaganda for the uninformed.”
Now although not all of these comments were written by Avery himself it is important to remember that Avery is the moderator of the website and the person who approves or rejects every comment.
Every antisemitic comment that still sits live across Avery’s website has been read and approved for publication for the world to see personally by him.
It is time the public, and particularly his Wild Justice acolytes within the conservation world, woke up to the horrific views this man deems appropriate to publish to the world.
Mind you, given one of their main funders, Lush cosmetics, this week put up a sign in one of the stores saying: "Boycott Israel", it is sadly unsurprising.