Tag Archives: Corrections

May 28 2013

CiF Watch prompts Guardian correction to report on Palestinian prisoners

On April 10, we commented on a Guardian report by Harriet Sherwood, titled ‘John Kerry: talks with Netanyahu and Abbas very constructive‘, about efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.  Sherwood’s report included several passages about concessions demanded of Israel by Mahmoud Abbas before he’ll agree to resume negotiations, including the following:

[Abbas] also wants the release of 123 political prisoners who have been in jail since before the Oslo accords were signed almost 20 years ago, and for Israel to present a map showing proposed borders. [emphasis added]

As we attempted to demonstrate at the time, using merely open source information, the Palestinians she was alluding to were all convicted for their involvement in murder, or attempted murder, and that the characterization of them as “political prisoners” – suggesting that they were imprisoned merely for their beliefs – seemed to be flatly untrue. 

Additionally, some time after our post CiF Watch was able to obtain detailed information on the pre-Oslo prisoners from Emi Palmor, the Director of Pardons at the Israeli Justice Ministry, which included the crimes, dates of conviction and other relevant facts on every Palestinian prisoner in question.   Palmor’s information proved conclusively that all of the prisoners consisted of common criminals convicted of murder and (mostly) terrorists who murdered or attempted to murder Israeli civilians, soldiers, or foreign tourists.

Some time after providing the Guardian with proof that the Palestinians in question can not fairly be referred to “political prisoners” they agreed to revise the passage, which now modifies the claim to note that the pre-Oslo prisoners are merely described as “political prisoners” by the Palestinians:

The Palestinians also want the release of 123 prisoners, viewed as political prisoners by the Palestinians, who have been in jail since before the Oslo accords were signed almost 20 years ago, and for Israel to present a map showing proposed borders.

As we noted at the time of our original post, many Palestinians regard even compatriots convicted of deadly terrorist acts euphemistically as “political prisoners”, and that Sherwood’s text, intentionally or otherwise, served to legitimize the Palestinian narrative which glorifies even terrorists convicted of the most gruesome crimes as ‘victims’ of Israeli oppression. 

Our efforts to secure the definition of the term “political prisoner” – which is clearly understood to mean ‘those who are imprisoned for their political beliefs’ - represents an attempt to fight back against the manipulation of language, in the service of an egregiously pro-Palestinian agenda, which is routinely advanced by the Guardian and their fellow political travelers.

This Guardian revision represents one victory within the larger cognitive war.

Related articles
Apr 18 2013

CiF Watch prompts correction to Indy post by Matt Hill about Ethiopian contraception

Yesterday, we posted about a commentary at The Independent, written by ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ blogger Matt Hill, on April 16 titled ‘At 65, modern Israel is falling short of Zionism’s most basic goal‘, which included the following passage:

Israel’s story, in brief, might be described as overcoming a horrific infancy to grow rich and successful. But its triumphs have come at a cost. Once full of youthful idealism, today it is cynical, increasingly corrupt, and calloused by hubris. The land of socialist pioneers has become, besides America, the most unequal country in the world. A state established as a home for the homeless now treats immigrants with contempt, as the scandal of its forced sterilisation of Ethiopian women has shown.

However, as we noted in our post, the row which Hill alluded to – based on an Israeli documentary and subsequent reports by Haaretz – merely involved unproven allegations that some Ethiopian women may have been coerced by doctors into receiving a long-lasting popular contraception called Depo-Provera.  

There was never anything resembling “forced sterilisation’ – a term which is commonly defined as ‘a process of permanently ending someone’s ability to reproduce without his or her consent’.

Shortly after our post yesterday we contacted editors at The Independent to object to the misleading term, and today the paper removed the reference to “forces sterilisation” and added this note at the end of Hill’s commentary:

ehtiopian

Indy editors deserve credit for their prompt response after being alerted to this error. 

Related articles
Mar 21 2013

CiF Watch prompts revision to Guardian op-ed which omitted Livni from coalition

On March 18 we posted about a curious omission in a March 17 Guardian editorial about President Obama’s (then upcoming) visit to Israel, titled “Obama in Israel: waiting for Godot“.

Here’s the passage we cited (emphasis added):

Rarely has a US president prepared to visit Israel amid such low expectations of what he can achieve there. By the time Barack Obama arrives, Binyamin Netanyahu’s government will have been sworn in, a coalition composed of the Likud-Yisrael Beitenu bloc: Yesh Atid, founded by former TV personality Yair Lapid; and Jewish Home, a party linked to the West Bank settler movement led by Naftali Bennett. The coalition is uniquely suited to dealing with domestic issues, such as the exemptions to military service granted to the ultra-orthodox. But it is uniquely unsuited to unravelling the occupation in the West Bank

We noted that, in the above passage and in the subsequent text of the op-ed, the Guardian failed to mention one of the four Israeli government coalition partners – Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua party.  This omission occurred despite Guardian editors’ inclusion of a hyperlink (in the above passage) which directed readers to Phoebe Greenwood’s March 14 Guardian report about the coalition agreement which specifically mentioned Livni’s inclusion.

Following communication with the Guardian, the passage has been revised, and the following footnote added.

revision

We commend the Guardian on their prompt revision. 

Related articles
Mar 21 2013

Following CiF Watch post, Guardian amends false Jewish demography claim

corrections to storiesWe posted yesterday about a March 19 Guardian report by Chris McGreal, ‘Obama urged: act tough on Israel or risk collapse of a two-state solution‘, which contained an egregious error regarding the Jewish population in Israel.

In the context of warning about the ‘urgent need’ to quickly create a Palestinian state, McGreal grossly mischaracterized a recent study on Jewish demography.

Here’s the passage:

Others have pointed up a recent Hebrew University demographic study, which showed that Jews are now in a minority in the occupied territories – suggesting that Israel’s democratic and Jewish character are threatened by its reluctance to give up territory to an independent Palestine.

We noted that even causal Israel observers would surely know that Jews are of course a minority in “occupied territories” and have been so since Israel’s founding. Further, in locating the Hebrew University professor who he was citing, we demonstrated that the demographic study in question was in fact only claiming that Jews are a minority (relative to non-Jews) in the historic land of Israel – from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, including Gaza, the West Bank and Israel proper.  (As we noted, the political significance of citing the Jewish population within these territorial parameters, which includes Gaza, is uncertain.)

McGreal either conflated the data, or, at least by inference, was characterizing all of Israel (including the state within pre-67 boundaries) as ‘occupied’ Palestinian territory.

Roughly eight hours after our post, which we Tweeted directly to McGreal, the Guardian revised their erroneous claim (which was also originally included in the caption of the accompanying photo) and noted the error.

Here’s the editor’s note:

correctionWhilst in unclear how an “editing error” could explain the original misleading claim, we’re pleased of course whenever the Guardian is prodded into recognizing a factual error and acts promptly to correct it. 

Related articles
Jan 17 2013

CiF Watch post prompts second correction to Guardian story about Bab al-Shams

As always, a h/t to the team at CAMERA 

On Jan. 14 we reported on a Guardian correction (prompted by an earlier CiF Watch post) to a story written by Harriet Sherwood on Jan. 13 about the removal of Palestinian protesters from a tent city named Bab al-Shams – located in an area between the cities of Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim known as E-1.

correctThe Guardian corrected Sherwood’s false claim that Palestinians were “arrested” by Israeli police during the evacuation.

Today, following a post published on Jan. 15 – as well our communication with the Guardian – they made another correction to the same story, removing text falsely suggesting that Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered the evacuation of Palestinian protesters from the tent city in violation of a Supreme Court ruling.  

As we noted, the Supreme Court order in question only referred to the removal of the tents, not the evacuation of the protesters.

The article by Harriet Sherwood now includes this at the bottom of the piece.

“This article was amended on 14 January and 17 January 2013. Activists were detained but not formally arrested. In addition a sub-heading and text were amended to make clear the Supreme Court injunction referred to tents rather than the protesters. This has been corrected.”

Related articles

 

Aug 8 2012

Guardian’s grudging mea (not quite) culpa highlights the need for media regulation reform in the UK.

As reported earlier in the day, our friends at Honest Reporting today issued a press release announcing a major achievement on the subject of the Guardian’s bizarre ‘style guide’ assertion that Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel. As a direct result of Honest Reporting’s persistence, the Guardian today printed a correction. 

However, whilst the Guardian will, according to its own clarification, no longer refer to Tel Aviv as the capital city of Israel, it apparently still believes itself justified in denying that Jerusalem holds that title. The Guardian’s ‘reasoning’ is based upon UN SC resolution 478 (1980), which in turn rests upon resolution 476 (1980) – initiated by 39 Islamic States of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.  

Obviously the absurdity of the OIC being able to promote resolutions at the UN which seek to keep Jerusalem divided, especially when those resolutions open with the words “acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible” only 32 years after an Arab nation conquered and divided the city by force in a belligerent war, is as lost on Guardian editors as it is on the United Nations itself. 

The significance of Honest Reporting’s achievement is not limited to the Guardian – it also pertains to the increasingly redundant Press Complaints Commission which (once again) made a mockery of itself by initially upholding the Guardian’s case. 

Despite its impressive-sounding name, the Press Complaints Commission is actually just an arm of the self-regulating British newspaper industry which consists of representatives of the major publishers who join on a voluntary basis and pay an annual fee to fund the commission’s activities. It has no legal powers whatsoever and time after time its performance suggests more than a smattering of an ‘old school tie’ type mentality.  

The leaders of all three major political parties in the UK severely criticized the PCC a year ago in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, with David Cameron stating that it is “ineffective and lacking in rigour” and calling for “a new system entirely” and the Labour leader calling it a “toothless poodle”. 

This particular case – in which the Guardian was cleared of charges of inaccuracy by the PCC even after having decided of its own accord to designate a new capital to a foreign country – illustrates just how urgent the need is for a new regulatory body in the UK. The PCC’s impotency is highlighted even further by the fact that only after Honest Reporting launched legal proceedings was change brought about.

The need for a new regulatory system in the UK is, however, not limited to the printed press. The BBC is also self-regulatory to a very considerable extent, which is especially troubling in light of that organisation’s legal obligations to accuracy and impartiality. 

At present, British media consumers have no one effective and truly independent body not inhabited by interchanging past and present members of the media industry to which they can turn for answers to their concerns and complaints. OFCOM, the PCC and the BBC Trust are all compromised by the fact that – despite a semblance of independence – they actually represent the media overseeing the media. 

Although one only has to look at the state of too much of the British media through the prism of the Israel canary in the mine to understand that this system is not working, it is perhaps more realistic to hope that it will be domestic issues such as the phone-hacking scandal which will eventually render the British government unable to ignore the pressing need for a comprehensive reform which will benefit both consumers and the increasingly tattered reputation of the UK media itself.  

Oct 25 2010

The “dull and throbbing” anti-Americanism of Jonathan Franzen (The Guardian interview)

Jonathan Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His third novel, The Corrections (2001), drew widespread critical acclaim, and earned Franzen a National Book Award

Adam Kirsch, writing a review of Franzen’s new book, Freedom, for The New Republic, noted several disturbing themes.  Kirsch’s literary criticism includes demonstrating that the book:

“fictionalizes this left-wing conventional wisdom about [Jewish philosopher] Strauss, the Jews, and the Iraq war…Franzen is spreading it to a much wider audience—complete with images of a wizened, cranially distorted Jewish puppet master, who cynically chuckles about how “we” control the U.S. government from behind the scenes. That Franzen could uncritically reproduce this kind of imagery is a reminder of how ugly and obsessive the antiwar discourse sometimes became.”

Recently, Guardian correspondent Sarfraz Manzoor interviewed Franzen about his new novel, friendship, and American politics. While you should see the full interview for yourself, some of what Franzen says about America says as much about the Guardian as it does about Franzen.

Here are some highlights from the interview:

Manzoor: Some of the characters in Freedom speak quite positively about the European approach towards freedom and community and the ideas is (from your book) that people came to America for money and for freedom, and it almost seems that what you’re suggesting is that the U.S. fetishizes freedom and forgets that there are greater freedoms to be had by having [human] bonds.

Franzen:  I’m at pains not to endorse any interpretation of my book but, believe me, this isn’t grating on my ears what you’re saying.  In the last decade America has emerged even in its own estimation as a problem state.  There are many criticisms one could make…like the treatment of the Indians…it goes way back…and our long relationship with slavery…and then the Cold War where we were certainly culpable, but the degree to which we are almost a rogue state and causing incredible trouble around the world in our attempts to preserve our freedoms to preserve our SUV’s….

His characterization of the U.S. as a rogue state is simply a perfect display of how the far-left goes beyond mere critiques of U.S. policy, descending  into the naked anti-Americanism which has so much currency in the totalitarian world.  With all his sophistication and erudition, he parrots the most facile , not to mention hateful, narratives of his own country typically advanced by those in the world least dedicated to the progressive politics he presumably supports.

Manzoor: Like Operation Enduring Freedom?

Franzen (laughs): Yeah, Operation Enduring Freedom.  It does make me wonder what it is in the national character that’s making us a problem state. And, I think this mixed-up, childish notion of freedom.  And, perhaps, truly, who left Europe to go over there (to come to the U.S.)?  It was all the malcontents. It was all the people who were not getting along with others.

This is truly a remarkable statement.  Franzen characterizes the millions of Europeans (and citizens from other continents) – who escaped the poverty, and political and religious oppression, which characterized life for such people in their native countries (especially during the major waves of U.S. immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century) to start their lives anew in a land which clearly represented for them “a land of opportunity” – as “malcontents…who were not getting along with others.”

Manzoor: Are you more comfortable in America now then when you started writing the book?

Franzen: No.  The liberal left has power but the system itself is so screwed up..and we (The Democrats) are relatively the adult party…so we’re responsible for making an unworkable system work.  It’s this kind of discouragement and dull, throbbing anxiety.”

Yes…much like the dull, throbbing anxiety I feel when I contemplate how many Guardian fellow travelers – not to mention Franzen’s fellow Americans – may subscribe to his views.  I continue to wonder how certain Americans (and her allies abroad), who simply can not deny that the U.S. is blessed with simply unparalleled political freedom and economic affluence  - which would have been simply been unimaginable throughout most of human history – have developed such a seemingly immutable masochism and self-loathing.  The moral inversion on display in Franzen’s interview with the Guardian represents something close to the ground zero of such a dynamic.