Turning a Misspelling into a Fabrication

By Published On: April 28, 2011

People can get pretty desperate. One example of how desperate they can get played itself out on Snapshots, when a commenter attempted to discredit an article we linked to a few days ago. The original article quoted an official from the Red Cross as stating there was no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. The person quoted is named as Mathilde Redmatn, deputy director of the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip.

A few hours after CAMERA posted a link to the article, a commenter stated that the article was false because there was no one by the name of “Mathilde Redmatn” working for the Red Cross. A similar statement appeared on the Mondoweiss blog.

Interestingly enough, even the Mondoweiss blog entry acknowledged that there was someone working for the Red Cross with a similar name. A commenter, who disagreed with the premise that there was no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip still had the presence of mind to acknowledge that Redmatn’s name got misspelled in the course of the article being translated from Hebrew into English.

Given Snapshots’ interest in the accuracy of the article in question, CAMERA contacted both the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Jerusalem and the IDF website article’s author, Rotem Caro Weizman. The ICRC confirmed that it does in fact have a Mathilde De Riedmatten in its employ – and her title is ICRC Deputy Head of Sub Delegation in Gaza.

And Ms. Weizman confirmed that the name ‘Mathilde Redmatn’ was indeed mistranslated from the Hebrew into English.

Ms. Weizman stands by her story and barring a denial from the Red Cross, it seems reasonable to conclude that the quote is, in fact, accurate.

As to the complaints about a humanitarian crisis taking place in the Gaza Strip, commenters should take it up with Mathilde De Riedmatten.

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