Not for the first time, Ha’aretz‘s Gideon Levy plays fast and loose with Palestinian casualty figures.

In his March 31 column, Gideon Levy attributes a Cast Lead Palestinian casualty figure to Amnesty International, though a thorough search of the organization’s materials does not turn up any such figure. In particular, he wrote:

One can argue ad nauseam about the numbers, but even the official IDF records − 1,166 killed, including 709 “terrorists,” 89 children and 49 women − leave no room for doubt. Amnesty International, for instance, enumerated only 92 Palestinian fighters among the dead. (Emphasis added.)

Yet, Amnesty’s extensive report on Operation Cast Lead does not indicate that “only 92 Palestinian fighters were among the dead.” Contrary to Levy’s claim, the report, “Operation ‘Cast Lead’: 22 Days of Death and Destruction,” states:

Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in attacks by Israeli forces during Operation “Cast
Lead” between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009. Some 5,000 were injured, many maimed for life. Hundreds of those killed were unarmed civilians, including some 300 children, more than 115 women and some 85 men over the age of 50.12 The figure is based on data collected by Amnesty International delegates in Gaza and on cases documented in
detail by local NGOs and medical personnel in Gaza. According to Palestinian human rights NGOs two thirds of those killed were civilians. Amnesty International delegates who carried out research in Gaza in January-February 2009 did not have the time and resources to verify all the reported deaths, but investigated dozens of cases comprising more than 300 victims, more than half of them children and women, and gathered information from a wide range of sources. They concluded that an overall figure of some 1,400 fatalities is accurate and that, in addition to the children, women and men aged over 50, some 200 men aged less than 50 were unarmed civilians who took no part in the hostilities. In addition, some 240 police officers were killed in bombardment of police stations across the Gaza Strip in the first moments of Operation “Cast Lead” in the morning of 27 December 2008, including scores who were killed when the first Israeli air strikes targeted the police cadets’ graduation parade in the central police compound in Gaza City. Even though some of the policemen who were killed in these bombardments were also rank-and-file members of Hamas’ armed wing (in
addition to being members of the police), many were not involved with armed groups and none were participating in hostilities when they were targeted and killed in the bombardments.13

While Amnesty acknowledges it did not have “the time and resources to verify all the reported deaths,” it nevertheless somehow concluded that there were 1,400 Palestinian casualties, including 300 children, more than 115 women, some 85 men over the age of 50, and some 200 men under 50 they say took no part in hostilities — a total of 700 uninvolved civilians, and an additional 250 Hamas policemen they say were not involved in hostilities when they were killed. According to Amnesty’s own calculations, that leaves 550 unclassified Palestinian casualties out of 1400. Though Amnesty does not say so explicitly, presumably they are combatants. In any event, nowhere in its Cast Lead report does the organization cite only 92 Palestinian fighters killed. If Mr. Levy cannot substantiate his claim that Amnesty used that figure, a correction is in order.

April 4 Update: CAMERA Prompts Corrections on Gideon Levy Column

Yesterday we noted how the “Ha’aretz, Lost in Translation” phenomenon made its mark on Land Day coverage. Today, it’s illegal outposts which get the English-language makeover.

In print and online, the English edition incorrectly reports that every professional army officer not serving in a front-line unit must spend a week a year guarding an illegal outpost. A screen capture of the online article, as it now appears, follows, with the sentence in question highlighted yellow:

The word “these” is a mistranslation which introduces a serious factual error. “These settlements” clearly refers to the illegal outposts discussed in the preceding two paragraphs. Yet, the statement that every non-frontline career officer must spend a week protecting illegal outposts is incorrect.
(more…)

Malki Roth

The following letter was sent by Frimet Roth to the New York Times shortly after it published a one-sided magazine cover story, which one Ha’aretz reporter said could be seen as “encouraging a third intifada,” about the town of Nabi Saleh.

A terrorist from Nabi Saleh murdered Frimet and Arnold Roth’s daughter, Malki, several years ago. Be sure to also read this blog post by Arnold Roth, where the letter was first publicized.

Jerusalem
March 20, 2013

The Editors,
NY Times

Ben Ehrenreich’s article [“Is This Where the Third Intifada Will Start?”] is a brazen quest for confirmation of his preconceptions about the Palestinian Israeli conflict: politics blended with fantasy and embellished with every tear-jerking cliche in the book. Smiling, frolicking children; poetic “activists”; generous hostesses plying their delicacies at every turn. It is a bucolic scene that is frequently painted in anti-Israel publications. But how does the NY Times publish a piece that plays so fast and loose with fact and history?

Sadly, I am well-equipped to offer some corrections and details omitted by Ehrenreich.

Ahlam Tamimi, the villager whom Ehrenreich described as a woman who “escorted a suicide bomber”, is in fact the self-confessed engineer and planner of a bloody terrorist attack. By her own account and after several scouting forays, Tamimi selected a target: the Sbarro restaurant in the heart of Jerusalem, on a hot August afternoon in 2001.

Tamimi has said she chose it because she knew it would be teeming at the appointed hour with women and children. She transported the bomb, enhanced with nails and bolts to maximize the carnage, from Ramallah across the Qalandia security checkpoint and into Israel’s capital. Israeli soldiers still waived females through without inspection in those days.

Tamimi and her weapon, the bomber, both dressed in Western garb and chatting in English to appear as tourists, strolled through the city center. At the entrance to Sbarro, she briefed him on where and when to detonate, instructing that he wait 15 minutes to allow her a safe getaway. Fifteen men, women and children were murdered that afternoon. My teenage daughter Malki was among them. Ehrenreich, who writes warmly about Nabi Saleh’s children, displays a cold detachment when relating to the bombing’s victims, the youngest of whom was two years old: “Fifteen people were killed, eight of them minors.”

Tamimi, on the other hand, has focused hard on the children. Filmed in an Israeli prison, she smiled broadly when an interviewer informed her that 8 children were murdered, and not merely the 3 she had known about. Since her release in the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal, Tamimi has repeatedly and publicly boasted of her deed, adding: “I have no regrets. I would do it again.”

Tamimi has always lived in Amman, other than two years in Nabi Saleh while attending university. Israel ‘exiled’ (to adopt Ehrenreich’s term) her to Jordan where her father and brothers reside. Since her release she married another Tamimi, also a convicted murderer freed in the Shalit deal. He too is a home-town hero in Nabi Saleh. The host of her own weekly show on Hamas TV, she travels freely throughout the Arab world to address her many fans, accepting accolades and trophies while urging others to follow in her footsteps.

For a mother to bury her loving, gentle child is torture. To watch the murderer walk triumphantly free and enjoy life rubs salt into that wound every day. But to see the NY Times gloss over this travesty of justice with a cover story that showcases this woman’s many admirers in Nabi Saleh – that is journalism of the most amoral sort. You ought to be ashamed of it.

Frimet Roth – Jerusalem