In an erroneous headline and article last week, CNN falsely reports that Israel has approved an “East Jerusalem settlement.”

The first paragraph, like the headline, errs:

Israel approved Wednesday the construction of a settlement in East Jerusalem just before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is to visit the country on a peace mission.

Likewise, the sixth paragraph erroneously refers to “Wednesday’s approval of a 69-unit settlement in East Jerusalem. . . . “

In fact, Israel did not approve the “construction of a settlement,” nor did it approve “a 69-unit settlement in East Jerusalem.” The clear — and false– implication of CNN’s language is that Israel allowed the construction of a new settlement consisting of 69 units. The approval involved the addition of 69 units to Har Homa, a large, well-established neighborhood in Jerusalem which is presently composed of 5,500-6,000 homes. Thus, the addition of the 69 planned new homes constitutes an approximate one percent growth of a pre-existing community.

As the New York Times correctly reported:

The chief Palestinian negotiator condemned Israel on Thursday for moving closer to constructing 69 apartments in a Jewish neighborhood on territory seized in the 1967 war even as Secretary of State John Kerry arrived for a fifth round of meetings in his intensive push to revive Middle East peace talks.

In addition, CNN’s wholesale adoption of tendentious language is noteworthy. First, reporters Kareem Khadder and Michael Martinez refer to Har Homa, a Jerusalem neighborhood over the pre-1967 armistice line as a “settlement.” While Palestinians consider Har Homa a settlement, Israelis consider it a neighborhood in Jerusalem.

Second, the reporters paraphrase Palestinian Saeb Erekat, stating:

Palestinian chief peace negotiator Saeb Erekat called out to the world Thursday to stop Israel from building more settlement homes. Letting Tel Aviv get away with it, takes away any motivation for Israel to work towards peace, he said.

Erekat did indeed use the erroneous shorthand of “Tel Aviv” as referring to Israel’s capital. But as an impartial news organization, CNN has an obligation to inform readers when a source that it quotes or paraphrases provides blatantly false information — in this case, that Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital.

Netanyahu and Kerry meeting Friday in Jerusalem (AFP/Getty photo by Jacquelyn Martin)

We have taken media outlets to task in the past for referring to Israel’s capital with the erroneous shorthand of “Tel Aviv.”

The Boston Globe and, more recently, the Washington Post have both commendably corrected that error. For instance, the Post corrected March 30, 2012:

A March 21 A-section article about President Obama’s annual message to the Iranian people incorrectly referred to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel. Israel designated Jerusalem as its capital in 1950, although many countries maintain embassies and other diplomatic missions in Tel Aviv because of the Palestinians’ competing claim on Jerusalem as their capital.

Unsurprisingly, Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat is undeterred, and continues to use Tel Aviv as a shorthand for Israel’s capital. (It is problematic when CNN paraphrases Erekat’s statement about Tel Aviv, without quotation marks, and without indicating that, in fact, Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.)

But today’s English edition of Ha’aretz, in print on page-one and online, takes the Tel Aviv-as-Israel’s-capital problem to a whole new level by relocating a Jerusalem meeting Friday between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Secretary of State Kerry to Tel Aviv. Ha’aretz reports:

In fact, the meeting took place in Jerusalem, not Tel Aviv. As reported today by Michael Gordon in the International Herald Tribune, which in Israel is published and distributed together with the English edition of Ha’aretz:

Mr. Kerry then flew by Jordanian helicopter to Jerusalem, where he met Friday afternoon with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. . . .

Mr. Kerry’s meeting on Friday with Mr. Netanyahu was held int he Yitzhak Rabin suite of the David Citadel Hotel.

The David Citadel is in Jerusalem. Ha’aretz‘s Hebrew version of this article does not contain the misinformation about Tel Aviv, making this the latest case of “Ha’aretz, Lost in Translation.”

Update: 7:15 a.m. EST — Online Article Corrected

In response to communication from CAMERA, editors have corrected the online version of the article, which now appears as follows:

Stay tuned for news of a print correction.

July 1 Update: Ha’aretz Corrects: Netanyahu, Kerry Met in Jerusalem, Not Tel Aviv

It should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Palestinian terrorists hide behind civilian human shields. You may have seen the video in which Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Fathi Hammad, boasted:

For the Palestinian people death became an industry at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the Jihad fighters excel, and the children excel. Accordingly [Palestinians] created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine, as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire Death, as you desire Life.

Even so, when a video surfaces of Palestinian terrorists firebombing Israeli Defense Forces while hiding behind journalists, you might expect the media to cover it; especially considering that the human shields in the incident are the colleagues and friends of the very reporters and editors ignoring the story. And yet… not a peep from the popular press.

This is not figurative. We’re not talking about terrorists taking over a media building and using it as a meeting place, or launching rockets from nearby, or painting a phony “TV” on the hood of a car transporting terrorists, or even being a terrorist who also takes pictures and writes propaganda – all of which Hamas operatives do. We’re talking about terrorists literally throwing firebombs while hiding behind journalists and using their bodies as shields. Human shields. Where’s the coverage?

Sherlock Holmes famously advised those who sought his deductive assistance to be alert to the curious incident of the dog that didn’t bark in the night. A close relative to that complacent canine appears in The Washington Post’s “Sunnis, Shiites clash in Lebanon; Fighting in seaside town shows entanglement in Syrian war is growing,” June 19.

Post foreign desk correspondent Liz Sly’s final paragraph reads: “Under the peace accord that ended Lebanon’s 15-year civil war in 1990, Hezbollah is the only militia legally allowed to carry arms.” A conspicuous omission, akin to the silent watchdog Holmes suspected of knowing an intruder.

Three U.N. Security Council resolutions, all subsequent to the agreement The Post mentions, call for Hezbollah’s disarmament.

Resolutions 1559 (2004), 1680 (2006), and 1701 urge the Lebanese government to fully extend and exercise its sole and effective authority throughout the south and to “exert control over the use of force on its territory and from it.” The Security Council aimed these measures at Hezbollah, the party obstructing Beirut’s sole, effective authority and key extra-governmental armed force.

Resolution 1701 (2006), helped end that year’s Hezbollah-Israeli war. It requires, among other things, the disarming of all non-governmental groups in Lebanon. Like resolutions 1559 and 1680 it focuses on Hezbollah, the one remaining private military group [text of resolution at bottom of U.N. press release].

Two years later, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said “Hezbollah’s maintenance of a paramilitary capacity poses a key challenge to the government’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force,” according to an Associated Press
report (“U.N. chief calls for Hezbollah disarmament,” USA Today, April 24, 2008). Ban asserted “it is high time … for all parties concerned, inside and outside of Lebanon [meaning Hezbollah’s Iranian and Syrian backers], to set aside this remaining vestige of the past.”

Ban repeated his call during a 2012 visit to Beirut, only to have Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah immediately reject it.

The Post generally identifies Hezbollah (the Iranian-founded, funded, armed and trained Shi’ite “Party of God”) as Lebanon’s dominant political and “military” party. It usually calls its gunmen “militants.” It is one thing for the newspaper rarely to remind readers of Hezbollah’s 1983 destruction of the U.S. Marine barracks and embassy in Lebanon, 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, reported involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, or its U.S. government designation as a terrorist organization. It’s quite another to state, without qualification, that “Hezbollah is the only militia legally allowed to carry arms.” Curious, and conspicuous.

The debunked Palestinian claim of a massacre of “hundreds” is so passé, but that doesn’t deter Los Angeles Times entertainment writer John Horn. In April 2002, Palestinian spokespeople alleged that hundreds were killed in the so-called “Jenin massacre.”

But as early as May 2002, Palestinian officials admitted that 50-some Palestinians, not hundreds, were killed. Commemorating eight years since the “Jenin Massacre,” the official WAFA Palestinian news agency referred to the dozens (not hundreds) killed:

The Palestinian assessment that dozens, not hundreds, were killed in Jenin in April 2002 is consistent with the findings of the United Nations and human rights groups.

How is it then, that in a review today of the film “The Attack,” John Horn writes that protagonist Amin

travels to the Palestinian territories, where he visits Jenin in the West Bank (a site where Palestinians say the Israeli Defense Forces massacred hundreds of civilians). . . . (Emphasis added)

The Los Angeles Times itself reported back in August 2002 that the United Nations report on Jenin:

. . . set to be released today, says that 52 Palestinian deaths were confirmed by April 18 and that as many as half may have been civilian. It calls the allegation that up to 500 were killed “a figure that has not been substantiated,” the diplomats said. Israel has reported 23 soldiers killed in the battle.

The U.N. findings mirror those of Human Rights Watch.

Perhaps fictional Palestinians in the fictional film “The Attack” say that the Israeli army massacred hundreds, but Horn makes no attempt to distinguish fiction from fact. Stay tuned for news about a correction.

Twenty three students from across the US and Canada are participating in CAMERA’s annual advocacy and leadership training mission to Israel.

In an interview with JNS, CAMERA’s Director of Student Programming Aviva Slomich states:

In our trip… students will visit top Israeli institutions and meet public relations experts to learn how to effectively communicate a message.

We will also take part in training sessions about media coverage and how to help promote sound reporting. In addition, the study tour includes meetings with journalists, policy makers, world-renowned academics, and government leaders.

Read all about the trip here and here.

The AP published a series of photos yesterday, including the one below, of children in Hamas’ Gaza summer camps. Note the caption:

A Palestinian youth takes part in military-style exercises run by Hamas during a scouting summer camp next to the border between Egypt and Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, June 19, 2013. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Military-style exercises, but not actually military exercise? Is that kind of like journalism-style reporting?

You probably did not hear that “moderate” Palestinian Authority official Jibril Rajoub said that “All of Palestine – from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea – it’s all occupied.” This includes all of Israel. He made this statement in an interview on an Arabic sports channel, as translated by Palestinian Media Watch.

Very few news outlets reported this story. Only some of the Israeli press and specialized media found it deserving of coverage.

This is not an uncommon remark coming from a Palestinian official. They frequently deny Israel’s right to exist (or even, if you look at Palestinian schoolbooks and maps, Israel’s very existence). References to Jewish “occupation” are so common that, in a dog-bites-man way, the media could argue that Rajoub’s statement is not news.

Using that logic, when someone claims that Arabs are the real occupiers, that should get front page coverage. But it doesn’t.

Ryan Bellerose, a leader in the Canadian indigenous rights movement, Idle No More, and founder of Canadians for Accountability, a Native rights advocacy group, wrote an Op-Ed in the Toronto Sun:

To begin, though Palestinian propagandists love to characterize Zionism (that is, Jewish nationalism) and the re-establishment of Israel in 1948 as colonial enterprises, it is the Jews who are aboriginal to the Holy Land. Alone among other nations, Jews’ language, history, culture and folklore were born and forged in the Holy Land. There is no statute of limitations on being indigenous. Accordingly, to claim the Jews are colonizers in the Holy Land delegitimizes all indigenous peoples because such attempts trivialize the unbreakable, maternal ties to the land that make us, like the Jews, indigenous.

In stark contrast, Arabs arrived to the Holy Land only in the seventh century, when Arabian armies colonized the Middle East.

[…]

Tellingly, Palestinians are silent with respect to the rights of indigenous peoples still dominated by Arab states from Morocco to Iraq.

Arabs are the colonizers, the occupiers, not the Jews. You won’t hear that in most major news outlets. Bellerose continues:

I am offended that my people’s cause appears to serve merely as a prop for Palestinian propaganda. For example, I have seen materials juxtaposing Native-American symbols — the feather, a symbol of peace — to AK-47 assault rifles, a symbol of Arab militantism. And yet, unlike most Palestinian nationalist groups across the board, Native rights movements seek to be peaceful and inclusive. Palestinian groups who are otherwise all too eager to wrap themselves in the indigenous mantle systematically ignore this crucial difference.

For too long, we Natives have let an uncompromising and reactionary Palestinian narrative substitute for facts. […] Natives cannot let themselves be used merely as ornamentation to often-damaging Palestinian propaganda.

The Jews are the indigenous people of Israel and the Arabs are occupiers and colonizers. That’s certainly a man-bites-dog story and yet… Where’s the coverage?

FYI:

Bellerose wrote before about the common experiences of his people and the Jews; how Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. That too got little media attention.

And… if Jibril Rajoub’s name sounds familiar to you, it might be because he recently threatened to nuke Israel, but you wouldn’t have heard much about that in mainstream news outlets either.

A post yesterday by my colleague, Adam Levick at CiF Watch, about the Guardian‘s myopic coverage of statements by Israeli politicians (Naftali Bennett, Danny Danon, Moshe Ya’alon) expressing skepticism about a two-state solution might just as well apply to the Los Angeles Times. Levick wrote about Harriet Sherwood’s June 17 article:

. . . . Sherwood included no context about Palestinian views to balance her report – nothing about statements by Palestinian officials at odds with not only a two state deal, but to the existence of a Jewish state within any borders. While there are hundreds of examples available of Palestinian leaders advancing rhetoric fundamentally at odds with peace and co-existence which Sherwood could have cited, here’s one mock Guardian headline which would accurately reflect a recent well-publicized example of Palestinian incitement and intransigence.

The story reflected in the fake headline above is based on a very real report by Palestinian Media Watch, and covered elsewhere in the media:

A official, Jibril Rajoub…praised the use of violence against Israel. During an interview on a Lebanese TV channel [on May 2], the host referred to “the negotiations game” with Israel, and Rajoub expressed the view that negotiations are held because the Palestinians lack military strength: ”I swear that if we had a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning.”

The Los Angeles Times, like the Guardian, completely ignored Rajoub’s statement saying he’d use nukes against Israel if he had them. Nevertheless, it found space for a 800-plus word story yesterday about the statements by Bennett, Danon, and Ya’alon. Batsheva Sobelman and Maher Abukhater report that Bennett’s:

comments are the latest in a series of remarks by members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government against the two-state solution, raising doubts about the prospects of peace talks the United States is trying to renew. . . .

But Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, accused the Israeli government of intentionally undermining U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s efforts to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

“These are not isolated statements but a reaffirmation of political platforms and radical beliefs,” Erekat said of the spate of downbeat remarks. “Israel has officially declared the death of the two-state solution.” . . .

Nabil abu Rudaineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, described the statements, particularly Bennett’s, as “dangerous.”

“These statements are not only a message to President Obama’s administration, which is exerting nonstop efforts to revive the peace process, but also a clear rejection of efforts to save what could be saved,” Abu Rudaineh said.

(more…)

One month after the New York Times published a correction making clear that there is no coerced gender segregation on bus lines in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Israel, the Times’ Web site carries a Reuters article containing the identical error.

The May 11 (in print) correction about gender segregation, prompted by CAMERA staff, states:

The Reuters story, by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, entitled “Barbra Streisand raps Orthodox Jews’ actions against Israeli women,” errs:

A public bus system operating in some Israeli cities forces gender segregation in deference to ultra-Orthodox rabbis who have long wielded political power in the Jewish state.

CAMERA has requested corrections from both media outlets. Stay tuned for an update.