In International NY Times, Palestinian Refugees Forever Young

Sept. 22 Update: New York Times Corrects Grossly Inflated Figure for Palestinian Refugees

Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from Israel in 1948 are forever young. Or so one must conclude based on an article in the Sept. 15 print edition of The International New York Times. Those refugees, who are now at the minimum 66 years old, are the parents of children studying in first through ninth grades in the Gaza Strip, according to The Times.

The International New York Times erred:

There are two apparent errors in this sentence.

First, it seems that the article should have stated “grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Palestinians who were expelled from or fled homes in Israel and the West Bank.” Indeed, another version of the piece, which appeared in an earlier New York Times edition accurately referred to “descendants of Palestinians who were expelled from or fled homes in Israel and the West Bank.”

It is impossible that the parents of students ranging from age 5 to 14 (kindergarten through ninth grade) were expelled from or fled homes in Israel in 1948.

If the parents were alive in 1948, they would have to be at least 66 years old today. Clearly, the parents of all of these elementary and middle school students are not, at a minimum, 66 years old.

The mean age of Gaza women when they first marry is 20.1. For men, the figure is 24. In other words, Gaza’s parents are young, not old.

Similarly, if the parents were displaced from the West Bank in 1967, and this category is much smaller than 1948 refugees, they would have to be at a minimum 47 years old, which also seems highly unlikely, though not impossible.

Second, it is not true that 70 percent of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents are “Palestinians who were expelled from or fled homes in Israel and the West Bank.”

In fact, as reported by the Associated Press, of those Palestinians who were expelled or fled homes in Israel in 1948 there are now some 30,000 still alive, living around the world, not just in the Gaza Strip. So if ALL of the surviving Palestinian Arabs who fled or expelled from their homes in Israel lived in the Gaza Strip — and they don’t, they also live in the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere — then they amount to a total of 1.6 percent of the 1.8 million residents in Gaza, not 70 percent.

On previous occasions, The New York Times has corrected erroneous figures which similarly conflated those who were expelled or fled in 1948 and their millions of descendants.

CAMERA has informed The International New York Times of the editing error. Stay tuned for an update.