CAMERA Elicits Ha’aretz Clarification on Settlements

For the second consecutive day, CAMERA’s Israel office prompts a correction in Ha’aretz. Today’s clarification in the English print edition addresses a mistranslation addressed earlier this week on our Snapshots blog. In another instance of “Ha’aretz, Lost in Translation,” English translators inaccurately translated the original Hebrew report, resulting in the false claim that professional Israeli military officers not in front-line units must spend a week a year protecting illegal outposts in the West Bank.

The English version read:

One quarter of all illegal West Bank outposts are regularly guarded by Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

These 25 unauthorized outposts are guarded by a special force tasked with “community protection.” Soldiers from the force typically spend a full week at a time guarding and protecting the outpost where they are stationed.

Every professional army officer who does not serve in a front-line unit must spend one week a year protecting these settlements. They must do a regular tour of duty in the West Bank, the Jordan Valley or the Kerem Shalom region near the border of Gaza and Egypt.(Emphases added.)

The following clarification appears in today’s print edition on page 2:

In addition, the online article has been corrected, and the following clarification appears at the bottom of the article:

CAMERA commends Ha’aretz for the prompt and thorough clarifications. At the same time, we note that mistranslations are a systematic problem at the English edition, and we urge editors to take steps to improve translations, so that regular corrections are no longer necessary.

For additional Ha’aretz corrections prompted by CAMERA, see here.

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