Ha’aretz Corrects Article Wrongly Blaming Israel for Boy’s Death

Following communication from Presspectiva, CAMERA’s Hebrew branch, Ha’aretz has corrected a column by Anshel Pfeffer which had wrongly blamed Israel for the death of four-year-old Gazan Mahmoud Sadallah. We first noted the error in our Snapshots blog earlier this week, pointing out that the falsehood had been debunked and corrected for several days before Pfeffer repeated the falsehood. The error and correction follow:

Error (Ha’aretz, Anshel Pfeffer, 11/23/12): . . . Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, during his visit on Friday to Gaza, posed for a joint photograph with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, holding together the body of a dead baby boy killed in an Israeli air strike.

Correction (Online as of 11/28/12): . . . Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, during his visit on Friday to Gaza, posed for a joint photograph with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, holding together the body of a dead baby boy, the circumstances of whose death are the subject of much debate, with evidence emerging that he was not killed in an Israeli air strike, as the Palestinians claim, but by an errant missile fired from inside Gaza.

The article has been amended online, and the following now appears at the end of the article:

CAMERA commends Ha’aretz for correcting the error, and for the new, positive step of acknowledging online that the article was corrected (as opposed to quietly correcting, without indicating that the initial report had been erroneous). Nevertheless, it should again be noted that days before Pfeffer’s Nov. 23 column, AP, New York Times, Reuters, CNN, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights had all reported Sadallah was likely killed by an errant Palestinian rocket.

Stay tuned for news about a possible correction in tomorrow’s print edition.

For the Hebrew version of this article, visit Presspectiva.

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