NY Times Corrects Nazareth Error, But Not ‘Nakba Day’ Law Error

Following communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, The New York Times has corrected one of two factual errors  in Jodi Rudoren’s Dec. 8 article (“Israel Struggles With Its Identity“).
 
As we first noted last week, The Times had incorrectly reported that Nazareth, with a population double that of Upper Nazareth’s, has just five percent of the amount of land as neighboring Upper Nazareth. In fact, according to statistics from the respective municipalities, Nazareth has 45 percent of the amount of land compared to Upper Nazareth.
 
The article has originally stated: “Professor Jamal said the Arab city of Nazareth has twice the population but 5 percent of the land of its neighbor, predominantly Jewish Upper Nazareth. . . “
 
The text has been corrected online. The article currently states: “The Arab city of Nazareth has nearly twice the population but less than half the land of its neighbor, predominantly Jewish Upper Nazareth . . . “
 
In addition, the following correction is appended to the bottom of the article:
 
 
We expect a print correction will run as well.
 
Meanwhile, The Times has continued to refuse to correct the article’s erroneous reference to laws that “prohibit funding for groups that commemorate the Nakba, or catastrophe, as Palestinians call their expulsion as Israel was established.”)
 
There is no law which prohibits “funding for groups that commemorate the Nakba.” This is a rather blanket statement relating to any group of any kind, when in fact the law in question (available on the Knesset site) specifically deals with state-funded bodies. Moreover, the law does not even prohibit funding to state-funded bodies which commemorate the Nakba. Rather, it enables the Minister of Finance, at his or her discretion, to reduce or withhold government funding to such bodies. Thus, even if the government did withhold funding from a body which it had previously supported, private individuals, NGOs and others may still fund the outfit.
 
For additional New York Times corrections prompted by CAMERA, please see here.
 
Dec. 31, 2014 Update: Times Publishes Print Correction
 
The New York Times yesterday published in print the following correction, making clear that Nazareth has “less than half the land of Upper Nazareth,” and not 5 percent of the land.
 

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