The Israel office of CAMERA prompted Ha’aretz to correct an online news brief in English which had wrongly identified a Hamas man killed by Israeli forces as a “Palestinian civilian.” CAMERA’s Snapshots blog first wrote about the erroneous report here, noting that the Hebrew version correctly reported Ibrahim Sarhan’s Hamas affiliation. The error and correction follow:
Error (Ha’aretz, Anshel Pfeffer, news brief, 7/14/11): Military police are launching an investigation into the killing of a Palestinian civilian by an IDF force yesterday in a Jordan Valley refugee camp.
Correction (Online as of 7/17/11): Military police are launching an investigation into the killing of a Palestinian youth by an IDF force yesterday in a Jordan Valley refugee camp… Hamas later confirmed that the youth was a member of the organization.
CAMERA commends Ha’aretz for taking this positive step towards correcting the record, and continues to urge the paper to publish a print correction as well, since the error also appeared in the print edition. In addition, CAMERA notes that given that Sarhan was 22, the description of him as a “youth” is misleading, and ought to be changed.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), which earlier had published
grossly skewed Cast Lead fatality statistics, has
identified Sarhan as a “civilian,” and provides no mention of his Hamas affiliation. As for the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, which had
earlier covered up Sarhan’s Hamas membership, a
subsequent story was very direct about the fact that he belonged to Hamas. Once B’Tselem updates its
factually challenged casualty statistics, how will it identify Sarhan?
