UPDATED: Wall Street Journal Misinforms on Money Transfers to PA

April 26 Update: Editors have commendably published a correction clarifying that payments to the Palestinian Authority have resumed. See details here.
 
 
Wall Street Journal subscribers who read yesterday that the United States and Israel cut off money transfers to the Palestinian Authority should, of course, be forgiven for concluding that the United States and Israel are not transferring money to the Palestinian Authority. In so many words, that is what the newspaper told them.

Unfortunately, those readers were misinformed. U.S. aid and tax money collected by Israel are currently flowing into Palestinian coffers, after a temporary pause that ended last month.

Here is how Charles Levinson, in his April 15 story “Palestinian Shake-Up Roils Peace Bid,” described the situation for his trusting readers:

In November, Mr. Abbas appealed to the United Nations for statehood recognition, over U.S. and Israeli objections.

In retaliation, Washington cut off all aid to the Palestinian Authority, slashing nearly a quarter of Palestinian’s aid. Israel cut off transfers of a $100 million a month in Palestinian tax revenue it collects on the Palestinian Authority’s behalf. The already crumbling economy took a dive.

An Israeli government spokesman said there was no connection between Israel’s decision to cut off tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority and Mr. Fayyad’s resignation.

Nowhere in the article were readers informed that both the American and the Israeli measures have been reversed. On the contrary, the passages above, including the reference to a link between the tax cutoff and Fayyad’s resignation, clearly convey that these measures are still in place.

Perhaps Levinson does not read his own newspaper. Joshua Mitnick reported in the Journal a few weeks ago that “The Obama administration last month unfroze hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the government of President Mahmoud Abbas that had been held up by Congress.” And the headline of an AP story that appeared a few days later on WSJ.com pointed out that “Israel Resumes Tax Transfers to Palestinians.”

CAMERA has informed Wall Street Journal editors of the substantive error of omission in Levinson’s article and called for them to publish a correction.

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