Correction (5/4/11): The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was incorrectly quoted in Annette John-Hall’s column Tuesday. The sentence “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy,” was written on a Facebook posting by Jessica Dovey, an English teacher in Japan, after the death of Osama bin Laden was announced.
Dovey’s post then attributed to King, in quotation marks, sentences from his 1963 book The Strength to Love: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Others commenting online read Dovey’s post incorrectly and attributed all four sentences to King. One of those was used as a reference.
Error (Philadelphia Inquirer headline, 1/11/11): Rockets Strike Gaza Town
Correction (1/12/11): A headline Tuesday on a story about Israeli-Palestinian tensions misidentified the target of rocket attacks that took place Monday. The rockets were fired from Gaza and struck the Israeli city of Ashkelon.
Error (Philadelphia Inquirer, letter by Robert G. Draper of Mickleton, NJ, 10/16/07): When the state of Israel was formed, there were tens of thousand of indigenous Palestinian Arabs living within the borders of this Jewish State. The laws of Israel declared that only Jews had the right to own land, thus depriving these Arabs of land ownership.
Correction (10/18/07): A letter on the Oct. 16 Editorial Page misleadingly stated the case regarding the right of Arab Israelis to own land in Israel. Arab Israelis may own land, but there is not much to own: Only about 6.5 percent of the land in Israel is privately owned (some by Arab Israelis). Of the rest, almost 80 percent is owned by the governmental agency called the Israel Land Administration. ILA land is not sold but leased; by law, it is available to be leased by all Israelis, whether Jewish, Arab or other. About 13 percent is owned by the Jewish National Fund. In September an Israeli high court ruled that the JNF must allow non-Jews to buy its land.
Fact: The correction failed to note that roughly half of the private land is owned by Arab Israelis, who constitute just 20 percent of the population.
Error (Philadelphia Inquirer headline to AP article by Ramit Plushnick-Masti, 10/23/06 ): Israel says it used banned shells in war
Correction (10/27/06): A headline Monday incorrectly stated that Israel used “banned” shells during the war with Hezbollah. While the article said the Geneva Conventions ban the use of white phosphorous as an incendiary against civilians or civilian areas, Cabinet Minister Yaakov Edri said Israel used the shells against Hezbollah “in attacks against military targets in open ground.”
Error (Philadelphia Inquirer, 8/12/05): This will restore freedom of movement for Palestinians who have lived hemmed in by fences on three sides and the Mediterranean on the fourth since 1967.
Correction (8/20/05): In an Aug. 12 story on the challenges facing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, an incorrect date was given for when the Israelis constructed fences to enclose three sides of Gaza. The fences were constructed in 1994.
Error (Philadelphia Inquirer, Carol Rosenberg, 11/11/04): He shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize … a prize Israel later came to view as soaked in blood after two violent Palestinian uprisings …. at the end of his life, Mr. Arafat was once again seen in wide portions of the West as an exremist cast as an obstacle to coexistence between 4.4 million Arabs and 4.7 million Jews who live in the land today controlled by Israel.
Correction (2/9/05): An obituary of Yasir Arafat published in The Inquirer on Nov. 11 gave an incorrect breakdown of the population of land controlled by Israel. The 2004 CIA Factbook indicates that more than 5.3 million Jews and more than 4.4 million non-Jews live in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The same obituary incorrectly said that Arafat received the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize after two Palestinian uprisings; the second uprising occurred after he had received the prize.
CAMERA: A number of errors in the Rosenberg story were left uncorrected. For details click here.
Error (Philadelphia Inquirer, AP article by Josef Federman, 7/9/04): By September 2005, Sharon plans to pull all Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Correction (7/13/04): An article in the July 9 Inquirer erred in describing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw troops from the West Bank. Under the plan, troops would be withdrawn from four West Bank settlements.
Error (Philadelphia Inquirer, AP article, Mark Fritz, August 23, 2003): [Jericho] is the most revered biblical site in Jordan, yet only a trickle of tourists wander through the church in which Moses himself is buried.
Correction (September 6, 2003): An Associated Press article in the Aug. 23 Inquirer erred in stating the location of Jericho and the burial place of Moses. Jericho is in the West Bank and the exact location of Moses’ burial is unknown.
Error (Philadelphia Inquirer, Thomas Ginsberg, 8/13/03): [Daniel] Pipes also launched an organization after Sept. 11 called Campus Watch that collects complaints against college professors deemed to be biased in favor of Islam, Muslims and Palestinians.
Correction (8/15/03): An article in Wednesday’s Inquirer incorrectly described the work of the organization Campus Watch, created by Daniel Pipes and the Middle East Forum. Campus Watch says it critiques Middle East studies programs, focusing on problems that include the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students.
Error (Philadelphia Inquirer, Gwynne Dyer, 5/3/00
): Then came Victor Ostrovsky, formerly a colonel in Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Ostrovsky already had revealed that the bombing in Libya in 1986, ordered by President Ronald Reagan after U.S. intelligence intercepted a radio message implying Libyan responsibility for the bombing of the La Belle disco in Berlin where two American servicemen were killed, was actually the result of an Israeli deception. It was a Mossad unit, operating secretly in Libya, that really generated the radio message that fooled Reagan into trying to kill Gadhafi – and the 1988 message implying Libyan responsibility for Lockerbie was so similar to the La Belle message, Ostrovsky will testify, that it was almost certainly produced by the same Mossad unit.
Correction (7/21/00): In a May 3 Gwynne Dyer column, informant Victor Ostrovsky was quoted as alleging that Mossad, the Israeli secret service, was involved in a plot to blame Libya for the bombing of the La Belle disco in Berlin in 1986, and subsequently in an attempt to implicate Libya in the bombing of Pan Am 103. It has become clear since then that Ostrovsky is not a credible source for these allegations, and the columnist wishes them withdrawn.