CiF Watch, a CAMERA affiliate, has prompted a correction on an Op-Ed by Robert Fisk in the Independent, in which he had falsely claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Iranian President Hassan Rouhani an “anti-Semite.” The Oct. 1 Op-Ed (“US cowardice will let Israel’s isolated right off the hook“) had stated:
What we do know is that when Mr Rouhani started saying all the things we had been demanding that Iran should say for years, Israel went bananas. Mr Netanyahu condemned him before he had even said a word. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing.” “An anti-Semite.” (Emphasis added.)
Noting the “characteristic hyperbole and outright misrepresentation about Israel and the state’s supporters” in the Fisk Op-Ed, CiF Watch commented:
whilst it was widely reported that the Israeli prime minister called Rouhani “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”, we were unable to find any record of him accusing Rouhani (either at the UN speech or elsewhere) of being an “anti-Semite.” Netanyahu did end his UN speech with a tale of the antisemitism suffered by his grandfather and his subsequent Zionism, but this was only meant to illustrate the moral urgency of the Zionist mission to build and maintain a Jewish homeland.Of course, none of this is anything new, as Fisk is a well-known anti-Israel ideologue who’s been accused of unethical and unfactual reporting in the past.
After CiF Watch contacted editors about the apparent fabrication, it was removed from the online article.