In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, Haaretz‘s English edition today clarified an article which had failed to identify Palestinian gunmen as responsible for the fatal West Bank shootings of two east Jerusalem Arabs this month.
The page-one story in Friday’s print edition, “E. J’lem woman dies of wounds from West Bank attack,” failed to report that the perpetrators of the deadly Jan. 7 shooting were Palestinian, leaving readers to falsely assume the culprits were Israeli settlers.Haaretz reporting, including in English, on the day of the Jan. 7 attack, did note the Palestinian identity of the perpetrators.
But the more recent English edition story elliptically reported that Dr. Lara Tannous died “of wounds sustained in a shooting attack earlier this month in the West Bank, north of the settlement of Ofra.” Further, it stated, “A preliminary investigation conducted by the military found that the attackers blocked the road, opened fire at Mansour’s car, and then climbed out of their vehicle and continued shooting.” The article continued: “Israeli forces apprehended suspects later that day.”
At no point did the article report that the gunmen were Palestinian, and thus readers could have easily and wrongly concluded that the East Jerusalem Arabs, Tannous and Amar Mansour, were fatally shot by Israeli Jews north of the settlement of Ofra.
Notably, Haaretz deemed newsworthy the Palestinian identity of the man who assisted the two victims, reporting that Tannous and Mansour “received medical attention from a Palestinian man who was passing by the scene of the attack.” Why then did it not report the Palestinian identify of the pairs’ killers?Unlike the English coverage, the language in the Hebrew edition made clear that the attackers were Palestinian.
In response to communication from CAMERA’s Jerusalem office noting the English edition’s failure to report the killers’ Palestinian identity, editors commendably revised the digital article to state: “A preliminary investigation conducted by the Israeli army found that the Palestinian gunmen blocked the road.” (Emphasis added.)
See also “Haaretz, Lost Translation“