Haaretz Corrects Nationality of Terrorist Samir Kuntar

Terrorist Samir Kuntar in 2009 (Photo by Mardetanha/Wikimedia)

CAMERA’s Israel office yesterday prompted correction after Haaretz’s English edition mistakenly identified convicted terrorist Samir Kuntar, who in 1979 and brutally murdered Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter Einat, as Palestinian. A second daughter, 2,  accidentally smothered to death while her mother kept her hidden. Kuntar was a Lebanese Druze.

The Kahol Lavan party is likely to support a request to bar Israeli Arab lawmaker Heba Yazbak of the Joint List from running for reelection on March 2 over a Facebook post that hailed a Palestinian convicted of killing an Israeli family in an attack in the late 1970s as a “fighting martyr.”

In addition, the online subheadline repeats the erroneous description of Kuntar as Palestinian: “Hebrew Yazbak under fire after hailing Palestinian convicted of killing Israeli family as a ‘martyr.” In response to communication from CAMERA, editors amended the digital subheadline and text. The accurate heading now states: “Heba Yazbak under fire after hailing convicted killer of Israeli family as a ‘martyr.'” In addition, the same accurate language now appears in the text itself. Contrary to common journalistic practice, the correction is not noted at the bottom of the article.