Last week, AFP's Israel-related coverage took on a turn towards the fantastical. First, there was the embarrassing misidentification of Yad Vashem as Judaism's holiest day. Then, the wire service bizarrely maintained that the Israeli city of Bat Yam is known for its retired Mossad agents,
CAMERA prompts correction of an Agence France Presse article which inexplicably misidentified Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, as the holiest day in the Jewish year. Judaism's holiest day is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
CBS's false depiction of Israel's demolition of a handful of illegally tents and pens dangerously built in a long-established military firing zone as the destruction of an entire Palestinian village is one small step away from Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's vitriolic "ethnic cleansing" charge.
News coverage of Malawi's announcement about opening an embassy in Jerusalem included a flurry of inaccurate articles, most misreporting that the nation would be the first African nation to open an embassy in the capital. While Malawi be the only African nation with an embassy in Jerusalem, several others existed in the past, and were closed after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
In Arabic and French, AFP rightly reports that the Kerem Shalom crossing was reopened over a week ago and fuel deliveries to Gaza resumed following a three-week closure. The English report, in contrast, misleadingly reports only that crossing was closed last month, ignoring its subsequent reopening.
While in English AFP correctly identified Kibbutz Ma'anit, internationally recognized as located within Israel, the Arabic article falsely labeled the community as a "settlement," reflecting Islamist and leftist tendencies to delegitimize the entire Jewish state.
AFP abandons its "duty to seek the truth and not passively report information as it is presented to us" when it reports without challenge or clarification the false claim that Israel's army destroyed all of Neve Dekalim's hothouses before the 2005 disengagement.
The Palestinian Authority is likely covering up evidence of its complicity in supporting terrorist attacks against Israelis. Yet, many major U.S. media outlets are ignoring the PA's suspicious decision to shred papers—and the history that suggests what the Authority is up to, and why.
CAMERA prompts correction of an AFP article republished at the Times of Israel which had erroneously reported that the Trump administration had recognized Israeli settlements. Last November, the administration stated that the settlements are not per se contrary to international law; it did not "recognize" them.
