Ha'aretz Stonewalls In Attempt to Escape From Correcting Errors
Tamar Sternthal Director, Israel Office CAMERA www.CAMERA.org
Monday, November 14, 2005

For more than two decades, CAMERA has followed media coverage of Israel and
the Middle East closely, contacting countless outlets with questions about
factual accuracy and in many instances eliciting corrections. Virtually
every major media outlet in America and some beyond U.S. shores have
corrected errors in response to CAMERA, in accordance with professional
journalistic standards asserting the paramount importance of accuracy -- and
accountability. Among those issuing corrections, often multiple times, have
been the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe,
Chicago Tribune, International Herald Tribune, National Public Radio, ABC
News, and CNN.

Until recently CAMERA's efforts have focused primarily on North America with
few foreign media outlets monitored intensively for accurate coverage or
challenged for corrections on erroneous reporting. Little attention was
directed, for example, toward Ha'aretz, an Israeli daily newspaper printed
in Hebrew and English and relied on by the Western press corps as well as
Israel's cultural and political elite. (Ha'aretz is sometimes described by
its admirers as the New York Times of Israel .) With the opening of CAMERA's
Israel office last year, however, it was possible for the first time to
monitor Ha'aretz in the same sustained way as U.S. newspapers are followed.

In the last year, CAMERA has contacted the paper's editors concerning
multiple factual errors, taking the identical approach used with U.S.
publications - emailing editors behind the scenes, providing data
substantiating why a report is incorrect, requesting a correction, following
up with phone calls, and finally, posting an item on our Web site and/or
sending out an alert. (In a particularly egregious case, we published an
Op-Ed in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles about a serious and
uncorrected error.)

However, unlike prominent American and international outlets, Ha'aretz
apparently considers itself above criticism. Ha'aretz editors seem
unaccustomed to responding to readers in a straightforward process and
appear to believe readers have no right to fault them for shoddy, inaccurate
coverage. Rather than considering the substance of CAMERA's queries,
Ha'aretz has stonewalled completely, refusing to correct errors. Indeed, the
English edition of the newspaper, in contrast to almost every major American
newspaper, has no regular corrections section; a lone correction appears
once every few months.

Amira Hass Falsehood

CAMERA contacted Ha'aretz editors about an error that appeared Nov. 2 in an
Op-Ed entitled "How the PA Failed" by columnist Amira Hass. She writes that
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "cannot prevent the expropriation of
land for Jewish-only roads in the West Bank." In fact, while there are roads
prohibited to Palestinians in the West Bank, there are no "Jewish-only
roads." Israel' s Arab citizens and, indeed, Israeli citizens of any
religion or ethnicity, have just as much right to travel on those restricted
roads as do Israeli Jews. Israeli Arabs frequently use the bypass roads for
business and to visit relatives. Moreover, at least one Israeli Arab was
fatally shot by Palestinian terrorists on one of these roads. As the Los
Angeles Times reported on Aug. 8, 2001:

"{Wael Ghanem, an Israeli Arab, was shot and killed as he drove toward the
Jewish settlement of Tzofim in the West Bank, not far from where an Israeli
woman was killed on Sunday. . . . However, he was driving a car with yellow
license plates on a West Bank road where a similar shooting attack had taken
place, raising the possibility that Palestinian gunmen thought they were
targeting an Israeli settler."

Georgios Tsibouktzakis, a Greek Orthodox monk, shot on June 12, 2001, was
another non-Jew killed by Palestinian terrorists while on these roads.

Even B'Tselem, an organization frequently critical of Israel, acknowledges
that restricted roads are reserved for those with Israeli plates, (Jews and
Arabs), as opposed to Jews only. Thus, an Aug. 9, 2004 hard-hitting report
stated: "B'Tselem has divided the Forbidden Roads Regime into three
categories of roads: 'sterile roads' where Palestinian traffic is completely
prohibited, roads where Palestinians require special permits, and roads with
restricted access. The regime applies only to Palestinians. Israeli vehicles
are allowed to travel freely along these roadways." (Emphasis added.)

This false charge implying a racist policy on the part of Israel -- allowing
special privilege to Jews over other religious and ethnic groups -- is
particularly pernicious. When such a claim is made in a prominent Israeli
newspaper it is often echoed in the media worldwide.

In response to CAMERA's request for a correction on this issue, Ha'aretz
assistant editor Ruth Meisels inadvertently sent CAMERA's Israel Director
Tamar Sternthal what was clearly meant to be an internal Ha'aretz email.
Addressed to a Ha'aretz employee who apparently handles phone calls, the
email warned (in Hebrew):

"In the event that this [CAMERA complaint] gets to you: We have a quasi
'policy,' on the orders of [editor-in-chief] David [Landau], to ignore this
organization and all of its complaints, including not responding to
telephone messages and screening calls from Tamar Sternhal [sic], director
of CAMERA. Otherwise, we will never finish with them."

Thus, Ha'aretz editors appear to have little interest in the accuracy of
their coverage or the accepted standards of journalism -- unlike their
American counterparts -- and seem to believe (wrongly) that not returning a
phone call or responding to an email will deflect CAMERA's efforts to
redress false and inflammatory assertions.

Uncorrected Errors

Beyond the most recent Amira Hass error, numerous others remain uncorrected,
including:

In a July 18, 2004 column, Gideon Levy made a number of false claims, among
them the allegation that Golda Meir once said: "After what the Nazis did to
us, we can do whatever we want." CAMERA was not able to track down any
source for such a quote. Moreover, Levy himself sent an email to CAMERA
admitting that he had no source. Nevertheless, Ha'aretz editors refused to
correct.

On Jan. 26, 2005, Ha'aretz ran a five-column color Reuters photograph above
the fold on the front page, with the incorrect caption: "A Palestinian man
inspecting buildings after they were demolished by Palestinian police in
Gaza yesterday, the first time the PA has acted against illegal
construction." In actuality, the PA has repeatedly acted against illegal
construction, and CAMERA provided Ha'aretz with news reports from Times of
London, the Washington Post, and Israel's Channel 2 substantiating earlier
such action taken by the PA in 1994, 1995, and 1998, respectively.

In a Feb. 10, 2005 Op-Ed about the current status of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, Ha'aretz writer Sefi Rachlevsky alleged that there had been "four
years in which the Palestinians preserved nearly absolute quiet." The exact
time of the four years is not entirely clear from Rachlevsky's writing, but
at no point during the 1990s was there a period in which "the Palestinians
preserved nearly absolute quiet." CAMERA provided Haaretz with a detailed
list of the attacks which occurred throughout the decade. Ha'aretz again
stonewalled.

In a June 5, 2005 Op-Ed, Yossi Beilin claimed that in Israel from 1957 to
1967 "only 20 people were killed from hostile operations." In fact, at least
40 Israelis were killed in hostile acts during this period.

In a Jan. 21, 2004 exposi in Ha'aretz Magazine, Meron Rapaport erred about
the Absentee Property Law, stating: "The law stipulates that the property of
such an absentee would be transferred to the Custodian of Absentee Property,
with no possibility of appeal or compensation" (emphasis added). This is
false, as both appeal and compensation are possible, and landowners have
exercised these rights and been compensated. Though Ha'aretz ran a letter
from CAMERA on this issue, a letter is no substitution for an acknowledgment
from the newspaper that it had erred.

'Personal Vendetta'

In July, the Israeli weekly Makor Rishon ran an article about CAMERA's
Israel office, focusing on its efforts with respect to Ha'aretz, quoting the
editor:

David Landau, editor of Ha'aretz, says that his relationship to CAMERA's
complaints are different than his relationship to the complaints of others.
"I confirm that we relate to CAMERA as if they have a personal vendetta
against us. I have experience of many years with them. We encourage readers
to write to us, and we publicize every day or two days corrections of errors
according to need, but everything depends on the clean hands of the writer."

Yet, it is totally untrue to suggest that in the English edition, which is
the version Western journalists read, corrections run every day or two.
Moreover, CAMERA is the only organization to press Ha'aretz for factual
accountability in a systematic way. Thus, it is CAMERA's unique agenda to
promote accountability which makes Ha'aretz's relationship with us
"different."

Israeli Code of Ethics

Landau's directive to disregard complaints from CAMERA not only stands in
contrast to the attitudes and procedures of the U.S. arena but also, in
fact, violates the Rules of Professional Ethics of Journalism as authorized
by the Israel Press Council.

These state:

"Substantive mistakes, omissions or inaccuracies in the publication of facts
must be corrected speedily, fairly and with the appropriate emphasis
relative to the original publication. In addition, in suitable cases, an
apology shall also be published. In suitable cases a person injured shall be
given a fair opportunity to respond to a substantive mistake, omission or
inaccuracy speedily and with the appropriate emphasis relative to the
original publication."

Ha'aretz seems to believe it is above any such guidelines requiring
accountability.