FT Hamas Shocker – “We Don’t Feel a Correction Was Warranted”
December 22, 2011 12:26 by Simon Plosker
Hamas does not discriminate between Israeli soldiers, civilians, men, women, children or babies when it carries out terror attacks. For Hamas, they are all potential soldiers and legitimate targets. That’s why Israelis and most of the media knew exactly what Hamas meant when it boasted of killing 1365 “Zionist soldiers” over the 24 years of its existence.
But not the Financial Times, which published the following, referring to “Israeli soldiers” of the purely military kind:
We pointed this out on our Backspin blog at the time as it is important to understand that Hamas deliberately targets civilians and soldiers alike. Stating that Hamas has killed only soldiers whitewashes the indiscriminate murderous agenda of the organization and is, of course, an inaccurate report of what Hamas really stated.
Thinking that the Financial Times had committed an innocuous error, we contacted the paper asking for a correction. This was the response:
thank your for your email, which I followed up with Tobias Buck , our Jerusalem bureau chief, and we don’t feel a correction is warranted. The column clearly attributes its claims to Hamas in Gaza. The statement was carried on the official Qassam Brigades website and referred to “1385 Zionist soldiers”. We and all other outlets tend to translate “Zionist” into “Israeli”, since that is what they mean. Hamas was clearly not talking about civilians. Below are links to the Hamas web site and AFP wire from that day, which also refers to “Israeli soldiers”.
If Hamas was “clearly not talking about civilians,” then how does Tobias Buck explain Israeli human rights organization (and a favorite source for the international media) B’Tselem’s own casualty statistics dating back to 1987 when Hamas was formed?
Unlike Hamas, B’Tselem does distinguish between civilian and military casualties on both Israeli and Palestinian sides. So we totaled the number of Israeli soldiers and civilians killed by Palestinians (including all terror groups and not only Hamas) and came up with the following:
- 492 members of the Israeli security forces killed by Palestinians
- 1025 Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians
- Total number of Israelis killed by Palestinians, Dec. 1987 – present: 1517
Had Tobias Buck bothered to do some simple fact-checking, he would have realized that Hamas could not possibly be referring to only soldiers when it quoted a figure of 1365, also bearing in mind that out of the 492 soldiers and 1025 civilians, other Palestinian terror groups would be responsible for a proportion of those fatalities.
Even the Al-Qassam website that the FT refers to in its own email to HonestReporting is titled “Al-Qassam carried out 1106 operations, killed 1365 Zionists.” Not 1365 Zionist soldiers or Israeli soldiers but simply Zionists. According to the FT, it tends “to translate “Zionist” into “Israeli”, since that is what they mean.” In this case this is exactly what Hamas means – Israelis.
If, as the FT states, it merely repeated the Hamas claims word-for-word, then it should have published the quote as is i.e. referring to “Zionist soldiers” and added the caveat that this actually referred to all Israelis irrespective of military or civilian status.
Instead, the FT (and the AFP) has unilaterally changed the meaning of Hamas’s words thus sanitizing the reality of the Hamas agenda – to indiscriminately kill as many Israelis as possible.
That the FT has refused point-blank to amend or correct its error is simply unethical and unprofessional journalism.
We will be following up with the FT to demand a correction and acknowledgement of the error. In the meantime, you can also add your voice to this call by writing to the Financial Times – corrections@ft.com
Please consider clicking +1, Tweet, Like or linking to this article on your blog or website. Correcting the record about the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas is only effective when it reaches a large readership, especially through the Google search engine. Creating a link to this page with the text “Hamas civilian casualties” helps this article reach the first page search results for the term.
Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com, flickr/gerlos.
william
8:20 pm
Dec 23, 2011
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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dov grauman
9:31 pm
Dec 24, 2011
william. you are a shmuk
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Michelle Albagli
9:47 pm
Dec 23, 2011
Fact: Britons have always been, and will always be, anti-semitic. The FT will always reflect this bias. We can split as many hairs, or count how many angels dance on the head of a pin, as we with; this disgusting characteristic will not change. Do not purchase any products from the publisher of the FT or of other anti-semitic groups. The only pain we can inflict is on their pocket books; this is a severe pain indeed. Such people will one day meet their Maker and will not die a peaceful death.
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Alan
12:18 am
Dec 24, 2011
“Fact: Britons have always been, and will always be, anti-semitic”
What an outrageous and repulsive statement, I am Jew who was raised in the UK and whilst a lot of the media are without doubt anti-semitic that is not the same of the ordinary man/woman in the street, I encountered a lot more anti semitism in France, Germany and Holland, I have always been treated with the utmost respect by a majority of the people in the UK, you should think before you make such a odious comment.
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Mr. Light-Bright
7:09 am
Dec 26, 2011
Then call me stupid. British media needs to be rocked and shook by the “majority of the people in the UK.”
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Mikhael
4:04 am
Jan 13, 2012
As a non-Briton, but an American-Israeli who has spent a lot of time in the UK on and off over the years both for study, business and pleasure and who thinks he knows Britain (and its Jewish communities) fairly well, my impression is that a certain segment of self-styled would-be intellectual types have a certain prejudice against Jews which is often cloaked in so-called anti-Zionism, but it’s not so simple. Sometimes the critique of Israel is a just a knee-jerk sophomoric unthinking identification of Israel with “neo-colonialism” and “neo-imperialism” and these people sincerely think they are defending the downtrodden dispossessed by clinging to the Palestinian Arab cause above all, and it’s not necessarily motivated by an animus against Jew per se, but can sometimes be converted into anti-Semitism. My experience though is outside of academe and leftist circles, regular British folk are often tolerant, warm people (particularly in Northern England and Scotland), although there are always idiots guilty of crude anti-Semitism. But overall, the average working-class Brit really cares more about the price of lager/bitter in his pub and the fortunes of his football club and he doesn’t know or care much about the Jews or Israel and he’d be happy to invite a kippa-wearing Jew for a pint. That’s my experience, but I admit I’m slightly Anglophile.
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M J F
11:48 pm
Dec 25, 2011
As another ex-Briton I would add the rider that if Britons are less overtly anti-Semitic than other Western European nations it is almost certainly a concomitant of their politeness, reserve and ‘correctness’ in public. Today, however, the religiously-inspired (nay, Koranically mandated) anti-Semitism of the Muslim public is slowly but surely releasing ‘ethnic’ Britons from that aspect of their reserve and making overt anti-Semitism more common and more … acceptable.
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Michelle Albagli
9:49 pm
Dec 23, 2011
Fact: Britons have always been, and will always be, anti-semitic. The FT will always reflect this bias. We can split as many hairs, or count how many angels dance on the head of a pin, as we wish; this disgusting characteristic will not change. Do not purchase any products from the publisher of the FT or of other anti-semitic groups. The only pain we can inflict is on their pocket books; this is a severe pain indeed. Such people will one day meet their Maker and will not die a peaceful death.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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steve mann
1:17 pm
Dec 26, 2011
As a patriotic Englishman of 3 generations I would dearly love to dispute some of the statements made. However when it comes to the majority of the Press, the Media and the “Chattering Left Elite” I can not make an argument.
Stephen Pollard , the Journalist, once wrote that ” At the Elite dinner table, anti-Semitism is always at the fore.”
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Angela Wine
5:47 pm
Dec 26, 2011
Even some of the Jews in the U.K. themselves are somewhat anti-semitic!!!!!!!! Maybe they want to be more British than Jewish ?!!!!!!!
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LAURENCE FREEMAN
2:20 am
Dec 27, 2011
From the news I have watched over the current holidays, one could easily form the impression that the media is anti semitic as regards Jews. One example relates to the recent sermon aired on BBC news of the Catholic Arch bishop in Westminster saying that we should all be saying prayers for those poor Palestinians who were about to be evicted so the Israeli security wall near Bethlehem could be completed. The assumption would seem that those evicted would no longer have any housing.
Of course, in his Christmas message, the venerablle Archbishop could have referred to the thousands of homeless in Britain who shelter in cardboard boxes for most of the year, Or perhaps he could have referred to the abuses by Priests of his persuasion of children whose minds would have been affected by the unwelcome advances of his co religionists, over many years.
If he had been watching the news himself he might just have said a few words of sympathy for those of his co religionists who had been massacred in Nigeria after Holy Mass on Christmas Day by northern Nigerian islamist groups.Or even referred to those Jews in Israel still not properly housed in Israel as a result of their withdrawal from Gaza, which now permits Islamic Gazans to send rockets and Mortars into Israel, ever closer to Tel Aviv. Anyone who criticises the present Israeli Government should bear this in mind when recommending further concessions to Abbas and his ilk, when one day they might deign to sit at the same table for talks about Peace.
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David Pinto
5:42 pm
Jan 09, 2012
You said that the Archbishop spoke about the Palestinians. You go on to say that the Archbishop could have spoken about the homeless or about those abused by priests or about the Christians in Nigeria. Yes, of course, he could have spoken about them — but he didn’t. This is a standard line on Honest Reporting and its pusillanimous toadies — no matter what someone says about something, anything for that matter, go on and attack him, or her, for what he or she didn’t say. No wonder public figures refuse to say anything these days — no matter what you say the attack dogs at Honest Reporting (Honest my foot!) are going to spin it some way or other.
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Kenya
8:11 pm
Jan 12, 2012
You fail to grasp the basic point of antisemitic propaganda: Jews – and their collective, Israel – are singled out for opprobrium. At Christmas time, it has become a trope of antisemites to compare Palestinians with the “homeless” Mary and and Joseph. When it is pointed out that other nations have a worse record than Israel, the “singling out” of Israel is exposed. What is not said is indeed a significant aspect of antisemitic discourse. Antisemitism is correlated with ignorance and irrationality – stupidity – as well as hate.
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jacko
4:19 pm
Dec 28, 2011
Th British ruling classes many of the “intelligensia as well as the left wing Trade Union Council and the British Churches are no doubt anti semitic. The Foreign Office and and other government ministries has never forgiven “The Jews” for forcing them to leave the Holy Land after they reneged on their mandate from the League of Nations to “Establish a Home for the Jewish People” in the Holy Land
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Odette Jones
3:55 pm
Jan 07, 2012
The magazine Israel Today has just recorded that Hamas wants the Jews back in Gaza because now that they are gone they have no one to hate & fight anymore . The Jews has been
the scapegoat of the World for centuries ( I am a Gentile ) whether here or in Israel . Thank you Michelle Albagli for your comments . GOD bless you .
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Michael
2:52 pm
Jan 08, 2012
Funny enough the figures are roughly the same for the number of Palestinians killed during Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza in Dec 2008, over a period of just 2 weeks , not 15 years. A high proportion of those victims being women & children.
Let’s not pretend Israel is the victim here.
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Mikhael
4:20 am
Jan 13, 2012
Re: “Funny enough the figures are roughly the same for the number of Palestinians killed during Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza in Dec 2008, over a period of just 2 weeks , not 15 years. A high proportion of those victims being women & children.”
And about 900 of the approximately 1300 killed by IDF in Gaza during Op. Cast Lead in Winter ’08/’09 were of course Hamas terrorists or affiliated with members of other terror gangs like Islamic Jihad–or police who were under the authority of the Hamas government command structure and thus legitimate military targets during wartime (but who Hamas tries to pass off as “civilian”) . It’s also true that approximately 400 civilians were also killed directly or indirectly by IDF during the hostilities, which Israel admitted to and regrets. Civilian casualties are sadly an inevitable consequence of modern combat in densely populated, built-up urban areas such as Gaza, which Israel had no choice but to fight in. I would suggest that Hamas could avoid this by engaging IDF in an open area away from civilians, so that IDF can kill them more effectively without worry about harming any innocents. By contrast, Hamas deliberately seeks to harm Israelis, civilian or not. During WW2, the UK killed far more German civilians than Nazi Germany managed to kill British civilians. In one night alone, RAF killed about 50,000 Germans (majority civilian) in Dresden, which was nearly the amount of British civilians killed during all the years of the Blitz, Lufwaffe air raids and V2 buzz-bombings from between 1939-1945. The UK was not guilty of a “genocidal” attack on Germany, and Israel is not guilty of a “genocidal attack on Gaza. It’s a truism that the losing side in armed conflict will suffer greater casualties than the victor. We will not be the losing side.
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news
1:32 pm
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Im having a tiny problem. I cant get my reader to pick-up your feed, Im using yahoo reader by the way.
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