Two recent articles from The Independent, both by the same writer, have caught our attention. Bel Trew, who has already been featured on this site on a number of occasions in recent months, has penned two articles referring to the Arab exodus in the course of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war in less than balanced terms.
In the first article, about the one year anniversary of the Great March of Return protests on the Israel-Gaza border, Trew described one of the motivations for the weekly violent protests as:
demanding the right to return to their lands they were forced from during the conflict which surrounded the creation of Israel in the 1940s.”
In so doing, Trew portrayed Arabs as being uniformly forced out, and omitted the fact that thousands of Arabs abandoned their properties willingly after being advised to do so by their leaders, while many thousands more fled for safety without being attacked by Jewish forces.
Related reading: The Forgotten Jewish Refugees From Arab Lands
In reality, however, the reasons why Arab residents of the land left their homes were varied. While in some cases it was as a direct result of force and the immediate violence of the outbreak of war between the Arabs and Jews, for others it was a voluntary decision to temporarily vacate their homes until the situation calmed down. For others still, the decision to leave was prompted by directives issued by Arab leaders.
Noticing this egregious reporting, HonestReporting responded on Twitter, and called attention to the failure there.
You left something out @independent @Beltrew so we corrected it for you. https://t.co/0PGR3bFjuy pic.twitter.com/vJn37Mshzd
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) March 31, 2019
A day later, Trew had a second article published in The Independent, also about the first anniversary of the protests, focusing on the “hopelessness” of people in Gaza. In that article, the same basic error recurs:
Gaza protesters are also demanding the right to return to ancestral lands they were forced from during the conflict which surrounded the creation of Israel in the late 1940s.”
This second error is perhaps even more egregious, accepting the Arab claim that all of Israel can be seen as Arab ‘ancestral lands’ without any measure of criticism. Of course, given that most of the land lay empty throughout the Middle Ages and as late as the early twentieth century, and given that many Arabs in the Holy Land originated in neighboring countries including Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, it’s not at all clear how much of the land Gazans are protesting about could ever feasibly be claimed as ‘ancestral’.
All that, however, is secondary to a far graver sin as far as journalism is concerned.
Each newspaper has its own style guide, and The Independent’s line regarding Arab refugees from 1948 until now has been the same as the vast majority of other newspapers, and recognized that there are competing claims between Arabs and Israelis as to what transpired in 1948 to cause the exodus. As a result, journalists typically make clear that Arabs fled as well as were forced from their homes.
HonestReporting understands that journalists cannot possibly examine in detail every single claim put forward by each side in a conflict. However, adopting the one-sided Palestinian narrative and dismissing the Israeli claim, which is backed up with some weighty evidence, is a gross abuse of the platform afforded by a well-known news website with a readership of hundreds of thousands.
Is this a deviation from The Independent’s line? Or is this perhaps an indication of a shift in the news outlet’s style guide or policy? With previous articles making clear that some of those who ended up homeless had fled, this one-sided portrayal of the situation is a notable and worrying shift. While essentially only a few words have been omitted, the potential change in language and meaning may indicate a far greater issue with The Independent’s reporting. If this is the new standard, at least it will be clear – there’s no longer any pretense of balance.
HonestReporting has registered a complaint with The Independent, and will update with any developments.
