Correcting the Record, Haaretz Style

I have to credit the Globe & Mail for noting the "clarification" Haaretz made on its ugly apartheid survey.To my…

By Pesach Benson November 04, 2012

I have to credit the Globe & Mail for noting the “clarification” Haaretz made on its ugly apartheid survey.To my awareness, it’s the only Western paper that did the right thing.

Thumbs up to HonestReporting Canada for its role. This is significant because Big Media typically doesn’t follow-up on subsequent corrections, clarifications or apologies. The last word on the matter for Globe & Mail readers would have otherwise been this more distasteful headline:

Many Israeli Jews support apartheid-style, poll suggests

Unfortunately, Gideon Levy, the Haaretz journalist behind all this, is milking his apartheid agenda for all he can with a Friday op-ed in South Africa’s Mail & Guardian:

Levy writes:

Given the reality, making peace with the Palestinians would be an almost antidemocratic act. Most Israelis do not want it. A just, egalitarian society would also violate the wishes of most Israelis. That, too, is something they do not want. They seem to be satisfied with their racism, comfortable with the occupation, pleased with the apartheid. Things are very good for them in this country. That is what they told the pollsters.

No, it’s not what they told the pollster.

We saw a similar phenomenon a few years ago when Haaretz published soldiers’ “testimonies” from the Gaza war alleging IDF abuses. Ultimately, the stories were proven bogus, but not before Big Media fulfilled the maxim generally attributed to Mark Twain:

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

The Globe & Mail shows the truth got halfway around the world. But Levy’s still racing it.

Update

But that’s not all – An Israel Prize winner and author of the IDF’s Code of Ethics contacts us to reveal how Ha’aretz twisted his words to imply support for IDF medical experiments on soldiers. Click here to read more.

© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025

Pesach Benson

Pesach Benson

A Baltimore native, Pesach was with HonestReporting from 2011 to 2020. He edited the Israel Daily News Stream and authored the e-book, Red Lines: HonestReporting’s 8 Categories of Media Bias. Before moving to Israel in 1995, he worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Jewish Times. Pesach has a B.A. in political science from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, where he was executive editor of the campus newspaper.

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