The New Yorker Magazine’s online crossword puzzle on February 2 included a clue that referred to the Negev as a “desert that covers more than half of Palestine.”
Bizarrely though, The New Yorker chose to exclude ‘Israel’ from the hint while including ‘Negev,’ a Hebrew word describing the desert region framed by the Jewish state’s borders with Jordan and Egypt.
An eagle-eyed follower of HonestReporting immediately notified us on the same day the crossword puzzle was posted, and we took action by tagging The New Yorker in a tweet in which we pointed out that the Negev actually encompasses almost 60 percent of Israel’s landmass and asked the publication to correct the error:
.@NewYorker, are you trying to alter reality?
In yesterday’s crossword puzzle, @annashechtman calls the Negev a “desert that covers more than half of Palestine.”
The Negev is located within Israel’s borders — and there is no “Palestine.”
Please correct. https://t.co/uIYHk894it pic.twitter.com/ZgPSqt5Djy
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 3, 2022
Following our tweet, The New Yorker on February 8 partially amended ’10-Down’ to read: “Desert that covers part of Palestine.” [Emphasis added]
Although The New Yorker modified the clue to remove the most obvious error, it is still incorrect. As noted in our original tweet, there is no state of ‘Palestine.’
Furthermore, if the clue was intended to be read as a reference to the British-administered Mandatory Palestine, which existed from 1922 until Israel’s establishment in 1948, this should have been clearly stated to avoid confusion.
The New Yorker Magazine’s apparent effort to erase Israel and replace it with a fictitious Palestinian state is troubling: it points to a willingness to literally rewrite facts in a way that amounts to furthering an anti-Israel agenda.
The New York Times published a similar mistake in its crossword puzzle last year, when readers were asked to identify the “Largest city in the Palestinian state.”
As HonestReporting highlighted at the time, the current status of ‘Palestine’ is not that of a sovereign state, as evidenced by Palestinian leaders who have said as much.
In our article, ‘Even If You Will It, It Still Remains A Dream: New York Times, There Is No ‘Palestine,’ we also noted that there exists a clear path to Palestinian self-governance.
The Oslo Accords forged in 1993 between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority the following year. The agreement was based on a promise by the Palestinian leadership to renounce terrorism and resolve all outstanding issues with Israel via bilateral negotiations.
To date, the Palestinian leadership has failed to live up to its obligations.
HonestReporting urged readers to contact the NYT to weigh in on this clear cut case of media inaccuracy, noting that the “newspaper of record” had manufactured a sovereign nation that, according to international law, does not exist:
The @nytimes has conjured up a country — “Palestine” — that does not exist according to international law and never has.https://t.co/ovAZeuFCPt
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 30, 2021
By inserting ‘Palestine’ in its crossword puzzle – and thus depicting it as a viable, functioning entity – The New Yorker Magazine is denying reality. Moreover, the publication, whose weekly circulation exceeds 1.2 million, is effectively legitimizing unilateral Palestinian efforts to achieve statehood while bypassing peace talks with Israel – even as Ramallah incites violence against the Jewish state.
Like The New York Times and other prominent publications, The New Yorker Magazine has a responsibility to get the facts right, especially when they pertain to something as simple as geography or whether or not a country exists.
We encourage our readers to firmly but politely ask for a full correction to the crossword clue by contacting the editor of The New Yorker: [email protected]
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