Independent falsely claims the Western Wall is Judaism's holiest site

Since 2013, CiF Watch has prompted two corrections at the The Telegraph to reports erroneously claiming that the Western Wall is Judaism’s holiest site. As we noted in previous posts, the Temple Mount (where the First and Second Temples stood) is in fact the holiest site, while the Western Wall (The Kotel) is merely the holiest site where Jews are currently permitted to pray.
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The latest British newspaper to make this mistake is the Independent, in Adam Sherwin’s Dec. 19th article (Sarah Silverman accuses Jerusalem authorities of sex discrimination).

Indy error

 Whilst we’ve contacted Indy editors to seek a correction to this claim, it’s quite instructive to note that CAMERA has also prompted several corrections on this very same matter – including one at the BBC in 2008.

Here is the relevant section of the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit’s response to CAMERA’s appeal.
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Finally, it’s quite telling that the Guardian is one of the few publications which refused to correct their claim that the Western Wall is Judaism’s holiest site. We should add, however, that they inadvertently acknowledged the merit of our argument (that the Western Wall is simply the holiest place where Jews can pray) in a photo caption later that year:

Guardian photo caption, Nov. 4, 2013

(You can read a good backgrounder on issues relating to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, here.)

See an UPDATE to this post, here.

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