A Guardian video story published on March 16th (Could the Israeli left beat Bibi?), co-produced and narrated by Phoebe Greenwood, included this claim at the 1:14 mark:
In July, 2014, Israel launched a military offensive in Gaza. Netanyahu said this was in retaliation for the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.
Here’s the short section of the video where you can hear the claim.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHQHkoqLWzg]
This is simply not true. Netanyahu was quite clear that the operation was launched to stop the rockets from Gaza.
Indeed, our office was able to confirm with Mark Regev, official spokesman for the prime minister, that Netanyahu never once claimed the operation was launched in retaliation for the teens’ murder.
We’ve contacted Guardian editors, and have asked them to address this erroneous claim.
