Indy editors correct one of Sarah Helm’s false claims about recent Hamas violence

On Nov. 14th we posted about a piece at The Independent by Sarah Helm, who, as we’ve noted, is one of the more biased reporters we’ve come across in years. 

Within Helm’s completely one-sided, tendentious and at times conspiratorial account of the recent violence between Hamas and Israel, were a few factual errors.  We brought these to the attention of Indy editors who, after two weeks, have corrected one. (They’re still weighing the merit of our other complaints about the article).

Here’s the relevant sentence from the piece titled “Israel’s latest strikes on Gaza were deliberate attempts to prolong the suffering of Palestinians – and the world has fallen for it”, Nov. 13th:

Israeli commandos launched a highly provocative incursion into Gaza aiming to kill or – more likely – to kidnap a commander of al-Qassem, Hamas’s military wing.

As we noted to editors, the allegation, that the mission in Gaza was designed to kidnap or kill a Hamas commander, was flatly denied by the IDF on the morning of Nov. 12th, and all major media outlets we monitored included this denial when citing these early, and completely unsubstantiated, Hamas claims. (In fact, since the article was published, Hamas themselves admitted that this wasn’t accurate.)

Though editors didn’t remove the false claim, they at least added Israel’s denial.

The new sentence is in bold:

Israeli commandos launched a highly provocative incursion into Gaza aiming to kill or – more likely – to kidnap a commander of al-Qassem, Hamas’s military wing.

Israel deny [sic] reports that the operation was intended to kill or abduct militants in Gaza.

We’ll update this post when hear back from editors about the other errors in Helm’s piece.

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