East London paper falsely declares territories “illegally” occupied (Updated)

A tendentious, one-sided news article in the east London-based Hackney Citizen (“Petition calls on council to divest from companies complicit in occupation of Palestine”, March 15) included the following sentence:

“Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, is considered a violation of international law and an obstacle to a two-state solution, according to the United Nations”.

As we’ve noted previously, though Israeli settlements (located in the territories) are considered by most international parties to be illegal, the claim that Israeli control of the disputed territory is “illegal” is not correct, as there is no legal consensus over that matter.

CAMERA has prompted corrections to this same error in publications such as the New York Times and Independent.  Here’s the NY Times correction, which appeared at the bottom of the 2016 article:

We contacted editors at the Hackney Citizen requesting a correction.

Editors responded and tweaked the sentence, which now reads:

Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, is considered a violation of international law and an obstacle to a two-state solution, according to many commentators.”

The following addendum now appears at the bottom:

This article was amended at 14:23 on Tuesday 16 March 2021. The original article stated: “Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, is considered a violation of international law and an obstacle to a two-state solution, according to the United Nations”. It now states: “Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, is considered a violation of international law and an obstacle to a two-state solution, according to many commentators.”

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3 Comments

  1. says: Neil C

    Who gives a flying f… about the Hackney Citizen, just another rag that has been infiltrated by antisemites, we should be more concerned about these universities teaching (brainwashing) journalist students to be anti-Israel and antisemitic

  2. says: BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE

    Neil, this is about brainwashing people. The Hackney Citizen may be a small local newspaper but it is lying to its readers and perpetuating anti-Israel propaganda. We cannot tolerate this.

    In his campaign to get to sleep in the White House, Unity Joke Biden said ‘we don’t want facts, we want truth’ because whoever told him to say that knew that if you repeat the same lies over and over again people come to accept them as the ‘truth’. It’s called the Goebbels Principle and was used to great effect by the Nazis (Germany’s National Socialist Workers Party) in the 1930 to make hatred of the Jews acceptable to the populace at large. And we know what that led to.

    We want FACTS, not some biased version of their truth which we must challenge at every opportunity.

  3. says: Leila Cumber

    It is called psychological propaganda. The left wing Hackney Gazette, although not a national, is an important newspaper for the locals. That notwithstanding check out letter on the identical subject in the right wing Daily Telegraph from Alan Duncan and Christopher Soames on the far right spectrum. The DT is an influential national. The left and right come together on anti-Israel issues. Could be the start of a new campaign.

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