Daily Mail corrects ‘Jews storming the mosque’ libel

Last week, we complained to Daily Mail editors regarding dishonest, incendiary rhetoric in two pieces describing an Israeli minister’s controversial visit to the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site.

Though the visit by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the extreme-right National Security Minister, on the Jewish fast day which mourns the destruction of the Temples at the site, was widely criticised for his encouragement of prayer at the Mount, which he falsely claimed was in line with Israeli policy, the Mail article and video report employed the ‘Jews storming the mosque’ libel.

We explained to the Mail that words like “stormed” are widely used by PA officials, PA-run ‘news’ sites, pro-Hamas extremists, as well as Qatari and Turkish state media outlets, to describe any peaceful visit by Jews to the Temple Mount. It’s also the term of choice for those who want to incite antisemitic violence.  Moreover, the Jewish visitors on the day in question visited the Temple Mount Compound (described by some as the al-Aqsa Mosque compound), not the mosque itself. 

While it’s forbidden for Jews to pray at the site, it’s legal, and consistent with the current status quo, for Jews to peacefully visit their holy site.

Here’s the original Daily Mail headline:

Here’s the opening sentence:

The words “stormed” or “raided” were also used in several photo captions of what was, by all accounts, a peaceful visit.

Here’s a snapshot of a separate video report of the row, which, as you can see, similarly uses the word “storms”:

Editors upheld our complaint and made several revisions.

First, here’s the revised headline for the first story we cited, which, as you can see, removed the word “stormed” and change the misleading word “mosque” to “mosque compound”.

Now, here’s the revised opening sentence, which similarly removed the word “stormed”:

Additionally, all four of the photo captions were revised, and the words “stormed” and “raided” have been replace with the more neutral words “visited” or “entered”.

Finally, the headline of the Mail’s video report on the same topic was changed, and no longer uses the word “stormed”, and changed “mosque” to “mosque compound”.

h/t Yisrael Medad

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