Guardian removes false “plausible genocide” claim, but adds new lie

As detailed here yesterday, we complained to Guardian editors over an editorial (“The Guardian view on a genocide probe call: sense in Gaza’s senseless conflict”, Nov. 18) which included the following:

Legal scrutiny of the conflict requires access to Gaza, which has been sealed off for 13 months in defiance of the international court of justice’s calls to permit entry to investigate a “plausible genocide“.

In our complaint, we cited the fact that Joan O’Donoghue, the former President of the ICJ, stated clearly during a BBC interview that the court did NOT rule that the CLAIM of genocide against Israel was “plausible”, nor did it rule, in any way, on the merits of the charge. The court narrowly ruled that “there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide”. 

Indeed, the words placed in quotes in the Guardian editorial, “plausible genocide” represent a total fabrication, as those two words do not appear together in the ICJ ruling.

We also noted in our complaint that, in May, the outlet corrected two articles that contained the same error, and that the BBC recently upheld our complaint on that same error.

In response to our complaint to the Guardian, the sentence was changed:

Legal scrutiny of the conflict requires access to Gaza, which has been sealed off for 13 months in defiance of the international court of justice’s calls to permit entry to investigate a plausible risk of genocide.

Here’s the editor’s note:

While their revision noting the ICJ’s ruling that there is a ‘“real and imminent risk of irreparable harm” to the Palestinians’ plausible right to be protected from genocide’, is accurate, their additional language, claiming that the court found there to be a “plausible risk of genocide” is a new lie, as that can not be found in the text of the decision, either explicitly or implicitly.

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