Following a complaint from CAMERA UK, the Guardian corrected a headline which initially referred to Palestinian detainees as “hostages”. Here’s the original headline of the March 30th article written by the outlet’s Jerusalem correspondent Bethan McKernan, which focused on a few Palestinians in Gaza who were detained by Israeli soldiers and later released.
In our complaint, we argued that this word choice puts on equal moral footing Israelis and foreign nationals kidnapped on Oct. 7th by a proscribed terror group and threatened with murder, for the primary purpose of gaining the release of terrorists in Israeli jails, with Palestinians picked up in a warzone and suspected of affiliation with Hamas.
We also noted that the BBC was forced to issue an on-air correction after one of its presenters inadvertently used that same term during a live broadcast to describe Palestinian detainees.
Further, we explained that the plain meaning of the word “hostage” can not be used to accurately describe such Palestinian detainees.
The Oxford dictionary defines a “hostage” as “a person who is captured and held prisoner by a person or group, and who may be injured or killed if people do not do what the person or group is asking“. That is clearly not the case with the released Palestinians in question.
Our complaint was upheld, and the headline changed:
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