The NYTimes Admits An Error

The NYT, i.e., Isabelle Kershner has corrected her number of Arab civilians killed in Gaza during the fighting about ten days ago after the anti-tank rocket was shot at the schoolbus, critically wounding the Israeli boy. Now the number of killed includes "some civilians," not "about half."

In the subsequent clashes, 19 Palestinians, including some civilians, were killed in Gaza and he feared more deaths from Israeli fire.

Errors we know they make.

Now we know they also correct themselves, after defending themselves and their local Gazan stringer who is an activist, not a journalist.

Oh, their original position:

Yisrael,

We have rechecked our reporting and the number of civilian dead was 8. About half. The discrepancy lies in the identity of the men killed on Thursday April 7, in the hours after the school bus was hit, in the area of Rafah in southern Gaza.

Fares Akram, our Gaza correspondent, reported at the time that three of them were in fact non-combatants, but civilians collecting gravel from the old airport. There were two incidents of Israeli fire in the area that afternoon, one which killed a Hamas fighter, and another that killed the other three men. In other words the three men were not together with the Hamas fighter at the time they were killed.

Fares has re-checked his information and says that the three are widely regarded in Gaza as having been non-combatants. No militant group has claimed them as members, which would be highly unusual if they indeed belonged to one. We have checked the Iz al-Din al-Qassam Arabic website, where fallen "resistance fighters," or Mujahadin, are honored. Only one is honored as having been killed on April 7 -- Saleh al-Tarabin. The other three you list as fighters -- Musab al-Sufi, Muhammad al-Mahmoum and Khaled al-Diyari -- do not appear on that date or any other date since on the Qassam site, strongly suggesting that they were not Qassam fighters after all.

Which was in response to my sending this:


The New York Times Goldstones Israel Again

Doubles the Number of Civilian Casualties in Gaza

There in the middle of a silly article about Justin Bieber's visit to Israel, The New York Times' Isabel Kershner goldstones Israel.

"Last Thursday, a 16-year-old Israeli boy was critically wounded by an antitank missile fired by Hamas militants at a school bus in Gaza. That triggered days of intense exchanges of fire, during which 18 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, were killed."

So how much is "about half" of 18? How many dead civilians? Eight? Nine? Ten?

Actually, the real number of civilians killed is five. It's relatively easy to find out just by looking at Arab sources in English. And according to Arab sources, four were in close proximity to terrorists firing missiles at Israel.

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