In an email to POLITICO, Rudoren said Abrams' accusations * about her worldview were unfounded, but said she "deeply regretted" using "imprecise language" and not studying the map carefully enough:
It's not correct that most of the people I associate with have a left wing perspective, or any particular perspective. In fact I have been widely praised for speaking to a broad variety of people for my stories.
The essence of what our E1 story said was correct: that building there is seen by Palestinians, peace advocates and diplomats worldwide as the death knell of the two state solution, because it prevents meaningful contiguity in the West Bank and easy access to the heart of East Jerusalem. (The Israelis also understand this; it's precisely why this area was chosen at this time.)
On deadline, late at night and at the end of a very long couple of weeks, I used imprecise language and, yes, did not study the map carefully enough. I deeply regret that, but it does not betray any agenda or anything about who I know or consult in my reporting.
* Those accusations?
...just about everyone she knows –all her friends– believe these things, indeed know that they are true. Settlements are bad, the right-wing Israeli government is bad, new construction makes peace impossible and cuts the West Bank in half and destroys contiguity and means a Palestinian state is impossible," he writes on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is a senior fellow. "They just know it, it’s obvious, so why would you have to refer to a map, or talk to people who would tell you it’s all wrong?" "This was precisely what was feared when Ms. Rudoren was named the Times’s bureau chief: that she would move solely in a certain political and social milieu, the rough Israeli equivalent of the Upper West Side of Manhattan,"
^
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