Haaretz and the Three Rs

Three Rs (pronounced three ars), can refer to:
The three Rs, a widely-used abbreviation for the basic elements of a primary school curriculum: reading, ’riting (writing), and ’rithmetic (arithmetic) (Wikipedia)

However, Haaretz, at not infrequent times, seems to have skipped that which many would have imagined to be a prerequisite to publishing a newspaper.

Today's double helping -

Part I From Yori Yanover's "Lessons in Propaganda: Ha’aretz Bungles Numbers in Effort to Squash ‘Settler’ College":

Anyone with a basic knowledge of third-grade math will raise an eyebrow at the mathematical gyrations displayed by the Israeli daily Ha’aretz regarding the efforts to block the certification of Ariel College, located east of the 67 border, as a full-fledged university. The numbers in their report on academicians’ objections to the new facility just don’t jive.

The headline reads:

Thousands of academics against turning Ariel College into a University

The first line of the opening paragraph reads:

About a thousand academic scholars, including 18 Israel Prize laureates, signed a petition calling to stop the process of transforming the University Center in Ariel into a fully-recognized university.

The second sentence in that same opening paragraph reads:

The petition was sent last month to Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar bearing 300 signatures.

We screen-shot the Hebrew version, just in case it gets "scrubbed" later 

Part II Ha'aretz, Lost in Translation, XI from our hard-working friends at CAMERA:

Eldad wrote in Hebrew that settlers cleared rocks. Ha'aretz's English translators translated settlers "cleared rocks" into settlers "expelled"

Ha'aretz Lost in Translation strikes again. This time it's an Op-Ed by pro-settlement writer Karni Eldad, which states in the English version:

Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria can be broken down into a number of periods - the settlement period, during which dozens of communities were established (mostly under the Labor Party, and much of it due to President Shimon Peres ); the agricultural period, during which settlers took over land, expelled, planted and sowed; and the period of tourism, during which wineries, bed and breakfasts, restaurants and tourist attractions were built under every tree. (Emphasis added.)

That an advocate of the settlements would allege that settlers "expelled" seems highly unlikely. Indeed, a glance at the original Hebrew version tells us that in fact Karni Eldad did not at all write that settlers "expelled." The bolded English phrase above appears as follows in the original Hebrew:

תקופת החקלאות, שבה נאחזו המתיישבים בקרקע, סיקלו, נטעו וזרעו

The translation of the bolded English section is actually:

the agricultural period, during which settlers held onto the land, cleared stones, planted and sowed.

Thus, while Eldad wrote that settlers cleared stones ("seeklu"), Ha'aretz's English editors insisted that the settlers "expelled" ("seelku").

Furthermore, the Hebrew word "ne'achzu," which Ha'aretz translates as "took over the land," is not exactly that. While "taking over the land" has a negative connotation implying that it was taken over from someone, the word "ne'achzu," which doesn't have a precise English translation, does not imply the displacement of others. The infinitive of the Hebrew verb most accurately means "to hold on."

So it goes, day after day, year after year, at Haaretz, the paper whose audience imagines itself to be Israel's intelligentsia, and likens itself to the New York Times. Hmmmm ...

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