Sternthal - AP Revises Caption About Palestinian Prisoner's Violence

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA
24 October '11

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=2&x_article=2139

Following communication with CAMERA staff, the Associated Press today revised a photo caption which grossly understated the terror acts and which severely exaggerated the prison sentence of one of the West Bank prisoners released last week to the Gaza Strip. The photograph along with its original erroneous caption follow:

In this photo taken Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011, freed Palestinian prisoner Hamuda Saleh, age 38, who was originally from the West Bank city of Nablus, prays near the pool at a hotel in Gaza City. Palestinian prisoners exiled to the Gaza Strip in a dramatic swap for a captive Israeli soldier last week are contemplating the rest of their lives after years behind bars. Some say they want to put their violent pasts behind them and move on with their lives, now that the celebrations marking their release have faded. In 1989 Saleh claims he was sentenced to multiple life sentences for being part of the 'Ezz Al-Din Al Qassam' militia, the military wing of Hamas.

As noted earlier today in CAMERA's Snapshots blog:

Based on Ms. Todras-Whitehill's caption, Saleh would have been just 16 when he was supposedly sentenced to multiple life terms for his membership in Ezz Al-Din Al Qassam (but no specific terror act), a scenario which did not seem plausible. Indeed, a check of the Prison Service's list of prisoners released in the Shalit deal shows that Hamuda Said Abdul Rahim Saleh has been in prison since July 7, 2000, not since 1989. And his sentence was 22 years, not multiple life terms. (Also he was born in 1976, making him younger than 38.) We are still looking into his crime, but given that the rest of the information that he supplied to the AP was false, a dose of skepticism is in order regarding his claim that "being part of the 'Ezz Al-Din Al Qassam milita" was the sole reason for his imprisonment.

Todras-Whitehill does not specifically say that Mr. Saleh was one of those who claims he'd like to put his violent past behind him, but if he was, obviously that claim would be suspect as well.

Following communication today from CAMERA staff with the AP, the wire service added the Prison service's information to the caption, but did not issue an outright correction. Thus, the resubmitted caption today under the heading "ADDITION Mideast Israel Palestinians Prisoner Swap" reads:

In this photo taken Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011, freed Palestinian prisoner Hamuda Saleh, age 38, who was originally from the West Bank city of Nablus, prays near the pool at a hotel in Gaza City. Palestinian prisoners exiled to the Gaza Strip in a dramatic swap for a captive Israeli soldier last week are contemplating the rest of their lives after years behind bars. Some say they want to put their violent pasts behind them and move on with their lives, now that the celebrations marking their release have faded. In 1989 Saleh claims he was sentenced to multiple life sentences for being part of the 'Ezz Al-Din Al Qassam' militia, the military wing of Hamas. A list of prisoners released by Israel's Prison service states Saleh was born in 1976, arrested in 2000 and sentenced to 22 years in jail for premeditated murder, membership in an unrecognized organization, planting a bomb and shooting at people. (Emphasis added.)

It is worth noting that neither Hamas nor any other source disputes the veracity of the Prison Service's data. (The Hebrew list of released prisoners includes their acts of terror; the English does not.) While we commend the AP for quickly including the Prison Service correct information about Saleh's sentence and crimes, a straightforward correction would have been preferable. A news outlet is under no obligation to report a source's lie just because s/he said it.

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Wire Services Captions On Thin Blue Line

Honest Reporting/Backspin
03 August '10

Ugly border clash today along the Israeli-Lebanese border, a.k.a. the Blue Line. Five people were killed including IDF Lt. Col Dov Harari, three Lebanese soldiers, and Lebanese journalist.

First, bungled wire service photo captions out there incorrectly state that Israel was cutting down a tree on the Lebanese side of the border.

What the captions don't tell you is that the security fence is a few meters inside Israeli territory, and is not the actual international border. Exhibit A is Reuters:

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Propaganda from the AP

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
23 May '10

It's just a short paragraph. Yet, it is riddled with factual and historical errors -- all part of an egregious anti-Israel bias that undermines millennial Jewish ties and claims to Jerusalem.

It appears in the May 23 edition of the Washington Post, as the last paragraph of a brief item attributed to the Associated Press about U.S.-mediated indirect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the Post's "Digest" feature.

Here is the entire paragraph:

"Israel wants to annex Jewish settlements in the war-won West Bank and East Jerusalem."

How is that wrong? Let us count the ways:

1. For starters, Israel doesn't want or need to annex any part of East Jerusalem. After the 1967 war, when it defeated Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armies bent on destroying it, Israel made Jerusalem whole again. Israel formally put an end to 19 years of illegal Jordanian occupation of the eastern sector of the city -- the only time in its entire history that Jerusalem was a divided city. Today, there is nothing left for Israel to "annex." It's been a done deal for more than a generation.

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AP’s Historical Revisionism on Jerusalem

Gilead Ini
CAMERA
12 March '10

Revisionism is big, at least when it comes to Jerusalem. For example, Ikrima Sabri, until recently the Palestinian Authority-appointed mufti of Jerusalem, told the German daily Die Welt in 1997 that "In the whole city, there is not even a single stone indicating Jewish history... The Jews cannot legitimately claim [the Western] wall, neither religiously nor historically."

But revisionism is not limited to Holocaust-denying Palestinian religious leaders. A somewhat less absurd, but nonetheless outrageously false, version of the city's history has recently been promoted by major Western news organizations.

On CNN, Christiane Amanpour had insisted that the "tug of war over Jerusalem" began in 1967, when Israel removed homes abutting the Western Wall. "The 40-year tug of war over Jerusalem began when Israel bulldozed the Arab neighborhood next to the Western Wall and built a plaza where Jews now pray," she said in the original version of CNN's 2007 program God's Jewish Warriors.

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AP's Damage Control on Palestinian Incitement

TS
CAMERA/Snapshots
11 January '10

Leila Ghannam, the acting governor of Ramallah, is in damage control mode on the issue of Palestinian incitement, and the AP has served as a willing accomplice. Amy Teibel's AP article yesterday ("Israel: Palestinians to blame for impasse in talks"), notes Israeli objections to the naming of a square in Ramallah after bus hijacker Dalal Mugghrabi, who was responsible for the murder of 37 civilians in 1978. Teibel writes:

Leila Ghannam, the acting governor of Ramallah, confirmed the plan to name the square after Dalal Mughrabi, but said the national Palestinian leadership had nothing to do with the decision. (Emphasis added.)

Yet, according to a Dec. 31 report by Palestinian Media Watch:

The text on the giant banner carrying Mughrabi's portrait at the birthday ceremony read: "Under the auspices of President Mahmoud Abbas The Political and National Education Authority Ceremony on the anniversary of the birth of the bride of the cosmos The Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi."

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