The Media Accountability Project  

"This article makes an irresponsible and inaccurate claim. It states: 'thousands of Palestinians have been arrested and hundreds have been killed since last year, mainly gunmen or fighters involved in clashes with Israeli troops but also including several uninvolved civilians'. This is untrue. You did not and cannot cite credible forces for such a plain falsehood."

You accurately report in the twelfth paragraph of this article that the Palestinian Authority is still subject to the Israeli occupation. “The PA,” you write, “set up following the 1990s Oslo interim peace accords, exercises limited governance over parts of the West Bank.” Language to this effect is credible – though further context would improve clarity.

"Readers deserve to know that Smotrich is openly intent on discriminatory hostility against Palestinian citizens of Israel. You should know, if you do not, that he has publicly said to Palestinian Arab members of the Knesset that they do not live in their homes by right but 'by mistake – because Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948.'"

"The way that your article is written, particularly paragraph # 2, gives the impression that the Israeli military was acting in self-defense against a group of violent Palestinians. This unfortunate bias, which is all too common, paints the Palestinians as being the violent aggressors."

"Throughout your article, however, the onus is placed not on Israel as the occupying power but on its adversaries. Famously, Israel does not have declared borders. Its approach to illegal territorial expansion has always relied on a fluid and expandable frontier. To omit this well-established context, as your article does – while alluding to some two-way threat of conflict across Israel’s northern frontier – is quite simply to mislead your readers."

"You refer to Islamic Jihad simply as 'Iran-backed' without providing any further context. By using such a reductive qualifier, readers are left with a limited, if not one-sided, picture."

"However, I take exception to your use of the term ‘apolitical melting pot’ to describe the Israeli armed forces. This is factually incorrect and misleading to your readers."

"To be clear, we certainly welcome all reporting that lays bare atrocities against oppressed peoples without justification or obfuscation—much like the article’s headline does. The imprecise language and framing used within the body of the piece, however, obscures the reality of such horrors if not outright legitimizes them."

I have mentioned several times in the past in letters of concern that I and my colleagues have sent to you that the use of words such as “seized” or “captured” when describing Israel’s occupation of the west bank is misleading and inaccurate for several reasons.

Your article should have gone further to mention some of the specific racist comments about Palestinians that he has recently made, including his statement that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” or calling for the “erasure” of the village of Huwara.