Following an HonestReporting Canada alert, a recent Globe and Mail opinion column which falsely claimed that upon its independence in 1948, Israel invaded its neighbouring Arab countries, has been corrected to accurately reflect the historical record.
In his April 25 commentary which was entitled: “The modern Middle East was shaped by Canada. Should we finish the task?” columnist Doug Saunders originally wrote that (emphasis added): “in May 1948, Israel declared its sovereignty and immediately launched military raids on the lands separating its strips of land, forcing hundreds of thousands of Arabs to become refugees.”
The corrected version now reads that: “In May, 1948, Israel declared its sovereignty, which was followed by two events that reshaped the map. Within hours, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan attacked. The newly formed Israeli military launched military raids on the lands separating its strips of land, forcing hundreds of thousands of Arabs to become refugees, and held off the Arab states in a close war. But those Arab states seized the remaining lands that were to be Palestine, possessing them for 19 years before they were occupied by Israel.”
An editor’s note appended to the article also states: “Editor’s note: The original wording of this column may have created the impression that the 1948 Israeli raids on Palestinian-designated lands were planned before the Arab-Israeli war began. In fact, the ordering of the two is a matter of historical debate, and the columnist intended only to state that both occurred after Israel had declared independence. The sentences in question have been rephrased to remove any suggestion of chronological sequence.”
Meanwhile, the Globe’s print edition published the following clarification on May 3:
This correction sets the record straight in a most fundamental way: by making clear that when Israel declared its independence in 1948, it was attacked by its Arab neighbours, and not the other way sound. This is not a minor distinction, and it strikes at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
However, the statement remains far from perfect, leaving ambiguous the reason why “hundreds of thousands of Arabs” were displaced and became refugees. While there were many factors in the war, there was perhaps no bigger factor than Arab leaders, who expected Israel to promptly be destroyed, and encouraged Arabs to leave lest they be caught in the middle.
The corrected version also states that “those Arab states seized the remaining lands that were to be Palestine, possessing them for 19 years before they were occupied by Israel.” While Israel is technically in possession of these lands, the correction did not state that Israel strenuously denies that it’s an illegal occupier, citing its historical connection and its title to the lands under international law.
While anti-Israel detractors accuse the Jewish State of seeking war, the exact opposite was true: it declared its independence and was immediately set upon by countries seeking to annihilate the newly reborn country. Israel’s Arab neighbours did not have a territorial dispute with the country, but simply wanted to see it violently destroyed and its people massacred.
Saunders’ opinion column used this historical revisionism as a cudgel to then blame modern Israeli policy (and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu specifically) for the lack of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
As HonestReporting Canada pointed out in its May 1 alert, by single-handedly blaming Israel and its current prime minister, Saunders ignored that not only has Netanyahu not been prime minister since 1948, but that other Israeli leaders have made unprecedented offers of peace to the Palestinians, including offering all of Gaza, eastern Jerusalem and Judea & Samaria (West Bank), just to have their offers rejected in favour of violence and terrorism.
Blaming Israel – and Israel exclusively – for the Arab rejectionism of it is not only grossly historically inaccurate, but a form of victim-blaming, accusing Israel of being the aggressor when it is decidedly not.
While it is disheartening to see a columnist in Canada’s newspaper of record rewriting history to portray Israel as an aggressor against its Arab neighbours, it is encouraging that The Globe & Mail promptly worked to set the record straight and ensured that a correction was made to ensure readers are told the truth about the Middle East.
HonestReporting Canada thanks The Globe and Mail for its correction and expresses hopes that the newspaper will work to ensure such errors are not made in future.
