UPDATE

Newsweek has retracted the story and publicly apologized. See more here.

An article in Newsweek twists a quote by Israel’s Minister of Defense, Avigdor Lieberman, into an entire diatribe against Israel. In his fantasy driven tirade, journalist Tom O’Connor comes to the astounding conclusion that all of Israel…isn’t Israel.

The quote by Lieberman:

We will not agree to the return of a single refugee to within the ‘67 borders.

The statement is an apparent rejection of the Palestinian Authority’s negotiating demand: that even after a Palestinian state is formed, they would hold the right to settle Palestinians outside of their own state, and inside Israel instead. Though Minister Lieberman does not control government policy on this issue, his statement is nonetheless newsworthy as one, potentially influential, voice within Israel’s government.

Yet Newsweek’s Tom O’Connor was not content to simply report this news. He had to weave a tale of fiction instead.

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This isn’t Israel?

O’Connor begins with the incorrect statement:

Israel’s defense minister has said that his government will not allow any Palestinians to return to the lands historically settled by them and currently claimed by Israel.

Claimed by Israel??

In fact, the lands referred to in Lieberman’s statement, that O’Connor calls “claimed by Israel,” are the areas inside the 1967 borders, specifically: Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion International Airport, the western parts of Jerusalem, the entire Negev Desert and more. Most of the world does not describe this a “occupied” or “captured” or even “disputed” but rather as, “Israel.” The only exceptions are those countries and terror organizations that wish to destroy Israel entirely.

The lands that O’Connor defines as “historically settled by Palestinians” have actually had an uninterrupted presence of Jews dating all the way back to the Kingdom of Israel some 2,800 years ago, and since the founding of modern Israel have never been considered contested in any way. (Again, this is aside from the numerous attempts by Israel’s neighbors to destroy the country entirely).

Context

HonestReporting spoke this morning with Minister Lieberman’s office to clarify his statement. In fact, it was made as part of a complex 1,348 word speech to the Herzilya Conference at Israel’s IDC University last week, which was attended by HonestReporting.

Lieberman’s speech addressed the complexities and challenges of the peace process, including his position that a workable framework for peace must begin with the understanding that Palestinian refugees will settle inside the Palestinian state: in cities such as Nablus, Hebron and Qalqiliya. In this manner, Lieberman reinforced his support for a two-state solution, which would include Palestinian sovereignty over the stated areas, as well as others.

Twisting like an acrobat

O’Connor goes on to twist history in so many different ways simultaneously, he could make an acrobat jealous:

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman outright dismissed the possibility that his government would make any deals recognizing Palestinians’ claims to territory that was allocated to them by a 1949 armistice between Israel and neighboring Arab countries, but later taken by Israel during the Six Day War in 1967.

Where to even begin??

There was never any allocation of anything to anybody in 1949. Israel’s neighbors attacked, in the first of many attempts to destroy all of Israel. The 1949 Armistice Line is simply where Israel managed to turn them back, in a desperate bid to survive the assault.

Nonetheless, Minister Lieberman was not even talking about lands beyond the 1949 Armistice Line as O’Connor claims, but rather lands within the line, lands which (once again) most of the world simply calls, “Israel.”

Understanding Lieberman’s statement doesn’t actually require deep historical knowledge, but rather a working grasp of basic English. Is that really too much to ask of a professional journalist?

For a detailed review of the events and facts of the Six Day War in 1967 please visit our in-depth online resource: www.sixdaysofwar.com.

Additional information is contained in this critique by HonestReporting on another example of inaccurate Six Day War related journalism.

Laundry List of Lies

O’Connor goes on to make numerous statements about history that range from evocatively misleading to downright untrue:

The claim that the war of 1967 sparked a mass exodus of “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians” (it did not)

The misleading implication that Israel started the war in 1967 (it did not)

The claim that Jordan and Syria were merely “drawn in” to the war (they actively attacked in a bid to utterly destroy Israel)

The claim that Israel builds on “Palestinian land” (the land in question is disputed and subject to negotiations by the parties, not to unilateral decisions by journalists)

Emotionally evocative and totally unsupported Tweets from the anti-Israel, pro-BDS advocacy group IMEU (this counts as “journalism??”)

(For the data underlying our critique of these Six Day War related claims, please see the resources cited above.)

O’Connor made a misleading mention of President Trump’s confirmed anger at Palestinian president Abbas, with no mention of why he was angry: Trump had just learned not only that the Palestinian government pays enormous salaries to terrorists and their families (roughly $1.12 Billion in the past four years), but that Abbas had lied about this, directly to the American president.

That is what prompted the President’s reported outburst to Abbas, “You lied to me!” Abbas further inflamed relations with the US two weeks later, when he told US Secretary of State Tillerson that he had stopped the practice of paying for terrorism, only to be caught lying once again.

This is journalism?

Tom O’Connor is not a journalist, but an agenda driven activist, who refers to Israel as an “apartheid state.” Can such a person really embody the openness and impartiality that professional journalism requires?

https://twitter.com/ShaolinTom/status/426201944382652416

Yet even worse, O’Connor misstates objective facts, twists history, and even loses his grasp of the English language in order to support his untenable conclusions.

Consider this: if you must misstate reality in order to support your claims, isn’t it possible that you’re just plain wrong?

More disturbingly: why did a magazine as high profile as Newsweek give an anti-Israel activist a platform to broadcast his agenda-driven tirade under the guise of legitimate, mainstream “journalism?”