One problem with biased journalism is that it produces weak reporting. Another is that it can lead to the dissemination of outright falsehoods, even honest-to-God terrorist propaganda.
On Mar. 6, the global newswire Reuters fully retracted a report that had referred repeatedly to a victim of a Palestinian terrorist attack as a member of the Mossad, Israel’s top intelligence agency. The problem is there’s no evidence that the victim, Amatzia Ben-Haim, was ever in the Mossad, let alone an active agent at the time of his death.
Reuters, it turns out, relied entirely on the killer’s family for this supposed biographical detail, apparently making no effort to corroborate their version of events. When asked to explain how the original story was allowed to go to print despite serious and obvious flaws, the newswire replied to my inquiries with the same stock statement it had issued previously, that the story “is withdrawn” and that they “regret the error.”
It is unclear why Reuters chose to rely solely on the claims of the killer’s family that Ben-Haim was a Mossad agent, apparently without corroboration. It has made no effort to show its homework.
On Feb. 25, Reuters had published a tear-jerker of a story titled, “Gaza mother’s hopes for return of long-jailed son dashed.” Its subhead read, “A 75-year-old mother Najat El Agha has searched the ruined streets of Gaza for some modest supplies to welcome him back.”
The report detailed how a mother in Gaza has had to wait “more than three decades” for the return of her son, Diaa El Agha, who had been sent to prison in Israel for murdering a Mossad agent in October 1992. The report mentioned only once, and very briefly, that Diaa had used a pickaxe to smash open his victim’s skull, which sounds psychopathic — an odd detail to note only in passing.
The report referred to Hamas simply as a “militant” group, which also seems strange considering the group has been labeled a terrorist organization by the governments of the U.S., Australia, Canada, Japan and others. Even stranger is the fact that the Reuters report never once mentioned the name of Amatzia Ben-Haim, the man who Diaa had murdered.
Without ever mentioning the victim’s name or including comments from his family, the Reuters article concluded with these lines: “Despite widespread suffering all around her, the war left people like Najat El Agha with rare hope that at least she would embrace her son again after so many years apart. For now, the family home, damaged by an Israeli strike, still bears a sign reading: ‘House of the prisoner Diaa Zakaria El Agha.’”
The worst part, as noted above, is that there is no evidence Ben-Haim, who left behind a widow and three children, was or had ever been an intelligence officer. Yet with an abundance of confidence and an absence of evidence, Reuters alleged this in four places.
First, in the since-retracted report’s bullet-point summary, Reuters stated, “Son jailed for killing Israeli Mossad officer.” Then, in the body of the story itself, the newswire asserted that Diaa killed an “Israeli spy agency Mossad” and that he killed a “Mossad agent.” Lastly, in a video report for the same story, a narrator claimed, “Diaa was 17 when he was imprisoned in 1992 for killing an officer of the Israeli spy agency Mossad.”
Ben-Haim was a veteran, having served in the Sayeret Matkal commando unit, according to Israel’s National Insurance website. But he was a civilian at the time of his death, working a job fixing irrigation systems for farmers. He was out in the field troubleshooting a faulty irrigation line when Diaa crept up behind him and murdered him, according to a 2015 Times of Israel report.
It is unclear where Reuters got the idea that Ben-Haim was a Mossad agent. It has made no effort to show its homework.
The newswire has since retracted the report. Where once there was a headline about a sorrowful mother waiting for her son’s return, there is now a headline that states, “Reuters story on a mother’s wait for her son’s return from jail is withdrawn.”
“A Reuters story about a Palestinian mother’s wait for the release of her long-jailed son, who was convicted of killing an Israeli, is withdrawn,” reads a lone paragraph. “Reuters has been unable to verify a link between the victim and Israel’s Mossad spy agency, as stated by the Palestinian prisoner’s family. There will be no substitute version.”
Nearly as disturbing is that this isn’t a first for major media. It appears there is a trend in the Western press of recasting civilian victims of Palestinian terrorism as military and intelligence officers.
“On Jan. 30, CBS News falsely described 29-year-old hostage Arbel Yahoud as a soldier, though she was a civilian,” reports the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis. “The piece was corrected after CAMERA notified CBS of the error. Two weeks later, on Feb. 16, the Los Angeles Times falsely claimed that most of the remaining hostages in Gaza were soldiers. After CAMERA informed the paper that the overwhelming majority were in fact civilians, it eventually corrected the error once members of the public weighed in as well.”
The desire by many in the Western media seems obvious: They want the victims of Palestinian terrorism to be officials and therefore “fair game” in some twisted way. It’s easier to stomach car bombings, beheadings and stabbings if the victims are in uniform, as opposed to being unarmed civilians on their way to work or on their way to pick up their children from school.
Ben-Haim was a civilian. He was a family man who had his head split open by a pickaxe-wielding 17-year-old. We’re simply being asked now to grieve for the killer and his mother. Worse, Reuters seemed to want us, the readers, to consider that Ben-Haim’s murder was maybe justifiable because he was in the Mossad — as if being an intelligence officer cancels out the evil of terrorism.
However, despite media efforts to give some other impression, the Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism are usually civilians, picked off and brutally murdered by fanatics. No amount of propaganda can change this fact.
Becket Adams is a writer in Washington and program director for the National Journalism Center.
