RUTHFULLY YOURS

This was no minor error — a modest amendment to a fleeting aside in paragraph 25 of an otherwise airtight story. No, al-Mutawaq’s image was the feature art designed to illustrate the plight endured by all of Gaza’s 2 million people. It ran on the front page, stretching almost to the fold. And the Times wasn’t alone. This stricken child’s skeletal frame was picked up by the Times of London, The Guardian, the Daily Express, and more — all to morally blackmail Israel for pursuing its security priorities in Gaza, but not to pressure Hamas into surrendering in the war it launched and lost for the betterment of the people it supposedly serves.

What took the Times so long? I wrote about the Times error yesterday, well before the correction was issued. So had many other outlets — at least, those still possessed of the sort of skepticism that is expected from the journalistic enterprise. As the Times and others have noted, the fact that al-Mutawaq suffers from genetic ailments does not negate the fact that there is hardship on the ground in Gaza. We can, however, deduce from the Times’ reticence that perhaps its editors and reporters did believe that admitting a mistake in this case would invalidate a broader narrative that it has sought to popularize.

Maybe these journalistic professionals considered in their more contemplative moments that their credulity in retailing fictions fed to them by Hamas-friendly elements in Gaza, the West Bank, and Qatar does raise questions about the broader coverage of this conflict. It does. Or, rather, it should. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned from this conflict, it is that, for Israel’s critics, no allegation of Israeli perfidy and malice is too fantastical. This one was too good to check. But it was not the first, and it will not be the last.