Love of the Land: What's Wrong With This Headline?

What's Wrong With This Headline?

Honest Reporting/Backspin
18 March '10

Reporter Donald Macintyre visited Ramat Shlomo. See if you can spot the error in The Independent's headline:

Ramat Shlomo's not a town. It's one of Jerusalem's many neighborhoods, no different than other communities like Ramat Eshkol, Givat Shaul, Rehavia, or Emek Refaim.

This Google map should be sufficient to disprove the notion that Ramat Shlomo's a "town." I circled the neighborhood in red. I only regret that you can't see more of municipal Jerusalem to better appreciate the sense of scale. (Click on the map to see it more clearly.)

Love of the Land: What's Wrong With This Headline?

Love of the Land: Donald Macintyre's Tunnel Vision

Donald Macintyre's Tunnel Vision

Honest Reporting/Backspin
30 December 09

Donald Macintyre looks at Gaza one year after the war in a special dispatch written for The New Statesman. One particular statement startles me, because Macintyre has been covering Israel for The Independent for several years. He writes:

The war was started with the stated purpose of ending the surge of rocket attacks on southern Israel by Gaza militants. These began when a ceasefire broke down, after an Israeli raid in November.

After discovering a 245 meter tunnel leading into Israel, which the Palestinians intended to use to kidnap IDF soldiers, the army launched an incursion to destroy the tunnel. Hamas responded with 35 Qassam rockets.

For those of us not afflicted with Macintyre's tunnel vision, the cease fire broke down when Hamas dug that tunnel.

UPDATE Dec. 30: The article was trimmed down, and this particular snippet isn't there anymore. Looks like I happened to get a peek at some content that wasn't intended to be published online; here's the note at the bottom of the page:

To read the full version of this piece, pick up a copy of this week's New Statesman, available in all good newsagents.

Love of the Land: Donald Macintyre's Tunnel Vision