Cross posted fromUK Media Watch

The myth that there are ‘Jews-only’ or ‘settler-only’ roads in the West Bank has been debunked numerous times over the years by CAMERA and its affiliates – prompting corrections at media outlets such as CNN, Associated Press, Washington Post, The Economist, Financial Times and The Telegraph.

As we’ve explained on numerous occasions, there are, for security reasons, a very small percentage of roads in the West Bank restricted to Palestinians.  However, all roads are open to Israeli citizens of all religious backgrounds and foreign nationals of all religious backgrounds.  There is not, nor have there ever been, religiously based restrictions on roads in Israel or the West Bank – nor roads only for settlers.

The latest publication to publish a version of this lie is the Guardian, in an Oct. 11th op-ed by Nkosi Zwelivelile (the grandson of Nelson Mandela) attempting to use this ‘fact’ to support the larger lie that Israel is an apartheid state.

Here’s our tweet pointing out the erroneous claim – one of several in the paragraph, but, we concluded, the one most egregiously inconsistent with the accuracy clause of the Editors’ Code.

We followed up our tweet with an email editors, who upheld our complaint and amended the text in the sentence to the still misleading but improved “roads built for settlers which are not accessible to Palestinians”, and, more importantly, included the following addendum at the bottom of the op-ed:

RELATED ARTICLES

• Jeremy Corbyn perpetuates the myth of ‘settler-only’ roads in the West Bank. (UK Media Watch)
• Dispelling the myth of ‘Jews-only’ roads in the West Bank. (Irish Examiner)
• Haaretz repeats ‘Jewish-only apartheid roads’ canard (CAMERA)