While the smears and misrepresentations that Haaretz prints about Israel are too numerous to count, some of them really stand out more than others. One in particular that you may recall was that three years ago, Haaretz falsely reported that the Israeli government acknowledged that it had given Ethiopian Jewish women birth control injections without their consent. Despite the inaccuracy, the story was repeated throughout the international media.
In March of 2013, Tablet provided a good summary of the whole saga:
There was no shortage of outrage following a report by Haaretz in late January asserting that Israel had acknowledged a policy of forcing long-acting birth control shots upon Ethiopian women in transit camps who wished to emigrate from Ethiopia to Israel. The story also charged that Israeli officials hadn’t told the women the effects of the Depo-Provera shots. The explosive first of the story went like this:
‘A government official has for the first time acknowledged the practice of injecting women of Ethiopian origin with the long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera.’
Beyond the normal outlets that selectively focus on Israeli scandals, sites that report on women’s issues reprinted the Haaretz story and, in multiple acts of stenographic journalism, cast their vicious judgments of Israeli racism and sexism to their readerships.
The first problem with the story: No Israeli official ever acknowledged there was such a practice at all; it was denied by Joint Distribution Committee, which ran the clinics, and the Health Ministry. . . .
After an Israeli committee was established to investigate the matter, a second story ran in Haaretz last week repeating much of its original reporting. Then, earlier this week, came this correction (compelled by CAMERA):
‘This article, which was updated on March 6, 2013, reported on Health Ministry director-general Prof. Roni Gamzu’s instruction to gynecologists not to renew prescriptions for Depo-Provera if there is any doubt that recipients did not understand the implications of the treatment. The original version failed to state that this instruction was issued “without taking a stand or determining facts about allegations that had been made,” and referred to all women and not just women of Ethiopian origin.’
The 2013 story was picked up by no less then sixteen non-Israeli, non-Jewish news sites:
- Forbes
- The LA Times
- Time Magazine
- Salon
- The Huffington Post
- The Daily Beast
- Jezebel
- Ebony
- Ebony, again
- Atlanta Black Star
- World Bulletin
- The National
- The African Sun Times
- IRIN News
- The Independent
- The Guardian
- The Guardian, again
- and RT, which even went to Israel to conduct its own interviews.
Of course, the above list is of only the English-language publications that picked up the story. Some of the above articles cite a television report that initially raised questions about the treatment of Ethiopian Jewish women but which did not claim that Israel had ever acknowledged a practice of giving the drug under force or without informed consent. It doesn’t seem likely, however, that the television report would have come to these reporters’ attention if Haaretz had not repeated the story with the additional false claim that Israel had admitted to wrongdoing.
Of all sixteen of the above publications, it will surprise very few readers that I was unable to find a report in a single one of them based on Haaretz’s article last week, stating that an investigation has now exonerated Israel of the charges.
There is no evidence that Ethiopian women who immigrated to Israel were required to take birth control shots against their will, State Comptroller Joseph Shapira wrote this week in a letter obtained by Haaretz.
Shapira wrote that he had concluded his investigation into the allegations, which surfaced in December of 2012, and that ‘no evidence could be found for the claims raised that shots to prevent pregnancy were administered to Ethiopian women under pressure or threats, overt or covert, or in any way that was improper.’
Haaretz, of course, could not leave such a finding alone and published another article on Wednesday lamenting the fact that the Comptroller’s investigation did not include interviews with the women. The investigation, however, appears to have focused on what the instructions were that were given to the health care workers in transit camps. The patients would not have any reason to know what instructions were given to health care workers.
One claim that I saw repeatedly in the original reporting was that some of the women were told that they were being given vaccinations. What I did not see, however, was why these women had any reason to believe that they were not, in fact, just given vaccinations. For that reason, I would have liked to have seen the Comptroller interview them. It does seem clear, however, that even if there may have been errors in communications or individual instances of misconduct, there is no evidence that any systemic misconduct occurred.
It still remains to be seen whether the media silence will continue when the full report is released next week. I doubt, however, that anything will change.
Just as, last spring, the mainstream media ignored a report by two military experts which “concluded that IDF positions on targeting law largely track those of the US military,” while having a feeding frenzy over Breaking the Silence’s unsubstantiated allegations, it seems the international media is only interested in this story when it can be made to appear that Israel is guilty of misconduct.
