Sunday 12 February 2017

Urges


An article on the BBC website that, until you click on it, is still headlined...


...now (after you click on it) bears the different headline Trump urges Israel to 'act reasonably' on settlementsThe article itself shows that there's no justification whatsoever for the "warns" bit of the original headline as no warning was given.

That said, even this new headline isn't accurate.

The BBC quotes a bit of an interview with the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. It includes a link to the Hebrew language original (strangely, because there's also an English language version of the interview on the paper's website.) That shows that President Trump didn't, in fact, urge Israel to 'act reasonably' "on settlements", as that BBC headline asserts, but only to 'act reasonably' "with respect to peace" (and he said the same about the Palestinians too):
Well, I want Israel to be reasonable with respect to peace. I want to see peace happen. It should happen. After all these years. ... Maybe there is even a chance for a bigger peace than just Israel and the Palestinians. I would like to see a level of reasonableness of both parties, and I think we have a good chance of doing that.
Incidentally, Donald Trump says other things in this interview (in his own unique way!) that you won't find in the BBC's write-up, such as:
No, I don't want to condemn Israel. Israel has had a long history of condemnation and difficulty. And I don't want to be condemning Israel. I understand Israel very well, and I respect Israel a lot, and they have been through a lot. I would like to see peace and beyond that. And I think that peace for Israel would be a good thing for the Israeli people, not just a good thing, a great thing.
BBC headline writers do have a habit, long-noted, of not getting headlines right when introducing website readers to news stories about Israel. This time, however, they've managed to get it wrong twice.

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