Following a complaint from the Israeli embassy in London, The Observer has issued a correction over a claim that Israel used chemical weapons against people in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in 2008.
The Sunday newspaper’s columnist Nabila Ramadi wrote in the Comment section of the paper this month that "white phosphorus shells – a chemical weapon that causes severe burning right down to the bone – were used by Israeli forces against Palestinians in Gaza in 2008 in breach of all international conventions”.
She attempted to equate it with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
“Others point to the hypocrisy of the West, which continues to provide some of the most lethal weapons known to mankind to its political and trade allies,” she wrote. “US sourced white phosphorus shells – a chemical weapon that causes severe burning right down to the bone – were used by Israeli forces against Palestinians in Gaza in 2008 in breach of all international conventions, for example.”
The correction, published last Sunday, reads: “Contrary to the impression given in ‘Assad is a war criminal, but an attack will do nothing for the people of Syria’ (Comment, last week, page 34), white phosphorus, used by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2008, is not a chemical weapon as understood by the Chemical Weapons Convention, and its use is in itself not ‘in breach of all international conventions.’”
A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London, who requested a correction from The Observer editors, declared: “This is an example of zero tolerance for disinformation,” the official said. “If this goes unchallenged, then it becomes the conventional and accepted wisdom. It needs to be corrected.”
Israeli officials said this “setting the record straight” was especially important in this case amid pernicious efforts – with the world’s attention focused on Assad’s use of chemical weapons – to blame Israel for having used chemical weapons in the past.
The Observer is in the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a social liberal or social democratic line on most issues. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.