Yesterday, we posted about a commentary at The Independent, written by ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ blogger Matt Hill, on April 16 titled ‘At 65, modern Israel is falling short of Zionism’s most basic goal‘, which included the following passage:
Israel’s story, in brief, might be described as overcoming a horrific infancy to grow rich and successful. But its triumphs have come at a cost. Once full of youthful idealism, today it is cynical, increasingly corrupt, and calloused by hubris. The land of socialist pioneers has become, besides America, the most unequal country in the world. A state established as a home for the homeless now treats immigrants with contempt, as the scandal of its forced sterilisation of Ethiopian women has shown.
However, as we noted in our post, the row which Hill alluded to – based on an Israeli documentary and subsequent reports by Haaretz – merely involved unproven allegations that some Ethiopian women may have been coerced by doctors into receiving a long-lasting popular contraception called Depo-Provera.
There was never anything resembling “forced sterilisation’ – a term which is commonly defined as ‘a process of permanently ending someone’s ability to reproduce without his or her consent’.
Shortly after our post yesterday we contacted editors at The Independent to object to the misleading term, and today the paper removed the reference to “forces sterilisation” and added this note at the end of Hill’s commentary:
Indy editors deserve credit for their prompt response after being alerted to this error.
