CiF Watch prompts correction to extremely misleading Livni quote at ‘Comment is Free’

Yesterday, we posted about a selectively edited quote in a Nov. 26 essay at ‘Comment is Free’ by an anti-Zionist Jew named Michael Brull.  

We noted that the highly misleading quote – from comments made by Tzipi Livni in 2007 during negotiations with the Palestinians – was previously published at the Guardian during their special series in 2011 known as the “Palestine Papers”, and then soon corrected by the paper’s editors after a fury of complaints. 

Here’s the incomplete quote used by Brull:

Livni knows perfectly well why Israel builds settlements. In another candid moment, she explained that “the Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that it is impossible we already have the land and cannot create the state.” 

Now, here’s the full quote which, as you’ll see, indicates that Livni was certainly NOT admitting that “Israeli policy is to take more and more land” in order to prevent a new Palestinian state from being created, but was merely characterizing what she believed was the Palestinian view on settlements:

I understand the sentiments of the Palestinians when they see the settlements being built. The meaning from the Palestinian perspective is that Israel takes more land, that the Palestinian state will be impossible, the Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that it is impossible, we already have the land and cannot create the state.”

A couple of hours after we contacted Guardian editors – reminding them that they made a correction to a similar “error” two years ago – Brull’s piece was amended, and the following now appears at the bottom of the essay:

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