PrintApril 7, 2011
WaPo vs WaPo on who created Palestinian refugee problem
In the April 6 print edition of the Washington Post, Jerusalem correspondent Joel Greenberg blames Israel for creating the Palestinian refugee problem. Palestinian families, he writes, were "pushed out of what is now Israel when the Jewish state was created in 1948." Thus, it was Israel's establishment that was responsible for the Palestinian refugee problem.
However, on the April 6 Washington Post website, Jerusalem correspondent Joel Greenberg offers a completely different explanation for the Palestinian refugee problem. Some Arab families, he writes, were "displaced in the war that followed the establishment of Israel in 1948. So, it wasn't Israel's cration that was at fault. It was the "war" by Arab armies against the nascent Jewish state that created the Palestinian refugee problem
Which brings up an intriguing question: Which of these two contradictory versions reflects Greenberg's dispatch? Which was changed at the copy desk in DC?
Greenberg couldn't possibly have written both -- one blaming Israel for the Palestinian refugee problem and the other blaming Arabs for waging a war against Israel in 1948.
For the sake of maintaining the trust of its readers, to say nothing of the professional integrity of Joel Greenberg, the Post owes to its readers a public explanation of how it managed to serve up two irreconcilable historical versions.
