The New York Times was forced to issue a special clarification after it became clear that a lecturer in literature at the Islamic University in Gaza, Rafat Al-Arir, was described as a seeker of peace and coexistence, even though the curriculum he actually promoted was saturated with hatred for Israel.
The original article was published on November 16 with the headline "In Gaza, a controversial lecturer comfortably teaches Israeli poetry" and states that the lecturer manages to analyze poetry works with students in a fair and admirable manner despite being highly critical of Israel on social media. For example, the article describes how the lecturer presented a song by Yehuda Amichai about Jerusalem, but does not tell the students, and when he tells them that, they are amazed. "The poet of this beautiful work is not Palestinian, but Israeli," he is quoted as saying. He also adds that this is a song that "demonstrates how Jerusalem is a place where we can all join hands regardless of religion and faith."
But later the newspaper realized that he did not always talk about Israeli works in this way. In fact, a video from 2019 shows a different lesson in which he tries to teach the same song, but he calls it "dangerous" and "terrible" and claims that he "washes the mind" of the reader because he presents Israel as "innocent." In the video, he calls another song he teaches - this time by Tuvia Ribner - as "the kind of poetry that is partly responsible for the ethnic cleansing and destruction of Palestine."
As mentioned, the newspaper published a clarification, both on its corrections page and in the online version of the original article.
The clarification stated that "after receiving additional information that contradicts the lecturer's description, the newspaper's editors came to the conclusion that" the article did not accurately reflect al-Arir's views on Israeli poetry or the way he teaches it. " If we had done more in-depth research about him, the article would have presented a more complete picture. "Al-Arir told the newspaper that he did not see a fundamental contradiction between the two types of lectures he gave to his students, and that his" top aspiration "was to find parallels between Palestinians and Israelis. Israel uses literature as a "tool of colonialism."
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