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Corrections on the NYT Dani Dayan Profile

Jodi Rudoren makes a pretty big gaffe

by
Adam Chandler
August 20, 2012
(USC )
(USC )

As I mentioned in Daybreak, Dani Dayan, leader of the settler movement in Israel, was the topic of the Saturday Profile in the Times this weekend. You may recall that Dayan became a figure of interest to the Times-reading crowd after writing a controversial opinion piece declaring victory for the one-state solution.

Today, the Times ran the following corrections (h/t Miriam Krule) to the profile, which was written by semi-new Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren:

The Saturday Profile article, about the leader of Israel’s settlement movement, Dani Dayan, included several errors. The underground military organization led by the revisionist Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky is the Irgun, not the Haganah. One of Mr. Dayan’s critics, Itzik Shadmi, serves as chairman of the settlers’ committee in the Binyamin Region, not as chairman of the Binyamin Council. (That position is held by Avi Roeh.) Mr. Dayan moved to Israel with his family from Buenos Aires in 1971, not in 1979. And Mr. Dayan’s father, Moshe, was a second cousin — not a first — to Gen. Moshe Dayan.

Yes, those are a lot of errors to make. But one of them stands out as particularly egregious. Confusing the Irgun, the organization led by revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, with the Haganah is a pretty startling misstep for someone whose post depends a lot on knowing context. There’s no real political equivalent that comes to mind, but this would be like a music journalist writing that John Lennon was the leader of the Monkees. It’s pretty difficult to write that sentence.

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.