Reuters falsely accuses murdered terror victim of being Mossad agent

The news agency retracts claim, based on false comments by terrorist’s family, that Israeli man murdered by terrorists was a Mossad agent.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Reuters news agency, after receiving many complaints for not checking the facts, pulled an article that falsely accused a murdered Israeli man of being a Mossad agent.

The article, published last month, sympathetically portrayed the Gazan mother of terrorist Diaa El Agha, giving her a platform to say how much she missed her son, who was not among the nearly 2,000 security prisoners being gradually released by Israel in exchange for 33 hostages held by Hamas and other terror organizations.

El Agha was 17 when imprisoned in 1992 for killing a civilian, Amatzia Ben-Haim, by bludgeoning him with a gardening tool.

However, the Reuters article described Ben-Haim as a Mossad agent four times, including in the subheadings, based solely on the family’s claim.

This was completely untrue, as Ben-Haim, a father of three, was an employee of a kibbutz factory that produced irrigation systems.

When attacked, he had been fixing a broken system in a greenhouse of one of the Jewish settlements that existed in the Gaza Strip before all of them were forcibly evacuated by the Israeli government in the 2005 Disengagement.

Ben-Haim had never served in Israel’s spy service, having done his duty to his country in the army and reserves as a member of the elite Sayeret Matkal commando force.

This information was publicly available, including on Israel’s National Insurance website.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) complained to Reuters, as did many of its members, and took credit for the retraction.

In its press release on the subject, CAMERA also criticized the fact that the report “referred to Hamas simply as a ‘militant’ group,” when it has been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel and the U.S. as well as other Western nations.

It additionally pointed out as “strange” that the article, called “Gaza mother’s hopes for return of long-jailed son dashed,” did not mention Ben-Haim’s name at all,and only in passing noted how he was murdered.

The group concluded that the story was purposely slanted to “conceal the fact that Diaa El Agha murdered a civilian, so that readers are more inclined to sympathize” with his mother.

In its statement regarding the retracted article, the news agency said, “A Reuters story about a Palestinian mother’s wait for the release of her long-jailed son, who was convicted of killing an Israeli, is withdrawn.”

“Reuters has been unable to verify a link between the victim and Israel’s Mossad spy agency, as stated by the Palestinian prisoner’s family,” it continued. “There will be no substitute version.”