Reuters Withdraws Story On Palestinian Convicted of Murder After Baselessly Claiming Israeli Victim Was Mossad

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Reuters withdrew a story on Thursday that had stirred controversy online as its critics claimed it smeared a terror murder victim by promoting the baseless claim the victim was linked to Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

Reuters took the story offline and replaced an editor’s note where it once was, “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about a Palestinian mother’s wait for the release of her long-jailed son, who was convicted of killing an Israeli, is withdrawn.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. There will be no substitute version.”

The original story was released on February 25th and was titled, “Gaza mother’s hopes for return of long-jailed son dashed.” The report by Ramadan Abed began, “Awaiting the release of her son after more than three decades in jail, 75-year-old Najat El Agha had searched the ruined streets of Gaza for some modest supplies to welcome him back. Her son, Diaa El Agha, was supposed to be freed as part of an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners on Saturday under a fragile Gaza ceasefire deal.”

The part of the report that led to its being withdrawn added:

Diaa El Agha was imprisoned in 1992, aged 17, for killing an officer of the Israeli spy agency Mossad.

On his family’s website a newspaper report shows a picture of an Israeli soldier holding up the pickaxe used to kill the Mossad agent. An image of Diaa, who the website said was sentenced to 99 years, is superimposed.

One of 18 Palestinians detained for 30 years or more in Israeli prisons, he lost both his father and sister during his time in detention and became known as the “Dean of the Prisoners” for spending so long behind bars.

The Reuters story was made available to all the various outlets around the globe that subscribe to its service, along with a video package of the interview with Najat El Agha. Pro-Israel media watchdog CAMERA noted that Reuters failed to mention the name of the victim murdered by Diaa El Agha. Camera wrote of the Reuters story:

It was an odd subject for a human-interest story. The prisoner, Diaa El Agha, had brutally murdered an Israeli, hacking him to death with a pick axe. Readers, though, were invited to await his release along with his mother.

…

But Amatzia Ben-Haim, the victim whose name is absent from the story, was not a Mossad agent. In his listing on Israel’s National Insurance’s web site, which is dedicated to civilian victims of terror attacks, Ben-Haim is memorialized as a father of three and a husband, who had his years of military service and his time in reserve duty with the Sayeret Matkal elite commando unit. When he moved on to civilian life, he worked for his kibbutz’s factory programming irrigation systems for farmers. He was murdered in the line of civilian duty, while diagnosing a broken irrigation system in a greenhouse.

The Times of Israel published a Memorial Day post about Ben-Haim in 2015, noting:

Amatzia would go to these farms, install the systems, and often go back to maintain them or to troubleshoot them if needed. Some of these farms were in the Gaza Strip, prior to the Israeli evacuation of all farms and settlements in Gaza.

It was on one of these trips that Amatzia was helping one such farmer in the Gaza strip, focused entirely on an irrigation line that may have been clogged, or a computer lead that may have malfunctioned. He did not pay attention to the young teen working nearby with a hoe, weeding the furrows. It was to be Amatzia’s last day on earth, as the teen brought the hoe down on Amatzia’s head, killing him instantly, widowing Amatzia’s wife, and orphaning his children. The teen, wishing to become a member of Hamas, was told to “kill a Jew” as the required initiation into the murderous terrorist organization.

CAMERA noted it had called on Reuters to correct its original article and added, “CAMERA commends Reuters for taking this appropriate and much needed step to remove the gross misinformation and fawning coverage of the family of a murderer which had provided false information about the son’s deadly crime.”