Wall Street Journal under scrutiny over unconfirmed UNRWA and Hamas allegations: Semafor
LONDON: The Wall Street Journal is still unable to verify allegations from a January report about ties between staff at the Middle East Aid Agency for Palestine Refugees in the United Nations and Hamas militants.
According to the US news site Semafor, the editor-in-chief of the standards watchdog WSJ privately acknowledged that the allegations, based on Israeli intelligence reports, may be unfounded.
Elena Chernei, the chief news editor, acknowledged in an email reviewed by Semafor that the Israeli claims lacked hard evidence, but argued that the initial information was neither inaccurate nor misleading.
“The fact that Israel's claims were not supported by hard evidence does not mean that our reporting was inaccurate or misleading, that we have retracted it, or that there is an error that can be corrected,” Cherny wrote in an email.
A January report, described as one of the “biggest and most impressive stories of the war,” claimed that 12 UNRWA personnel were involved in the October 7 attack on Israel, with 10 percent of the agency's 12,000 personnel in Gaza allegedly linked to Hamas.
This story, based on Israeli intelligence, was later disputed by several international organizations and the UN itself after an independent investigation.
The story had significant consequences, including severe psychological toll on UNRWA staff and the freezing of $450 million in aid by various countries at a critical time for Gaza, which was facing the threat of famine.
Semafor reported that WSJ reporters tried and failed to confirm the 10 percent claim that is central to the story, raising concerns about Israel's commitment to the story.
“Our coverage of UNRWA's activities is part of an ongoing reporting effort on the war in Gaza involving editorial staff,” a WSJ spokesman said, confirming the paper's support for the January story and subsequent reporting.
The incident exposed internal friction within the WSJ newsroom since the conflict began, including concerns over the leadership of Deputy Middle East Bureau Chief Shandy Reiss and the controversial social media activity of Kerry Keller-Lynn, the author of the article.
The WSJ has also faced scrutiny for its unbalanced coverage of events in Gaza. Richard Boudreau, a former editor of the Standards, admitted that the paper “relied too heavily on Israeli voices and did not include enough Arab perspectives or expert sources.”
