Yale Student Paper Apologizes for Corrections Calling Reports of Hamas Raping, Beheading Israelis “Unsubstantiated”

The Editor-In-Chief of Yale University’s student newspaper issued an apology on Tuesday over the paper issuing corrections stating that reports of Hamas raping and beheading Israelis were “unsubstantiated.”

Yale Daily News Editor-In-Chief and President Anika Seth wrote in a blog post that the corrections were issued last week to two columns: the October 12 op-ed “Is Yalies4Palestine a hate group?” and “Stop justifying terrorism.” “In the former, the author wrote, in reference to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel, ‘yes, they raped women … yes, they beheaded men.’ In the latter, the author wrote that Hamas ‘committed … rape,’” Seth wrote. “The source that the columnists cited suspected cases of sexual assault. During our opinion editing process… the News failed to ensure that the columnists’ statements were properly cited and attributed. At the time of the columns’ initial publication, those specific forms of violence during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack were not independently confirmed by the cited source.”

Seth explained that they issued the corrections based on what outlets like The Forward and Los Angeles Times had reported earlier in October, but acknowledged that the student paper had erred in issuing those corrections. “By the time of the first correction on Oct. 25, there had been widely reported coverage from outlets such as Reuters publicly verifying that Hamas raped and beheaded Israelis,” Seth wrote. “These corrections erroneously created the impression that, as of late October, there still was not enough publicly available evidence for those horrific acts. The News therefore retracts those editor’s notes in their entirety and without qualification. The notes have been removed from the columns, and the original text has been restored.”

She added that the paper had never meant to downplay the barbarity of the October 7 Hamas terror attack and apologized “for any unintended consequences to our readership and will ensure that such erroneous and damaging material does not make it into our content, either as opinion or as news.”

The @yaledailynews has issued a statement regarding its editor's notes: "The News was wrong to publish the corrections."https://t.co/dMRIKOuH6B https://t.co/8QfYWmSpZd pic.twitter.com/stOFktWEar

— Zach Kessel (@zach_kessel) October 31, 2023

Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center Professor KC Johnson posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Kudos to the YDN for retracting the retractions about Hamas atrocities. Left unexplained here is why the original retraction occurred given that evidence already existed from lots of credible reporting.”

Kudos to the YDN for retracting the retractions about Hamas atrocities.
Left unexplained here is why the original retraction occurred given that evidence already existed from lots of credible reporting.https://t.co/HotH8TPwXO

— KC Johnson (@kcjohnson9) October 31, 2023

Sahar Tartak, who authored the “Is Yallies4Palestine a hate group?” op-ed, posted on X: “Yale Daily News returned my article to original form. Does that make the initial change any less insidious? No. Does it prove that public opinion can hold our institutions accountable, not allowing them to defend or deny anti-Jewish murderers? Yes.”

Yale Daily News returned my article to original form. Does that make the initial change any less insidious? No. Does it prove that public opinion can hold our institutions accountable, not allowing them to defend or deny anti-Jewish murderers? Yes.https://t.co/yR2NQBENvA

— Sahar Tartak🇮🇱 (@sahar_tartak) October 31, 2023