CAA writes to Guardian over description of Jenin camp as “ghetto-like area”

Campaign Against Antisemitism has written to The Guardian over its description of the Jenin camp as a “ghetto-like area”.

Today’s article in the newspaper, titled “Thousands of Palestinians flee Jenin refugee camp after major Israeli raid” and written by Bethan McKernan, comes as the Israel Defence Forces conducts a military operation targeting terrorist infrastructure in the Jenin camp, a neighbourhood of the Palestinian Authority city.

The full paragraph in which the phrase appears reads: “Jenin camp was set up in the 1950s to house refugees fleeing their homes in 1948 after the creation of the state of Israeli. The ghetto-like area, plagued by poverty, has long been a hotbed of what Palestinians consider armed resistance and Israelis call terrorism.”

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a “ghetto” is “an area of a city where many people of the same race or background live, separately from the rest of the population. Ghettos are often crowded, with bad living conditions”; or “the area of a town where Jews were forced to live in the past.”

It is not obvious to us that either of these descriptions applies. Accordingly, we have written to The Guardian requesting an explanation or otherwise an immediate correction, given the inflammatory implication of the description.

It is noteworthy that, according to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of antisemitism.

Campaign Against Antisemitism monitors traditional media and regularly holds outlets to account. If members of the public are concerned about reportage in the media, they should contact us at [email protected].