Ha'aretz changes headline to make PLO sound less anti-semitic

The PLO ambassador to the United States, Maen Areikat, says 'Palestine' must be Judenrein.

Even the URL of this link shows the headline:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/plo-official-palestinian-state-to-be-free-of-jews-1.384493

But when you try to go to that link you get redirected to a new page, with a new headline, and even a new URL!

the first headline is completely accurate - and is consistent with statements that Areikat made last year. Even the Ha'aretz article itself - which does not appear to have been changed - makes that clear. (MORE EOZ)

"After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated," Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador, said during a meeting with reporters sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. He was responding to a question about the rights of minorities in a Palestine of the future.

Such a state would be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany, which sought a country that was judenrein, or cleansed of Jews, said Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. National Security Council official.

Israel has 1.3 million Muslims who are Israeli citizens. Jews have lived in "Judea and Samaria," the biblical name for the West Bank, for thousands of years. Areikat said the PLO seeks a secular state, but that Palestinians need separation to work on their own national identity.

The Palestinian demand is unacceptable and "a despicable form of anti-Semitism," Abrams said. A small Jewish presence in a future Palestine, up to 1% of the population, would not hurt the Palestinian identity, he said.

"No civilized country would act this way," Abrams said.