The Facebook page in question.

From Vanity Fair, discussing the events of the past few weeks:

A Facebook page calling for Israeli vigilantes to “kill an Arab every hour” quickly gained more than 20,000 likes.

However, the page doesn’t say that at all. It says “Kill a terrorist every hour” until the boys are returned.

You don’t even have to know Hebrew to understand this. The “About” page says in English:

We must use a strong hand to fight violent and life-threatening terror. The weakness shown by the Israeli Government, which released thousands of murderers has only increased their drive and led to the kidnapping of the teens. The only way to bring the teens back is to instill fear in our enemies and make them understand that they will suffer. We support executing a terrorist every hour until the teens are released.

Nothing about killing “Arabs.” And there is nothing wrong with killing terrorists – unless you support the terrorists.

When the page was first publicized, papers like The Independent assumed that it was a call for vigilante lynchings, even though the page doesn’t call for that at all either.

So what unreliable source did author Anna Lekas Miller get this information from?

In all likelihood, from the liars at  Electronic Intifada:

Kill a Palestinian “every hour,” says new Israeli Facebook page

The Facebook page’s main profile picture and background image show Palestinians as targets through the crosshairs of a gun.

More than 16,000 Israelis have joined a Facebook page that calls for the murder of a Palestinian every hour until three missing Israeli settler teens are located. The page is titled “Until the boys are back, every hour we shoot a terrorist.”

(By the way, the “Palestinians” in the crosshairs are all known terrorists.)

So what kind of “journalist” would make such a ridiculous mistake?

Obviously, it was no mistake. Because Anna Lekas Miller has done the same thing before, and embarrassed her editors for not checking her facts.

Last year she wrote an article for “Open Zion” riddled with lies, as I proved then – claiming that an “Israeli soldier threw a young Muslim Palestinian woman’s Qu’ran on the floor, trampling it until it was destroyed on the Temple Mount,” that “Israeli settlers” regularly “storm” the Al Aqsa mosque, that “eight Israeli settlers accompanied by soldiers stormed the mosque, interrupting the worshippers during prayers and violently ripping off a woman’s hijab” – all complete lies that were taken uncritically from the most extreme, dishonest Islamist media.

Open Zion was forced to correct some of the lies, and it let others stand, without any evidence.

One would think that a major media outlet would do a basic background check on the track record of Anna Lekas Miller (whose qualifications for being a journalist are nil) before publishing her lies. But, as we’ve seen many times before, when the lies fit the preconceived notions of the editors, why bother?

UPDATE: Vanity Fair corrected it – with the same mistake that other media used as I mentioned above:

A Facebook page calling for Israeli vigilantes to “shoot a terrorist every hour” quickly gained more than 20,000 likes.

No, the page did not in any way urge Israeli citizens to go out and kill terrorists every hour. It was obviously referring to the state itself.

Vanity Fair really wants to get its narrative across, doesn’t it?

And look at the correction:

Update: An earlier version of the story translated a Hebrew phrase to mean “kill an Arab every hour.” The literal translation is “shoot a terrorist every hour.”

“Literal translation”? It is the translation, period. Vanity Fair is trying to imply that they know what the people behind the Facebook page really wanted, and to disregard what they actually wrote.

This correction is almost as bad as the original, sloppy reporting.