'Ashamed' Jewish Chronicle reporter explains his powerful change of heart after ripping Israel

Jacob B. | 8:13 PM on May 17, 2018

Jewish Chronicle reporter Daniel Sugarman admitted Thursday that something he wrote on Tuesday was way off base.

“I saw what I had done.

I had fallen into the trap I had always been convinced I would not fall into. I had condemned Israel for defending itself.”

On Tuesday Daniel Sugarman wrote that Israel should be ashamed. Today, he is the one who is ashamed.https://t.co/aHed84Yo2g

— The Jewish Chronicle (@JewishChron) May 17, 2018

He had written that Israel should be ashamed of the way it was treating and inciting the residents of Gaza. Upon reflection, Sugarman did something that very few in today’s media have the courage to do — admitted he was wrong.

There are a lot of people who should be ashamed; this man had the courage to say it about himself. https://t.co/dpDE3xQx5O

— Brit Hume (@brithume) May 17, 2018

This is what he says led him to write what he did initially:

“On the left, in Jerusalem, I saw happy faces. Self-congratulatory faces. I saw the Prime Minister of Israel talking about how the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem was a big step towards peace.

And on the right, simultaneously, in Gaza, I saw tear gas, and smoke, and bullets.”

And this is what he says caused his change of heart:

I failed to acknowledge that, either way, Israel would be giving Hamas what it wanted. Shoot at those charging at you and Hamas would have its martyrs. Fail to shoot and Hamas would break through the barrier and bring suffering and death – its stated aim – to Israelis living only a few hundred metres away from that barrier. The march may have originally been, as it was declared to be, about Palestinians returning to the homes they had to leave 70 years before. But Hamas’s aim was far more straightforward – “We will take down the border and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies.”