The Guardian list omits Israel's Nobel Peace Prize winners

By JONNY PAUL, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT IN LONDON

The Guardian newspaper was forced to amend an article on past Nobel Peace Prize winners on its website on Friday after it had omitted the names of Israel's prize winners.

Following the announcement of President Barack Obama's winning the 2009 prize, the newspaper's news editor Simon Rogers wrote an article listing the names of all Nob More..el Peace prize winners since its inception in 1909. However, all of Israel prize winners - Menachem Begin, Yizhak Rabin and Shimon Peres - were omitted.

In the 1978 entry, Begin's name was missing with only Egyptian President Anwar Sadat listed. The same error occurred in the 1994 entry with Yasser Arafat as the only entry and both Rabin and Peres missing.

The omission led to a number of frenzied entries in the article's comment section.

"Why does your list of prize winners exclude the Israelis' names in 1994?...It couldn't be that the Guardian is biased against Israel could it? No it must be a simple coincidence that the only mistake in your list omits the Israelis because the Guardian is so balanced when it comes to Israel! Shameful!" said one entry.

"The Guardian outdoes itself. It's now airbrushing history. In 1978, Menachem Begin won the prize with Anwar Sadat. In 1994, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin won it with Yasser Arafat. Begin, Peres and Rabin have not been included in the list above. Oh, of course, they're Israelis; presumably from the editor's perspective, they don't count," wrote "Appalled".

"Why does your list deliberately omit Israeli Nobel Peace prize winners? Three: Begin, Rabin and Peres? Is the Guardian deliberately omitting these names? Can this simply be "a mistake"? Shameful!" said "Lennieslover".

"Any chance of Simon Rogers clarifying this? Didn't know about Begin myself, but I could have sworn the 1994 one was also awarded to the Israelis? I'm quite prepared to be told I'm wrong," said "Smundy1969".

In a statement on Friday, the newspaper blamed it on a "technical issue" saying it was accidently omitted.

"For the Nobel Peace Prize winners list, we used data from nobelprize.org. However, there was a technical issue during the data transfer from the site, which meant that many of the names of the joint winners of the Nobel Peace Prize were accidentally omitted, although the country of origin of the winners was not. This has now been corrected," a Guardian spokesperson said.

The article's author, Simon Rogers, also posted an entry online: "It's my fault, I'm afraid. I decided where there was more than one winner to put the joint one in the second column. Unfortunately, this caused a few problems, which we've now rectified. Please let me know if you spot any other missing names."

Added: Oct 10 2009 In: news_politics

By: ellhow