Red faces all round at the Daily Mail, which has been forced to publish a humiliating retraction after falsely accusing a newly elected Green Party councillor of praising Hamas for its murderous attacks of October 7, 2023.
The paper had said that Kamel Hawwash, Birmingham Council’s cabinet member for children, young people and families, had called the attacks “courageous”. In actual fact, he had shared a clip from a TV news package on which he had appeared to discuss the situation in Gaza. Hawwash was not responsible for the name of the video, which included the phrase “Courage in the face of aggression.”
The Mail has now deleted the article from its website and published a clarification, saying: “An article published on 8 June, now removed, reported that newly elected Green Party councillor Kamel Hawwash had called the 7 October attacks ‘courageous’.
“In fact, he had shared a video titled 10 days since Al‑Aqsa Flood: Courage in the face of aggression, in which he discussed events in Gaza on 17 October. We have been asked to clarify that the title wording was the broadcaster’s, not his, and that he unequivocally condemns all attacks on civilians, which we are happy to do.”
The Mail is not alone. The Times made the similarly incendiary claim, running a story by its home affairs editor Matt Dathan in its print edition on June 8 under the headline ‘Birmingham councillor praised Oct 7 massacre’.
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Online, however, that headline is now ‘Birmingham councillor promoted video praising Hamas ‘courage’’ and a paragraph at the end of the story says: “An earlier version of this article said Kamel Hawwash, a Birmingham councillor, had shared a post calling the October 7 attacks “courageous”.
“We have been asked to make clear that the word ‘courage’ was referring to Hamas’s subsequent resistance to Israeli ground operations in Gaza and that Mr Hawwash unequivocally condemns all attacks on civilians.”
The Sunday Telegraph, meanwhile, has made a similar correction more quietly. A story on its website about Hawwash is headlined ‘Green councillors shared controversial posts online’ – but the original print story ran under the considerably less nuanced ‘Green councillor praised ‘courageous’ Oct 7’. The paper, however, has chosen not to tell its readers about the alteration, nor why it was made.
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