An open letter to the Guardian

Dear Guardian errors or inaccuracies department,

Apologies for being a Jewish person who is anally retentive about Israel/Palestine, and writes into the Guardian about it. I’ve heard you get a lot of those.

However, in the article http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/18/mitt-romney-fresh-blow-leaked-video?intcmp=239

Ewen MacAskill says that “He [Romney] described Tel Aviv as being only seven miles from the West Bank, though in fact it is over 40 miles away”

But actually the distance between Tel Aviv and the West Bank is 7-10 miles (pretty much what Mitt Romney said(unfortunately))

Eg, if you look at this map, http://www.distancefromto.net/between/West+Bank/Tel+Aviv you will see the distance between the points is 31.84 miles, with the West Bank point being deep inside the West Bank. If you look at the actual border of the West Bank (the dotted line), the distance is much shorter (and also bear in mind that Tel Aviv extends to about highway 4 on the map probably further.)

Perhaps, Ewen was getting mixed up between the distance from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and therefore the West Bank, which is about 40 miles.

I don’t know if you are able to publish a correction at the bottom of the article – it might be difficult to change the actual text.

Thanks,

Anonymous, 16 Oldhill Street, N16, London

Ps. STOP hating Israel.