http://www.nandotimes.com/opinions/story/362271p-2936404c.html
Opinions: HOLGER JENSEN: A mea culpa
This is a mea culpa.
I made a grievous error in not verifying the authenticity of 20-year-old quotes attributed to Ariel Sharon that I used in my April 12 column on the Israeli leader. As it turns out, they were made not by Sharon but another unnamed Israeli soldier who died 11 years ago.
The interview in question was conducted by Amos Oz, one of Israel's leading authors and prominent in the Peace Now movement. He had access to many Israeli generals and politicians of that era but identified some of his interview subjects only by letters of the alphabet, leaving it up to his readers to decide who they were.
The interview with "Z" was published in the Israeli newspaper Davar on Dec. 17, 1982 (Davar ceased publication in 1996), and later republished in a book of Oz's collection of interviews, titled "In the Land of Israel."
I was in both Beirut and Israel that year and remember the uproar it caused.
When the interview first appeared after the invasion of Lebanon, "Z" was widely assumed to be Sharon because the interviewee was described as a military man "with a certain history," about 50 years of age, heavy-set and a prosperous farmer. All this fit the stocky Sharon, who had a farm, was the right age and certainly had "a history."
[...]
Oz never revealed who "Z" was, saying he had promised to protect his identity. He held to that promise when I telephoned him Monday, but confirmed that it was not Sharon.
[...]
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