Last week one of the haredi papers in Bet Shemesh ran an ad about protecting one's children from abuse. It was a full page of instructions, in English, of how to protect one's children from potential abusers, and what to do if God forbid one should be in a situation where he suspects something might have happened. Despite being only in English, and regardless of whether every single point was appropriate or not, just having such content in the Chadash was a groundbreaking event.This week Chadash published a retraction and apology.
Here are the possibilities of the meaning of the retraction:
1. they really have no idea what's going on in the English section of the newspaper and it really slipped in without being noticed.
2. they put it in because they know how important the issue is, even if only in English for now, and the retraction is to save face and to placate those who were upset.
3. they meant to put it in but now regret that decision, either because they did not realize how upset some people might be or because they did not realize what exactly would be written and some of the content was objectionable.
Most likely they had absolutely no idea what they were doing, but this is a pretty big mistake. Even if they mistakenly let slip some of what was written within, it is hard to believe that they took a full page ad and not a single person reviewing the content of the newspaper noticed what the topic or content was.
Either way, it was a first. The second might be long in coming, but the first has already happened, by hook or by crook.
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