How to check us: a source in five steps

Why check at all

This site is written in Israel, through Israeli eyes, and it says so openly. That is a reason to check it, not a reason to dismiss it and not a reason to trust it: everyone who writes stands somewhere, and the fair ones tell you where.

Trust cannot be asked for. It is built one claim at a time, when you open the source and find in it what we said was in it. That is why every substantive claim on the site has a small number next to it that leads to a source.

Checking is also a skill you take with you. The same five steps work on a post, on a clip that reached your phone, on a politician's speech and on a school textbook.

The five steps

1. Find the small number and open the source

Next to a claim you will see a small number. It leads to the list at the foot of the page, where the source has a name, a publisher and a link. Open it. If an important claim has no number at all, that too is a finding.

2. See what kind of source it is, and who published it

The site tags every source: primary (the text of an agreement, an official transcript, a UN document), official archive, research, press, or reference. A primary source shows what was said or signed; research and press tell you what someone made of it. Then ask who the publisher is and what stake it has in the story.

3. Read the sentence in the source, not only the headline

Search the page for the name, the date or the number you are checking, and read the lines around it. Does the source say what we said, or something similar but weaker, older or more hedged? A link that opens proves only that the page exists.

4. Look for a second source, from another side

One source is a start. Look for the same event in a place that sees it from a different angle: the UN document system¹ and its collection on the question of Palestine,² the Israel State Archives³ and the Knesset website,⁴ the Office of the Historian at the US State Department,⁵ the Palestinian news agency WAFA,⁶ the Institute for Palestine Studies and its encyclopedia PalQuest,⁷⁸ and for the present day also B'Tselem⁹ and the UN humanitarian office OCHA.¹⁰ Where they agree, you are probably standing on a fact; where they differ, you have found the argument.

5. Separate fact, interpretation and position, and ask what a number counts

“The treaty was signed on 26 March 1979” is a fact. “The treaty was a turning point” is an interpretation. “The treaty was a betrayal” or “a triumph” is a position. With numbers, ask three things: who counted, what the figure includes and what it leaves out, and as of what date.

One example from the site: “No more wars”

Many people remember the line as “No more wars” and attribute it to Menachem Begin at the signing of the peace treaty with Egypt. On this site the quotation reads “No more war, no more bloodshed, no more bereavement”.¹¹ The difference is one letter. Let us check which is right.

The five steps, applied

Step 1: the number

The quotation card has a source line: the remarks of President Carter, President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin at the signing ceremony, as published by The American Presidency Project.¹¹ The link opens.

Step 2: the kind of source

It is a transcript of the ceremony from the official record of the US presidents (the Public Papers of the Presidents), published by a project of the University of California, Santa Barbara.¹¹ So it is a primary source for the words spoken in English that day, and the publisher has no reason to prefer one letter to another. It is still an American record, and a careful reader notes that as well.

Step 3: the sentence itself

Search the page for the word “bereavement”. In Begin's remarks, dated 26 March 1979, the text reads “No more war, no more bloodshed, no more bereavement”.¹¹ That is “war”, in the singular. These words close a longer sentence, which is why the site says so on the card and does not present them as a sentence standing alone. In the same transcript the plural, “wars”, appears in Sadat's remarks and not in Begin's.¹¹

Step 4: a second source

Here the site admits a limit. The transcript is one record, in English, of a ceremony held in English. A sound or film recording of the ceremony, or the Israeli record of that day, would be a real second source, and you can look for them yourself in the Israel State Archives.³ Until then the right thing to say is “according to the official US transcript”, which is exactly how the quotation is labelled on the site.

Step 5: fact, interpretation, position

Fact: the transcript has “war”, not “wars”. Interpretation: why memory changed the word; perhaps because the plural sounds more like a slogan, perhaps because Sadat used it, and we do not know. Position: whether the promise was kept is something people argue about to this day, and no transcript will settle it. The difference here is one letter, but the same steps catch bigger things too.