The Old City of Jerusalem – as the vast majority of people are aware – is comprised of four quarters. They are named the Jewish Quarter, the Armenian Quarter, the Christian Quarter and the Muslim Quarter, and have gone by those titles for donkey’s years.
But then along came the BBC’s Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen and not only erased the Christian and Muslim Quarters from the map, but also invented a new one.
In a December 2012 interview with the travel section of the Telegraph on the subject of Jerusalem, Bowen stated: [emphasis added]
“You should go to the Old City, home to the Western Wall (the holiest place in the world for Jews to pray), the Aq sa [sic] mosque and the Dome of the Rock, not to mention the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I like to visit the Old City’s various quarters – Jewish, Palestinian and Armenian.”
Obviously Bowen’s expertise in Jerusalem geography is about as precise as his knowledge of Jewish prayer traditions.
Somehow, this faux pas got past the Telegraph’s fact checkers. Perhaps they mistakenly relied on the assumption that the man ultimately in charge of Middle East content for the BBC would stick to the facts.
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