An Israeli blogger exposed the truth about an Irish ballet teacher who railed against Palestinian poverty, despite teaching at an upscale Palestinian club.
By Yakir Benzion
An April 22 article on the Irish Times website featured ballet teacher Juliet Casey, who hails from Ireland, claiming she was living and working “in Palestine” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, media watchdog HonestReporting discovered that Juliet actually lives in Haifa, which is clearly in Israel.
Outed by HonestReporting, the Irish Times was forced to correct the story so that instead of living “in Palestine” Juliet now lives in “Haifa.”
However, the corrections were too late and pro-Palestinian groups like Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) threw the original article onto their Facebook page: “Irish ballet teacher Juliet Casey on life under lockdown in Palestine, where even in ‘normal’ times Palestinians face severe restrictions and problems with something as innocuous as dance.”
It turns out that Casey gives classes in Haifa and Nazareth, both in Israel, as well as in Ramallah and Bethlehem, which are in territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
Her interview was full of standard Palestinian fake news phrases such as “Gaza … suffers from almost constant bombardment” and references to the “refugee camp where [she] teaches,” with “a huge number of people [who] support big families on less than €2 [$2.20] an hour.”
The blogger David Lange of at israellycool.com discovered that Casey does indeed teach ballet in Ramallah, but at the swanky Executive Club, which bills itself as the area’s “premier private and exclusive business club.”
“In other words, Juliet Casey worked in a place frequented by wealthy Palestinians, or at least not those with “big families on less than €2 an hour,” Lange said. “Even if such families do exist elsewhere, she was not being truthful about the real situation, with which she was acquainted.”
“She was lying, just like she was on Facebook, when she referred to Tiberius as being in Palestine,” he said.
Her Facebook page was either deleted or hidden following the article.
HonestReporting took the Irish Times to task, not just for the misleading article, but for its feeble corrections that simply changed “Gaza … suffers from almost constant bombardment” to “Gaza … suffers from bombardment” and “I live in Palestine” to “I live in Haifa.”
“Ultimately, any edits to the piece are, at best, aesthetic and for the most part fail to address the serious underlying issues in the article,” Honest Reporting said. “Juliet Casey lives in Israel but evidently considers it to be “Palestine.”
The Irish Times has done as little as possible to allay that misconception, instead allowing her anti-Israel bias to shine through while spitting in the faces of those who have made legitimate complaints.”