A Fairfax Mystery: The PLO Uprising That Wasn't

WTF is going on at Fairfax?

Here's a two-sentence extract from a piece that appeared on the websites of both Fairfax papers (Age & SMH), Life in the shadows for Palestinians caught in Syria's conflict, by Marika Sosnowski:

"After accepting thousands of Palestinians who fled or were displaced by Israel in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967, in 1970 the PLO under Yasser Arafat clashed with Jordan's Hashemite monarchy. The conflict, which came to be known as Black September, ended with thousands of Palestinians killed and the PLO leadership and militants expelled to Lebanon." (26/3/17)

Now here's how it appeared, in a less coherent form, and containing a marked anti-Palestinian tweak, in the print edition of the SMH on March 27 - I've boldened the changes:

"After accepting thousands of Palestinians who fled or were displaced by its Western neighbour Israel in wars in 1948 and 1967, in 1970 the PLO under Yasser Arafat staged an uprising against their Jordanian hosts, the Hashemite monarchy. The conflict, which came to be known as Black September, was violently quashed by the Jordanian Armed Forces. Thousands of Palestinians were killed and the PLO leadership and fighters were expelled to Lebanon."

Needless to say, anyone with a comprehensive knowledge of modern Palestinian history would know that there was no Palestinian "uprising" in Jordan in 1970. What there was was a bloody crackdown by King Hussein on the armed Palestinian resistance movement based there, and a heroic, but ultimately doomed, defence by the latter against the Jordanian army's vastly superior numbers and firepower.

So how do we account for the two versions? And which is Sosnowski's, who, according to her twitter account, is a Melbourne University-trained lawyer and "regular Middle East commentator"?