The New York Times obituary of Ariel Sharon hits a few false notes.
The Times writes:
It was Mr. Sharon's visit, in September 2000, accompanied by hundreds of Israeli police officers, to the holy site in Jerusalem known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, that helped set off the riots that became the second Palestinian uprising.
This account is inaccurate. Former New York Times magazine contributing writer Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in Bloomberg View, describes that uprising as "allegedly, though not actually, triggered by an infamous Ariel Sharon walkabout atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem."
The details are widely available. See for example, Tom Gross, who quotes the Palestinian Authority's communications minister Imad Al-Faluji: "Whoever thinks that the intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is wrong. This intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat's return from the Camp David negotiations, where he turned the table upside down on President Clinton." Or BBC Watch, or the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
The Times also reports that Sharon "had a surprising sense of humor." The Times doesn't say who was surprised by this sense of humor. If it was the obituary writer or his editor, the surprise says more about them and their preconceptions than it does about Mr. Sharon.