"The
media and 'the massacre'"
"The Times of London has this report by Janine di Giovanni: 'The refugees I had interviewed in recent days while trying to enter the camp were not lying. If anything, they underestimated the carnage and the horror. Rarely, in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life.'" (Howard Kurtz)
News and commentary on the conflicting reports on what happened during
the battle of Jenin.
Part 1: 2002/04/03 - 2002/04/30
Part 2: 2002/05/01 -April 2002
"Annan considers scrapping U.N. Jenin team" (CNN.com, 2002/04/30)
"IDF: Palestinians adding bodies from cemetery to Jenin mass grave" (Margot Dudkevitch, Haaretz, 2002/04/30)
"Jenin's War Criminals" (Jerome Marcus, IMRA/The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/30)
"Claims of massacre go unsupported by Palestinian fighters" (Charles A. Radin and Dan Ephron, Boston Globe, 2002/04/29)
"What is an outrage?" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/29)
"The findings are known in advance" (Ze'ev Segal, Haaretz, 2002/04/29)
"The U.N. won't investigate the real tragedy" (Yossi Klein Halevi, Los Angeles Times, 2002/04/28)
"Israel blocks UN Jenin inquiry" (BBC News, 2002/04/28)
"The UN and terrorism" (Shlomo Avineri, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/28)
"The U.N.'s Israel Obsession" (David Tell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/05/06 issue)
"Moshe Chertoff : Message From An Israeli On The Front Lines" (IMRA, 2002/04/26)
"Shifting Blame" (Robert N. Hochman, The New Republic, 2002/04/24)
"The Palestinian Account of the Battle of Jenin" (MEMRI, IA# 90, 2002/04/24)
"Israelis to Delay U.N. Fact-Finders" (Serge Schmemann, The New York Times, 2002/04/24)
"Palestinian fighter describes 'hard fight' in Jenin" (CNN.com)
"Portrait of the terrorist as a young man" (Amos Harel and Omer Barak, Haaretz, 2002/04/23)
"UN names Jenin inquiry team" (BBC News, 2002/04/22)
"The War Crimes Lie" (John Podhoretz, NY Post, 2002/04/22)
"Arafat’s Leninist Strategy" (Gerald M. Steinberg, National Review, 2002/04/22)
"International hypocrisy" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/22)
"Brutal, yes. Massacre, no" (Peter Beaumont, The Observer, 2002/04/21)
"'Terrorists used women and children to get close to us'" (Stephen Farrell, The Times, 2002/04/20)
"In Rubble of a Refugee Camp, Bitter Lessons for 2 Enemies" (James Bennet and David Rohde, The New York Times, 2002/04/20)
"'What kind of war is this?'" (Amira Hass, Haaretz, 2002/04/20)
"The UN is running out of blind eyes to turn" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/04/20)
"Violence in Gaza as Israel Reduces West Bank Forces" (C. J. Chivers, The New York Times, 2002/04/20)
"The 'engineer'" (Jonathan Cook, Al-Ahram Weekly, from the 2002/04/18-24 issue)
"In Jenin, U.N. Envoy Witnesses 'Horrifying' Scene" (John Lancaster, The Washington Post, 2002/04/19)
"Media Is Drawn Into West Bank Propaganda War" (Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post, 2002/04/18)
"As Palestinians Look for Dead, Israel Begins Pullback in Jenin" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/04/18)
"Visiting day in the Jenin refugee camp" (Margot Dudkevitch, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/18)
"The media and 'the massacre'" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/18)
"The new blood libel" (The Washington Times, 2002/04/18)
"Arabs seize 'Jenin' as rallying cry" (Philip Smucker, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/04/17)
"British Atrocities in Jenin" (HonestReporting.com, 2002/04/16)
"Lives Reduced to Rubble - Jenin Camp Is a Scene of Devastation But Yields No Evidence of a Massacre" (Molly Moore, The Washington Post, 2002/04/16)
"IDF bulldozers buried Jenin dead, Palestinians claim" (Anat Cygielman et al., Haaretz, 2002/04/12)
"The Number of Dead Is in Dispute, but the Destruction in Jenin Is Clear" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/04/12)
"Hundreds of gunmen surrender in Jenin" (Arieh O'Sullivan, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/11)
"Turning Point" (Seth Gitell, The New Republic, 2002/04/10)
"13 Slain by Boy Bomber - He lured Israeli soldiers to their deaths, says ex-PM" (Corky Siemazko, New York Daily News, 2002/04/10)
"Israeli soldiers die in Jenin ambush" (BBC News, 2002/04/09)
"Official Palestine News Agency: The USA and the British responsibility to the Palestinian Holocaust" (IMRA, 2002/04/08)
"Fighting Spreads Through West Bank" (Mohammed Daraghme, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/04/06)
"Israelis Move Into West Bank Towns; Arafat Rejects Exile Offer" (AP/The New York Times, 2002/04/03)
"IDF: Palestinians adding bodies from cemetery to Jenin mass grave" (Margot Dudkevitch, Haaretz, 2002/04/30)
"Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp are inflating the number of residents killed during Operation Defensive Shield by adding bodies of residents buried in a local cemetery to a mass grave that contains the bodies of 26 residents killed in the IDF operation, the army said yesterday. The IDF Spokesman said that Palestinians had begun removing bodies from a cemetery located near the government hospital in the camp to the mass grave, bringing the total number of bodies to 50. ... They have been instructed to erase any militant symbols and hide weapons, and refrain from taking any militant action while the UN teams are present. ... The IDF noted that since its pullout from the camp, 21 innocent residents have been wounded by explosive devices planted by Palestinian terrorists during the IDF operation.""Jenin's War Criminals" (Jerome Marcus, IMRA/The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/30)
"Mr. Kosirnik and friends are right about one thing: International law was violated in Jenin, and the violations should be investigated. But the law was not broken by Israel, which has responded carefully and proportionately to the daily murder of its citizens. Under international law, the people violating the human rights of Palestinian noncombatants are Palestinian terrorists, who have hidden themselves and their weapons - without uniforms or other identifying insignia required by the laws of war - among the civilian population of the West Bank. ... Rather than "avoid unnecessarily siting military objectives near civilian dwellings," they hid such "objectives" almost exclusively in dwellings and other civilian buildings: The bomb factories Israel found throughout the West Bank were located in homes, schools and other civilian sites. And rather than "trying to separate, to the extent possible, from military objectives," the Palestinians went out of their way to hide military objectives behind, in, around and under civilian (and even humanitarian) objectives. ... The Palestinians used the civilian population like this, we know, because that is part of their strategy: make victims and then cry about victims. ... But the Palestinian terrorists, having planted themselves among civilians, have harvested a fresh crop of victims, which they are now using for public-relations purposes. The U.N. investigation in Jenin is the fruit of that PR campaign. What the Palestinians did to harvest that fruit, however is the real violation of the West Bank residents' human rights.""Claims of massacre go unsupported by Palestinian fighters" (Charles A. Radin and Dan Ephron, Boston Globe, 2002/04/29)
"Palestinian Authority allegations that a large-scale massacre of civilians was committed by Israeli troops during their invasion of the refugee camp here appear to be crumbling under the weight of eyewitness accounts from Palestinian fighters who participated in the battle and camp residents who remained in their homes until the final hours of the fighting. In interviews yesterday with teenage fighters, a leader of Islamic Jihad, an elderly man whose home was at the center of the fighting, and other Palestinian residents, all of whom were in the camp during the battle, none reported seeing large numbers of civilians killed. All said they were allowed to surrender or evacuate when they were ready to do so, though some reported being mistreated while in Israeli detention.""What is an outrage?" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/29)
"In a world less surreal than the one we live in, the act of bursting into a random home and shooting a five-year-old child in the head would be the cause of some outrage. Multiply this act by hundreds and one might think it would rate an international investigation. Yet in the world in which we live, the party that is struggling not to be indicted for war crimes is Israel, for having the audacity to fight back. ... In the meantime, the Palestinians are not wasting time in their preparations for the UN team. According to a statement issued by the IDF, the Palestinians have dug up about 25 bodies buried near a hospital in Jenin before Operation Defensive Shield in order to add them to a mass grave of those killed in that operation.""The findings are known in advance" (Ze'ev Segal, Haaretz, 2002/04/29)
"The commission investigating the events of the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps determined that the massacre was carried out by the Phalangists and that the State of Israel thus did not bear direct responsibility for it. In a note to the summary of their report, published in February 1983, the members of the Kahan commission said they were not deluding themselves into thinking that "the results of this inquiry would convince or satisfy those with prejudiced views and a selective conscience." About a year ago, the Belgian court hearing the case against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other senior Israeli officials was presented with a whole set of testimonies, which appeared to be well-coordinated and orchestrated, about atrocities allegedly committed by Israeli soldiers in the camps. A similar set of testimonies could also be the daily bread of the fact-finding committee appointed by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to look into the events in the Jenin refugee camp. Palestinian sources, who are still making waves in international broadcasts, continue to claim there was a massacre in Jenin. This is the picture that will be presented to the fact-finding team by Palestinian witnesses, who will presumably speak with a single voice.""The U.N. won't investigate the real tragedy" (Yossi Klein Halevi, Los Angeles Times, 2002/04/28)
"The commission won't be investigating how the Palestinian Authority, established and lavishly funded by the international community, abused its sponsors' trust by turning Jenin and other West Bank towns into centers for suicide bomb factories. ... The commission won't be investigating how donor nations, especially those of the European Union, allowed the Palestinian Authority to sustain a terrorist war for the last 19 months, lavishing funds on a corrupt regime that devotes its budget to building bomb factories rather than hospitals and schools. ... The commission won't be investigating why much of the world's media rushed to proclaim a massacre in Jenin without evidence, and then appeared disappointed not to find mass graves beneath Jenin's rubble. Neither will the commission be investigating itself to expose how the U.N. has been hijacked by a coalition of international dictatorships that have singled out Israel, which struggles to maintain democratic norms under permanent siege, as the world body's symbol of evil. ... The commission won't be investigating the real tragedy: how the U.N. squandered the dream of a united humanity animated by justice - a dream first offered by the prophets of ancient Israel - and instead joined the unholy coalition of Islamic fundamentalists, far-left moralizers and far-right neofascists in again targeting the Jewish people.""Israel blocks UN Jenin inquiry" (BBC News, 2002/04/28)
"The Israeli cabinet has told the United Nations not to send a team to investigate what happened during an Israeli military assault on the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin earlier this month. Israeli spokesman Reuven Rivlin accused the UN of retreating on agreements, and suggested its inquiry would be biased against Israel. The cabinet, meanwhile, approved a US plan which could pave the way for the lifting of the siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah.""The UN and terrorism" (Shlomo Avineri, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/28)
"The United Nation group should investigate something else as well - the UN complicity in the way terrorism developed at the Jenin refugee camp and at other Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza. Because, what has been forgotten in the barrage of accusations and counter-claims is that the Jenin refugee camp is run - as are all Palestinian refugee camps - by UNWRA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. It has been a long-standing scandal that this UN agency has toed the Arab line that the refugees camps should remain temporary shelters, so as not to undermine the claims of the 1948 refugees to refugee status and to their demand to return to Israel proper. ... But there is a deeper issue: all refugee camp officials - from directors of the camps, through the camp bureaucracy and down to teachers in the schools - are UN employees. Most of them are Palestinians. Is it possible for a camp like Jenin to become a center for terrorists and suicide bombers without the knowledge, connivance or even active participation of the UN-employed camp bureaucracy - Palestinians or expatriates? ... Unless the UN takes some robust action to distance itself, its agencies and its employees from involvement in terrorism, it is indeed in a morally ambiguous and unacceptable position. In Bosnia it was complicit in mass murder; in the Palestinian camps it has, for years, at least been passively acquiescing in its employees' involvement in terrorism.""The U.N.'s Israel Obsession" (David Tell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/05/06 issue)
"UNRWA funds and staffs the schools of Jenin, where, from fall through spring each year, children are taught that all of "Palestine," from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, belongs to them. ... UNRWA allows its food warehouses in Jenin to do double duty as munitions dumps. UNRWA pretends not to know that explosives and counterfeit currency factories are housed in the public shelters it has constructed in Jenin. UNRWA cannot understand how it might be that its own administrative offices in Jenin are festooned with graffiti celebrating some of the world's most notorious terrorist organizations. Or how some of the world's most notorious terrorists might have found their way onto the agency's payroll - to the point where the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, extreme even in the context of Palestinian extremism, now openly controls the UNRWA workers' union. This same United Nations, the blood of Israeli civilians still wet on its hands, now dares to question the morality of a modest, defensive, and long-overdue Israeli reprisal? In curricular materials published by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Education, "Objective Five" for high school history teachers reads as follows: "The student will understand why the people of the world hate the Jews." It is a question for the ages. Zionism may no longer be racism at the United Nations. But anti-Semitism is forever.""Moshe Chertoff : Message From An Israeli On The Front Lines" (IMRA, 2002/04/26)
An account of the battle in Jenin by an Israeli soldier: "The whole place was one big booby trap with secret tunnels and enough explosives to blow up all of Israel twice. ... One time, and I saw this right before my eyes, a couple of families came out. There was a man, a woman, some boys, girls and even babies. Another family of more or less the same makeup also emerged. Now, we're in our armoured vehicles. We couldn't open the hatches or step out cause every time we tried, we'd be shot in the first second. We called for them to raise their shirts so that we could be sure that they weren't "wearing" any explosives. Only the men raised their shirts. When we called for everyone to do the same, the second the women raised their garments... B O O M. Everybody standing there was blown all over the place. They exploded themselves - entire families! It was horrific. It was also obvious that we would be blamed for having slaughtered them. It was insane. ... Too many soldiers were injured or killed when they tried to enter a house, only to find it booby trapped or see the fighters firing from behind the family who lived in the house. Many died because they wouldn't fire into innocent civilian shields.""Shifting Blame" (Robert N. Hochman, The New Republic, 2002/04/24)
"But we already know enough about what happened in Jenin to establish a few facts and render some preliminary moral judgments. And by the very moral standards the Palestinians themselves are now setting, it's clear that the Palestinians were the ones sacrificing the lives of innocent civilians - while the Israelis, by all appearances, went out of their way to avoid such losses. ... It is wrong, even during a war, to target civilians intentionally. But this is an odd principle for terrorists, and those who harbor them, to preach. After all, terrorists seek to obliterate the distinction between civilian and combatant. ... If targeting civilians is a crime, as the Palestinian leadership now suggests, then the Palestinian terrorists and their supporters have been guilty of it for years. And they were guilty of it at Jenin, too - only in an even more twisted sense. The large loss of life in Jenin is a tragedy, no doubt. But against whom should we direct our moral outrage? In Jenin, terrorists sprinkled bomb-making factories, storehouses of weapons, and combatants throughout the civilian population. And when the Israelis came in to find the terrorists, the Palestinians didn't hesitate to use civilians as human shields. ... A moral outrage? Yes. But not the one you've been hearing about.""The Palestinian Account of the Battle of Jenin" (MEMRI, IA# 90, 2002/04/24)
"The Islamic Jihad commander in the Jenin refugee camp, Abu Jandal, was interviewed several times by Al-Jazeera during the fighting. ... "I, the commander of the battle of the Jenin camp, have chosen for myself the name 'The Martyr Abu Jandal,' because all the fighters around me are martyrs. Believe me, there are children stationed in the houses with explosive belts at their sides… Today, one of the children came to me with his school bag. I asked him what he wanted, and he replied, "Instead of books, I want an explosive device, in order to attack…" ... In contrast, the Islamic Jihad announced that its commander in Jenin, Muhammad Tawalbeh, had prevented civilians from leaving the camp. The Islamic Jihad website announced that Tawalbeh died in his booby-trapped home when he blew it up on the Israeli soldiers inside it on April 6. The announcement went on to say that Tawalbeh 'had thwarted all attempts by the occupation to evacuate the camp residents to make it easier for the Israelis to destroy [the camp] on the heads of the fighters.'""Israelis to Delay U.N. Fact-Finders" (Serge Schmemann, The New York Times, 2002/04/24)
"Alarmed that the composition and mandate of a United Nations fact-finding team were stacking it against Israel, the government announced tonight that it would delay the arrival of the team until Israel agreed to its members and precise assignment. ... A senior government official said the decision reflected "deep concern" that the preparations for the fact-finding team, including statements made by Secretary General Kofi Annan and the fact that two of the three members were veterans of humanitarian work, amounted to a "setup to accuse Israel of war crimes." Mr. Annan brushed aside the Israeli objections tonight and said the team was expected to begin work by Saturday.""Palestinian fighter describes 'hard fight' in Jenin" (CNN.com)
CNN:s interview with Tabaat Mardawi: "He estimated 1,000 to 2,000 bombs and booby traps were spread through the camp. "It was a very hard fight. We fought at close quarters," he said, "sometimes just a matter of a few meters between us, sometimes even in the same house." He said there were about 100 Palestinians in the battle - 60 to 70 fighters from the camp and 20-30 members of the Palestinian security forces. That figure is not so different from what Israel has said. ... Asked about the allegations of a massacre, Mardawi said, 'By my own standard, what happened there was a massacre. But if you are asking, 'Did I see tens of people killed?' Frankly, no. In my group, we were in an area with no other people. Three fighters with me were killed. Later when we started to move from place to place, we saw destroyed houses and could smell bodies.'""Portrait of the terrorist as a young man" (Amos Harel and Omer Barak, Haaretz, 2002/04/23)
"Apathetic, almost laid-back, sometimes even entertaining, is how Thabet Mardawi yesterday described his time as a senior Islamic Jihad member. The terrorist from Jenin, who dispatched nine suicide bombers to fatal attacks inside Israel, is not ashamed of anything he has done. "I am proud," he says, "I did something for my people, for Allah." ... He says mines were planted to hit soldiers and tanks (during questioning he also admitted booby trapping houses with gas canisters). ... Mardawi admits he never saw an Israeli soldier take aim or fire at women or children. "I saw a couple of dead women and a wounded child. Your helicopters shot at houses where there were civilians." Was there a massacre? "This whole war is a massacre," he retorts, 'what's a couple of dozen people against tanks and bulldozers?'""UN names Jenin inquiry team" (BBC News, 2002/04/22)
"UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has appointed Finland's former President Martti Ahtisaari head of a team to probe events at the refugee camp in Jenin, where Palestinians say the Israeli army "massacred" civilians. The commission will investigate claims of human rights abuses during Israel's eight-day incursion into the camp. ... Hospital officials say that fewer than 50 bodies have been recovered, but the Palestinians say hundreds of people have been killed and may be buried under houses bulldozed by the Israeli army. Israel says 23 of its soldiers were killed in the refugee camp, including 13 in a single ambush, as its troops rooted out Palestinian militants. "The claim that only fighters were killed is simply not true - a mixture of bodies were clearly civilians and combatants," said Derrick Pounder, forensics expert from Dundee University in Scotland. ... "What was striking was what was absent. It was inconceivable that there were not large numbers of seriously injured," he said, concluding that they must have been left to bleed to death. "There must be many more (dead) because we could smell the corpses," Mr Pounder said.""The War Crimes Lie" (John Podhoretz, NY Post, 2002/04/22)
"The Palestinian big lie against Israel keeps shifting as the truth emerges. The first big lie was that the Israelis had perpetrated a massacre in Jenin, killing more than 500 people and then stashing them in mass graves. Then, as aid workers and journalists uncovered no evidence of mass graves, the lie was that the Israelis had secretly transported the dead bodies in refrigerated trucks. Now it's that the Israelis have violated international law relating to war. ... The simple truth is this: International law relating to the conduct of the incursion exculpates the Israelis and convicts the Palestinian Authority. ... What the leaders of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Hamas and Islamic Jihad do is hide among civilian populations to make it as difficult as possible for their enemies to attack them. The Geneva Convention denounces this as "perfidy." ... If a combatant uses the civilian population as a shield in this way, the deaths incurred are the moral and legal responsibility of those who are hidings out in this grotesquely cowardly fashion. ... The violators of international law - the criminals in this war - are the Palestinians who devised these shameful tactics.""Arafat's Leninist Strategy" (Gerald M. Steinberg, National Review, 2002/04/22)
"[U.N. special Middle East envoy Terje Roed-]Larsen also attacked Israel for allegedly turning back "international search and rescue teams" that had lined up to find the bodies buried in the rubble. This is another example of blatant bias — in other words, a lie. The IDF did not turn back any teams, but insisted, for good reason, on checking each team after some terrorists were smuggled out in this way. Of course, due to bias or Palestinian threats, the international humanitarian groups refused these conditions. As a result, the failure to provide assistance was not due to the IDF, but rather another key dimension in Arafat's Leninist strategy. ... For the past 54 years, Palestinian suffering has been exploited by the politicized aid agencies and the governments that support them. Once again, it is not Israel that is blocking aid, but rather the members of these groups, who have exploited fundamental ethical principles to further the goals of destroying Israel and spreading anti-Semitism. The time for dismantling these U.N. groups and NGOs and creating new, apolitical and professional aid agencies is long overdue. This won't change Arafat's Leninist strategy, but it will limit the degree of assistance he gets under the guise of humanitarian aid.""International hypocrisy" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/22)
"In response, Israel has stated that it will cooperate with a UN team because it has nothing to hide, but that the team should not include Larsen, UN Human Rights Commission chief Mary Robinson, or UN Relief and Works Agency Commissioner-General Peter Hansen. It should surprise no one that Israel singled out these three officials, because each has long ago given up any pretense of objectivity between Israel and the Palestinians. ... Not to be out done by his colleagues, Hansen did not bother restraining himself, "It was hell in the camp, and we will not exaggerate if we say that a massacre was carried out there... Having seen the reality with my own eyes, I cannot call what happened there by any other name." ... The miasma of international hypocrisy is running so thick that Israel should consider wearing its pariah status as a badge of honor.""Brutal, yes. Massacre, no" (Peter Beaumont, The Observer, 2002/04/21)
"But a massacre - in the sense it is usually understood - did not take place in Jenin's refugee camp. Whatever crimes were committed here - and it appears there were many - a deliberate and calculated massacre of civilians by the Israeli army was not among them. ... For even as the hunt for the bodies goes on, it is increasingly clear from evidence collected by this paper and other journalists, that the majority of those so far recovered have been Palestinian fighters from Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the al-Aqsa Brigades. Certainly, civilians died. But so far they are in the minority of those who perished. ... The true crime of Jenin camp is this act of physical erasure. It is covered by Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention in its prohibition on 'the extensive destruction or unlawful appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity committed either unlawfully or wantonly.' Article 147 mentions other crimes that may be applicable to Jenin: the alleged taking of hostages for human shields by the Israelis; the same army's refusal of access for humanitarian and emergency medical assistance and the deliberate targeting of civilians, particularly by Israeli snipers. But it is the sheer scale of the destruction that Israel will most likely have to answer for.""'Terrorists used women and children to get close to us'" (Stephen Farrell, The Times, 2002/04/20)
"Rafi Laderman's account of Jenin is a soldier’s story, of streets filled with hostile Palestinian fighters and booby-trapped bodies, in which even the children held wires ready to trigger bombs. ... Civilians died, he conceded, but he said that the vast majority of the dead were Palestinian fighters who endangered others by using them as human shields. 'Terrorists used groups of civilians, women and children to get close to our troops. In one case a man with an explosive belt on him was inside a group. He was separated from the group and refused to undress himself and was shot dead.'""In Rubble of a Refugee Camp, Bitter Lessons for 2 Enemies" (James Bennet and David Rohde, The New York Times, 2002/04/20)
"But dozens of interviews with residents of the camp, hospital officials, Israeli soldiers and officials, and Palestinian fighters produced no solid evidence of large-scale, deliberate killing of civilians in the camp. Palestinian claims of hundreds of dead appear to be exaggerated. The interviews also left little doubt that Israeli soldiers killed civilians - Israel said accidentally - with gunfire, missile fire from helicopters, and armored D-9 bulldozers sent crashing into homes. ... The furor over a possible massacre has obscured other troubling questions about the violence: whether Israeli soldiers used excessive force in the presence of civilians; whether Palestinian fighters deliberately endangered civilians by hiding among them; whether the operation, in the end, achieved its stated objectives, of eliminating terrorism and making Israelis more secure.""'What kind of war is this?'" (Amira Hass, Haaretz, 2002/04/20)
"J.Z., two of whose nephews were among the armed men who were killed, estimates that they numbered no more than 70. "But everyone who helped them saw himself as active in the resistance: those who signaled from afar that soldiers were approaching, those who hid them, those who made tea for them." According to him, no door in the camp was closed to them when they fled from the soldiers who were looking for them, the people of the camp, he said, decided not to abandon him, not to leave the fighters to their own devices. This was the decision of the majority, taken individually by each person. ... J. tells another story that is going around the camp, about soldiers who were attacked from inside a house they had taken over earlier, from which they fled, leaving their weapons behind. It is said in the camp that one of them cried: 'Mother, mother, what kind of war is this?'""The UN is running out of blind eyes to turn" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/04/20)
"So you can understand why the UN's head man, Mr Roed-Larsen, would rather talk about "unacceptable" Israeli conduct than why his "refugee" camp (funded by British taxpayers) is, in fact, a bomb factory with on-site demonstration facilities. Mr Roed-Larsen's operation is a large part of the problem in the region. ... But it beggars belief that officials on the ground in the UN-managed camp weren't aware of the scale of terrorist activities: there are only so many blind eyes you can turn. That's what's "horrific beyond belief": that the UN is complicit in terrorism. ... In Jenin, it's the UN that breeds "hopelessness" and "frustration", and enables and shelters terrorism. There was no massacre, just the natural consequence of the UN's foetid administration: if you let your charges build a bomb factory, don't be surprised if it blows up.""Violence in Gaza as Israel Reduces West Bank Forces" (C. J. Chivers, The New York Times, 2002/04/20)
"After a lull in fighting while Israel's military withdrew many of its soldiers from the West Bank, violence shifted to Gaza today, with Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen skirmishing and a Palestinian suicide bomber striking at a military checkpoint. ... The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a resolution supporting a mission to gather information on the Israeli military action in Jenin. The troops there have come under bitter criticism for leveling wide swaths of a refugee camp that was home to some 13,000 Palestinians. The resolution was approved after the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, told Secretary General Kofi Annan that Israel would welcome the arrival of a representative 'to clarify the facts.'""The 'engineer'" (Jonathan Cook, Al-Ahram Weekly, from the 2002/04/18-24 issue)
"Omar sits restlessly on his chair in the safe-house. He is an "engineer" from Jenin refugee camp: one of the revered bomb-makers from the City of the Bombers. ... "Of all the fighters in the West Bank we were the best prepared," he says. "We started working on our plan: to trap the invading soldiers and blow them up from the moment the Israeli tanks pulled out of Jenin last month." Omar and other "engineers" made hundreds of explosive devices and carefully chose their locations. "We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the camp. We chose old and empty buildings and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel because we knew the soldiers would search for them," he said. "We cut off lengths of mains water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four metres apart throughout the houses - in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas." The fighters hoped to disable the Israeli army's tanks with much more powerful bombs placed inside rubbish bins on the street. More explosives were hidden inside the cars of Jenin's most wanted men.""In Jenin, U.N. Envoy Witnesses 'Horrifying' Scene" (John Lancaster, The Washington Post, 2002/04/19)
"Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations' Middle East envoy, stood on a pile of rubble and surveyed a landscape of wretchedness and destruction. Just a few feet away, two middle-aged brothers used plastic buckets to excavate the ruins of their former home, unearthing a partial human torso. It was all that remained of their elderly father. "What we are seeing here is horrifying – horrifying scenes of human suffering," said Larsen, who helped shepherd Palestinians and Israelis toward the 1993 Oslo peace accords. "Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict." ... Palestinian officials have backed away from earlier charges of a massacre in Jenin. But much about the battle remains a mystery. ... "It's very hard to determine" the number of combatants and civilians killed in the fighting, said Dr. Tim Keenan, an orthopedic surgeon from Perth, Australia, who is working with the International Committee of the Red Cross at the hospital. "A lot of it's sort of anecdotal." ..."It's been incredibly difficult to tell the difference between fighters and civilians," said Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch in New York, who evaded Israeli checkpoints to sneak into the camp. 'I think it's clear that in the end what actually happened in Jenin will fall somewhere in between what the Palestinians are alleging and what [the Israeli army] claims. But only an independent authority can establish what actually happened.'""Media Is Drawn Into West Bank Propaganda War" (Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post, 2002/04/18)
"The Israeli assault on the West Bank town of Jenin has produced dramatically different media accounts. The British press is playing it as a massacre, while American newspapers say there's no such evidence. ... At the moment, there is no hard evidence of deliberate mass killings, as some Palestinians have alleged. ... Some of the British press reports seethe with anger toward Israel. The Brits also are willing to make sensational charges based on thin evidence. ... The Independent runs this no-doubt-about-it headline: "Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime." Writes reporter Phil Reeves: "A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a fortnight has finally been exposed." ... The Times of London has this report by Janine di Giovanni: 'The refugees I had interviewed in recent days while trying to enter the camp were not lying. If anything, they underestimated the carnage and the horror. Rarely, in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life.'" (See also: "Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime" (Phil Reeves, Independent, 2002/04/16) and "Inside the camp of the dead" (Janine di Giovanni, The Times, 2002/04/16))"As Palestinians Look for Dead, Israel Begins Pullback in Jenin" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/04/18)
"Surveying the camp here today, Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nation's special envoy to the Middle East called the scene "horrifying beyond belief." "Combating terrorism does not give a blank check to kill civilians," he said. He said people might still be alive under the bulldozed ruins, among the buried bodies. "You can yourself smell the stench of death all over the place," he said. "No doubt about it, there are bodies all over the place." He accused Israel of blocking access to the camp for United Nations and humanitarian worker for 11 days. Israeli officials were furious over Mr. Larsen's remarks, accusing him of ignoring the fact that 23 soldiers died in the combat here and that in attacking the camp Israel was reacting to Palestinian violence. "Larsen is not telling the whole truth," said Gideon Meir, a spokesman for the foreign ministry. 'He is totally ignoring what Israel went through. He is ignoring what Jenin was - the capital of Palestinian terror.'""Visiting day in the Jenin refugee camp" (Margot Dudkevitch, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/18)
"'We had received intelligence reports prior to our entry and knew there were hundreds of kilograms of explosives. Some we managed to defuse and others were detonated against our soldiers,' said Lederman. ... Another soldier standing nearby surveying the rubble says, "We uncovered dozens of bomb workshops, and on the streets and in the buildings there were more bombs than dogs turds." Capt. (res.) Uzi Maor said that "almost every house was boobytrapped and there were explosive devices in the streets. We made every effort to minimize damage to the civilian population. We used only precise weapons and ammunition and did not use artillery. Missiles were fired from helicopters at specific targets and bulldozers were used to damage specific buildings where gunmen were shooting at troops. Buildings or homes which were not used by terrorists were left alone.""The media and 'the massacre'" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/18)
"For, ever since the start of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield, the self-appointed guardians of truth have been all too quick to report fantasy as fact, but far less swift to correct the errors they have helped to spread. ... The evidence that's come to light [in Jenin], however, has thus far failed to corroborate Palestinian allegations. According to both the IDF and independent aid groups, the total number of Palestinian dead found in the town is 40 - a far cry from the 500 casualties which Palestinian spokesmen had asserted at one point - and nearly all of them are male combatants bearing ammunition belts or other signs of having engaged in combat with Israeli forces. ... Objectivity and even-handedness are about more than just airing both sides of a story. When one side is caught in a lie, it is the duty of responsible media to say so. So far, too much of the Western media have failed in that most basic task."
"The new blood libel" (The Washington Times, 2002/04/18)
"The accusations, now being made by Yasser Arafat and his apologists, that Israel has committed Kosovo-style "massacres" in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank town of Jenin are simply the latest version of centuries-old slander. ... ...Much of the terrorist infrastructure responsible for 18 months' worth of bombings directed at Israel has operated out of that densely populated West Bank city, effectively using Palestinian civilians as human shields. At least 23 of the Palestinian suicide bombers who have targeted Israel during this period have come from the Jenin area; Jenin's epicenter of terror is a Palestinian refugee camp with a population of 13,000. ... One man, Mr. Arafat, bears responsibility above all for the Israeli and Palestinian casualties in Jenin. Had he not decided to use Palestinians as cannon fodder for a barbaric war of terror against Israel, the tragedy there would never have occurred.""Arabs seize 'Jenin' as rallying cry" (Philip Smucker, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/04/17)
"The media barrage – through television, radio, and newspapers – is ceaseless. ... An editorial this week in the "Arab News," a moderate Saudi newspaper, suggested that Jenin conjures up the "the name Srebrenica" and "all the worst horrors of the Bosnian war; in 1995, when 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by Serbs. In the same way, the name Jenin looks set to go down in history as the place that encapsulates all the horror of the present phase of the long war for Palestinian freedom." ... In the "Arab street" Jenin is already viewed, almost across the board, as a "massacre" of several hundred people. Ahmed Sami, a Cairo University student who sports a money belt bearing a McDonald's logo, says he has no doubts about what "really happened" in Jenin. "The Israelis killed large groups of Palestinians and buried them all together," he says. A sense of biting cynicism dominates what many Arabs say they believe happened in Jenin. "The Israeli army killed between 3,000 and 4,000 Arabs," says Mohammed Khalil, a 33-year-old accountant.""British Atrocities in Jenin" (HonestReporting.com, 2002/04/16)
A survey of the coverage in British and American press about the battle in Jenin: "One of the hallmarks of journalism is to independently verify info before printing a "fact." Otherwise, readers are only being treated to rumors, accusations and even propaganda. The aftermath of the fighting in the Jenin refugee camp has dominated media reports. Though not independently verified, many media outlets devoted huge amounts of ink to unverified Palestinian tales of conspiracies, mass murders, common graves, and war crimes. The worst journalistic atrocities occurred in the British Press.""Lives Reduced to Rubble - Jenin Camp Is a Scene of Devastation But Yields No Evidence of a Massacre" (Molly Moore, The Washington Post, 2002/04/16)
"The heart of this battered Palestinian shantytown of 13,000 inhabitants has been erased from the face of the earth, its maze of apartment houses and twisting streets bulldozed by the Israeli military into a vast crater of broken concrete. ... Interviews with residents inside the camp and international aid workers who were allowed here for the first time today indicated that no evidence has surfaced to support allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions by Israeli troops. Thus far, about 40 bodies have been recovered, according to the Israeli military and aid groups.""IDF bulldozers buried Jenin dead, Palestinians claim" (Anat Cygielman et al., Haaretz, 2002/04/12)
"The IDF buried the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed in fighting in the Jenin refugee camp in a huge mass grave and used bulldozers to cover them up, Palestinian sources said yesterday. The army vehemently denied the allegations. The IDF intends to bury today Palestinians killed in the West Bank camp. Around 200 Palestinians are believed to have been killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers since the start of the operation last week, although it is unclear how many of the bodies can be buried. ... The IDF claimed a couple of times this week that repeated calls to groups such as the Palestinian Red Crescent Society to clear the dead and injured went unanswered. Israeli public relations officials expressed concern that the Palestinians wanted to leave the bodies in the camp and use the images for their own purposes. The humanitarian organizations said the IDF had not allowed them into the camp.""The Number of Dead Is in Dispute, but the Destruction in Jenin Is Clear" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/04/12)
"Toward dusk today, black smoke rose from the ruins of Jenin's refugee camp, a fortress of Palestinian resistance that has crumbled before overwhelming Israeli force. ... This city, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says, has been a major source of Palestinian terrorism for decades. The refugee camp has spawned many suicide bombers. Israel's hope is that it has now tamed Jenin. ... Some Palestinians here seemed stunned by the onslaught. "You collapse when you see them bombing and destroying the camp," Mufida Sabaani, 35, said outside her home late this afternoon. "We see missiles falling on the camp. We see shells falling. We see fire." Others sounded simply furious.""Hundreds of gunmen surrender in Jenin" (Arieh O'Sullivan, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/11)
"The Jenin refugee camp has virtually fallen, after hundreds of Palestinian gunmen surrendered to IDF troops yesterday. ... In Nablus, the army carried out final sweeps after pulling out of the casbah, where it demolished five bomb factories, encountering sporadic opposition. ... Leading Fatah member Abdel Karis Awais of the Jenin refugee camp told Israeli security forces that Tawfik Tirawi, the PA's West Bank General Intelligence chief, was involved in the recruitment of terrorists, the preparation of arms for them, and sending them to carry out attacks against Israeli targets.""Turning Point" (Seth Gitell, The New Republic, 2002/04/10)
"Although press accounts of the Battle of Jenin still remain vague, a few facts are clear. Yesterday, highly trained Israeli troops were fighting door-to-door. Resistance on the part of Hamas was furious. ... Today's dispatch in Haaretz reports that the fighting in Jenin, a key center in the construction of suicide bombs and bombers, has ended - with the Israelis emerging victorious. ... Israel did not achieve this victory with high-altitude bombing. It put the lives of its own soldiers on the line; literally speaking, it spilled its own blood. In so doing, Israel demonstrated that if its very existence is in jeopardy, as it is now, it is willing to fight man-to-man. In doing so, Israel took direct aim at a key precept of its enemies: that the Israelis are so weak and materialistic that they are unwilling to put soldiers at risk. ... Still, the forces of Hamas, who also lost a military commander in battle today, suffered a mighty blow. And it is bound to reverberate throughout the Arab world. As less an expert in Arab public opinion than Osama bin Laden once said, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." Israel showed its enemies a strong horse. And they know it.""13 Slain by Boy Bomber - He lured Israeli soldiers to their deaths, says ex-PM" (Corky Siemazko, New York Daily News, 2002/04/10)
"Thirteen Israeli soldiers were killed yesterday when they were lured into an ambush by a baby suicide bomber, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last night. "You know how they were killed?" he told Fox News Channel. "A 10-year-old boy was strapped with explosives and sent by [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat's goons to explode. This is the kind of monstrosity we're dealing with." Netanyahu said that when the soldiers spotted the boy in the ruins of a Jenin refugee camp, they chased him into an alley but did not shoot at him. Once in the alley, the boy detonated a bomb that killed three soldiers and sparked a series of explosions that sent a building crashing down on them, he said. ... Netanyahu later backed off on the boy's age in an interview on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes" show. ... "I don't know, frankly, because I inquired as well whether it was a 10-year-old or a 14-year-old or a 13-year-old." ... Other Israeli sources with close ties to the military confirmed that a boy lured the soldiers to their deaths.""Israeli soldiers die in Jenin ambush" (BBC News, 2002/04/09)
"Thirteen Israeli reservists have been killed and seven wounded in an ambush during a day of fierce fighting with Palestinian gunmen in a refugee camp in the West Bank town of Jenin. The army said the Palestinians had detonated a number of bombs as the soldiers entered the courtyard of a building in the centre of the camp and gunmen fired from surrounding rooftops. The number of Palestinian casualties was not immediately known, with Israeli sources saying it could be as many as 150 and the Palestinians suggesting it might be more.""Official Palestine News Agency: The USA and the British responsibility to the Palestinian Holocaust" (IMRA, 2002/04/08)
From an editorial published by Palestine News Agency: "So Arafat will not surrender and will not give up, the USA scheme will never achieve its destination, but will boomerang back baring blood and the responsibility of the killing, and filling the Arab and the Moslem nation with hate and rage towards the USA. Bush has proven that he became a puppet not only in the hands of the USA various institutes, but in the Jewish and Israeli hands also, yesterday he reached another hypocrisy climax when he said that the USA is the most loyal friend to Israel, burdening the USA with the Palestinian shed blood in the Jenin Refugee Camp while the cameras were prevented from recording the Holocaust is taking place... President Bush, and the British Prime minister the heir of the Palestinian historical "Nakba" (Holocaust), are both responsible for every Palestinian drop of blood that has been shed in the Palestinian occupied lands by the Israeli criminal forces..." (See also: "The USA and the British responsibility to the Palestinian Holocaust" (WAFA, 2002/04/08))"Fighting Spreads Through West Bank" (Mohammed Daraghme, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/04/06)
"Fighting spread Saturday through the alleys of densely populated West Bank refugee camps, where Palestinian militants reportedly were handing out explosives-packed belts to residents willing to strap them on and challenge Israeli soldiers. Israeli forces continued to surround Balata refugee camp in Nablus, and at a camp in Jenin, another northern West Bank city, residents said Israeli helicopter gunships targeting anything that moved were keeping people inside. Israeli army Capt. Jacob Dallal described "very close combat" in the Jenin area and said bomb traps had been set for Israeli soldiers. At least 15 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier died in violence in the West Bank and Gaza on Saturday.""Israelis Move Into West Bank Towns; Arafat Rejects Exile Offer" (AP/The New York Times, 2002/04/03)
"Scores of Palestinian gunmen were hiding inside one of Christianity's holiest shrines - Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity - on Wednesday, seeking refuge from Israeli troops that invaded the city as part of an offensive aimed at crushing Palestinian militias in the West Bank. Israeli forces expanded their campaign early Wednesday, taking over the Palestinian towns of Jenin and Salfit, and surrounding the Jenin refugee camp, a militant stronghold. ... At the Church of the Nativity - built over the traditional birthplace of Jesus - priests were forced to give refuge to Palestinian police and militiamen, who, according to witnesses, shot their way in on Tuesday after running battles with Israeli troops firing from helicopter gunships and from tank-mounted machine guns."
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