Part
1: 2002/04/03 - 2002/04/30
Part 2: 2002/05/01 -
November
2003
"Seven Lies About Jenin" (David
Zangen, Ma'ariv/FrontPageMagazine, 2003/11/14)
July
2003
"Palestinians confirm no massacre in Jenin
- study" (Joel Leyden, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/07/14)
August
2002
"UN
Report on Jenin" (HonestReporting,
2002/08/09)
"UN report on Jenin refugee
camp does not support Palestinian claims of a massacre, diplomats say"
(AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/01)
July
2002
"Back
to Jenin" (Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz, 2002/07/17)
June
2002
"Jenin: The Israeli reservist's view"
(Lou Marano, UPI, 2002/06/05)
May 2002
"How Europe's media lost out" (Martin
Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/22)
"Analysis: Why Europeans bought Jenin myth"
(Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/21)
"Part One: Documenting the Myth"
(Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/20)
"Jeningrad - What the British media said"
(Tom Gross, National Review, 2002/05/13)
"How Jenin battle became a 'massacre'"
(Sharon Sadeh, The Guardian, 2002/05/08)
"The Battle of Jenin" (Matt Rees,
TIME, 2002/05/06)
"The Independent's 'reporting'"
(Andrew Sullivan, andrewsullivan.com, 2002/05/06)
"Israel Has Nothing to Hide"
(Yuval Steinitz, The New York Times, 2002/05/04)
"U.N., rights group don't find massacre"
(Betsy Pisik, The Washington Times, 2002/05/04)
"Jenin: The Truth" (Charles Krauthammer,
The Washington Post, 2002/05/03)
"How the Times Distorted Jenin"
(Daniel Gordon, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, 2002/05/03)
"Burying the truth" (Mathhew
Gutman, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/02)
"Jenin 'massacre' reduced to death toll of
56" (Paul Martin, The Washington Times, 2002/05/01)
"Seven
Lies About Jenin" (David Zangen, Ma'ariv/FrontPageMagazine, 2003/11/14)
Seven lies and an avalanche of hate. Zangen on the Jerusalem premiere
of Muhammad Bakri's infamous "Jenin, Jenin":
"At the end of the screening, the hundreds of viewers awarded Bakri
and the editor of the film with thunderous applause. Bakri turned to
the audience and asked if there were any questions. I introduced myself,
ascended the stage and began to systematically list all the lies and
inaccuracies in the film.
At first, there was a rustle in the crowd, and then boos and I was called
a "murderer", "war criminal" and the like. Before
I had even finished my second point, a man from the audience aggressively
ascended the stage and tried to grab the microphone from my hand. I
decided not to be dragged into violence. I let him take the microphone
and walked off the stage. I was surprised that only a few spectators
rose to the defense of freedom of speech and freedom of expression.
I was amazed that the audience was not willing to hear the facts from
someone who had physically been there.
It was painful for me as a man, a father and a doctor to hear calls
of "murderer" from my own people. I said that I hadn't murdered
anyone, but the calls intensified. A powerful hatred was directed towards
me. I had an unpleasant feeling that I haven't been able to shake."
"Palestinians
confirm no massacre in Jenin - study" (Joel
Leyden, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/07/14)
"Palestinian sources are now saying that their death toll in the
2002 IDF incursion into Jenin, was 52, at least 34 of whom were armed,
contradicting earlier Palestinian claims that thousands had died, a
study to be released next month says.
The study indicates for the first time that Palestinian terror organizations
saw themselves as "armed combatants" and not as civilians
who died in a deadly massacre. The study's significance is that it uses
Palestinian sources to rebut the original Palestinian claims. ...
The study rebuts claims at the time by Palestinian Authorities that
IDF forces were attacking civilians, and that the only Palestinians
who died in the battle were unarmed Palestinian men, women and children.
Among other details, the study also reveals that Fatah, Hamas and Islamic
Jihad established a joint military operations room in preparation for
the battle. In addition the research indicates the three groups had
created a joint bomb-making facility in Jenin that produced more than
two tons of explosives.
The JCPA paper states civilians were intentionally used as human shields,
and that both women and children were deployed by the three groups to
divert IDF troops into ambushes and booby-trapped areas."
"UN
Report on Jenin" (HonestReporting, 2002/08/09)
A survey of how news agencies are retrospecting on their claims of a
"massacre" in Jenin in the light of the UN report which dismissed
those claims:
"To his credit, Phil Reeves of The Independent comes clean in a
report entitled: "Even journalists have to admit they're wrong
sometimes." Reeves admits that his report "was highly personalized"
and writes: "It was clear that the debate over the awful events
in Jenin four months ago is still dominated by whether there was a massacre,
even though it has long been obvious that one did not occur." ...
Peter Cave of Australia's ABC still insists there was a massacre in
Jenin. Here's some snippets from a transcript: 'I personally saw 30
Palestinian corpses at the hospital on April the 20th, and with dozens
of other foreign reporters, watched them being buried at a mass grave
just up the road from the hospital... Just as in Tiananmen Square, the
power of the gun and the tank ensured there was no proper body count
or accounting. Just as happened in Tiananmen Square, the uninformed
and those with their own agenda, are now claiming there was no massacre.
There was a massacre, a considerable number of human beings were indiscriminately
and unnecessarily slaughtered...'" (See also: "Even
journalists have to admit they're wrong sometimes" (Phil Reeves,
The Independent, 2002/08/03) and "UN
report on Jenin massacre flawed" (ABC News Online, 2002/08/04))
"UN
report on Jenin refugee camp does not support Palestinian claims of
a massacre, diplomats say" (AP/The Jerusalem
Post, 2002/08/01)
"A UN report on Israel's military attack on a Palestinian refugee
camp does not back up claims of a massacre, but it does criticize both
sides for putting civilians in harm's way, Western diplomats said. The
report accuses Israel of delaying aid and medical help to Palestinians
in the Jenin refugee camp. And it charges Palestinian militants with
deliberately putting its fighters and equipment in civilian areas in
violation of international law, the diplomats said Wednesday. ... But
it said that in Jenin, 52 Palestinian deaths had been confirmed by April
18, and that up to half may have been civilians. It called the Palestinian
allegation that some 500 were killed "a figure that has not been
substantiated in the light of evidence that has emerged," the diplomats
said." (See also: "Report
of the Secretary-General on Jenin" (Unitied Nations, 2002/08/01))
"Back
to Jenin" (Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz, 2002/07/17)
"What was the spark that set off the rumors about a massacre in
Jenin's refugee camp? ... Toward the end of the fighting, the army sent
three large refrigerator trucks into the city. Reservists decided to
sleep in them for their air conditioning. Some Palestinians saw dozens
of covered bodies lying in the trucks and rumors spread the Jews had
filled trucks full of Palestinian bodies. Some Palestinians went to
the Civil Administration to ask. When it turned out the rumors of executions
were baseless, the myth of the Jenin massacre evaporated on its own.
But Palestinian Minister Saeb Erekat continued lying, though he lowered
the number of dead from three thousand to five hundred."
"Jenin:
The Israeli reservist's view" (Lou Marano, UPI,
2002/06/05)
"The Jenin operation met with a firestorm of media criticism, especially
in Europe. [Jonathan] Alster dismissed the suggestion that Israel could
have forestalled this by accommodating the press from the outset. "Why
didn't we let the media in earlier? Why didn't we show that we had nothing
to hide? It is so ridiculous!" he said. "We did not receive
supplies inside the camp for two to three days because it was too dangerous
for our tanks and armored personnel carriers to move in it. "At
a certain point, they stopped bringing us water in jerry cans. They
moved to bottled water because it became too dangerous to carry the
jerry cans the 5 yards from the personnel carrier to our door. They
threw us the box with food into the house. The crossfire was too intense.
'It was a madhouse! Who would have dealt with 10 reporters being killed
the first day?'" (See also:
"Jenin: The human rights activist's view" (Jennifer Loewenstein,
UPI, 2002/06/05), in which Loewenstein,
as Best
of the Web Today points out, probably is "the first activist
ever to stand up for the rights of home entertainment devices":
"Walking was unsafe in Jenin, whether you were outside picking
your way through blasted blocks of cement and wire, or inside trying
to step over destroyed furniture, scattered and torn clothing, or broken
household items. A television set had been shot. The speakers of a stereo
had bullets in them. Were these appliances also considered terrorists,
I wondered.")
"How
Europe's media lost out" (Martin Sieff, UPI,
2002/05/22)
Part three of UPI's analysis of media coverage of the battle of Jenin:
"A.N. Wilson's willingness in the London Evening Standard to accuse
the Israelis, without any credible evidence, of poisoning Palestinian
water supplies showed the way columnists could break every restraint
of decency and common sense. Wilson's article would have been at home
in the pages of the Nazi propaganda sheet "Der Sturmer." ...
...Western media coverage of Jenin, especially in Western European newspapers,
stood out for its wild and remarkably uniform hysteria. An overwhelming
number of reports were published or broadcast in outlets, more especially
of the left but also of the right, appearing to document in great detail
the massacre of hundreds, possibly thousands of Palestinians at the
hands of the Israeli Army. ... But the small scale in casualties in
Jenin, ultimately confirmed by the PA itself, underlined the remarkable
loss in perspective across the European media in both reporting what
was happening and then analyzing it. The initial decision of the Israelis
to keep the media out of Jenin while the fighting raged does not account
for this. The most hysterical and inaccurate accounts and the wildest,
unsubstantiated claims came not while the international media was barred
from Jenin but after it was allowed in. ... Yet media reports teemed
in those countries with - as it turned out - highly exaggerated or just
plain wrong descriptions of the violence allegedly inflicted by the
Israelis on the Palestinians in Jenin. And as these reports ran, they
were quickly followed by attacks - largely, it appears, from young immigrant
Muslim gangs - on easily identifiable Orthodox Jews in both Britain
and France." (See also: "Analysis:
Why Europeans bought Jenin myth" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/21)
and "Part One: Documenting the Myth" (Martin
Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/20))
"Analysis:
Why Europeans bought Jenin myth" (Martin Sieff,
UPI, 2002/05/21)
Part two of UPI's analysis of media coverage of the battle of Jenin:
"Most of the major press and broadcasting outlets in Western Europe
uncritically gobbled up the Jenin Massacre Myth with self-indulgent
abandon. ... The reaction of the Western European media differed profoundly
in its nature from that of U.S. newspapers and broadcasting news outlets.
The allegations were equally widely reported in the United States. However,
the U.S. broadcast media proved far more resistant to anti-Israeli and
even anti-Semitic hysteria than that in Western European. This appears
to have been the case precisely because no single state-funded or state-approved
corporation dominated broadcast news in the United States, as is the
case in Britain and France. In those and other smaller countries, a
well-entrenched left-wing media elite has been hostile to Israel and
its policies for decades. And they have long enjoyed a cozy, unchallenged
bureaucratic dominance in the state broadcasting news organizations
that to a large degree set the braking news and analysis for the entire
print press. Therefore, entire echelons of editors and executives in
these organizations were willing to accept uncritically the fierce unsubstantiated
and hysterical reports coming out of their correspondents in Jenin.
... The reasons for the European media's "rush to judgment"
over Jenin were many, but one conclusion was inescapable: The "rush
to judgment" was an 'hour of shame.'" (See
also: "Part One: Documenting the Myth"
(Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/20))
"Part
One: Documenting the Myth" (Martin Sieff, UPI,
2002/05/20)
UPI traces the course of the "media myth" of the "Jenin
massacre": "The U.S. and Western European media coverage of
the Battle of Jenin last month raises troubling and far-reaching questions
about the reliability of the modern mass media and press in conflict
situations. ... After the Israeli Army attacked the West Bank Palestinian
city of Jenin on April 2, the Western European media fell for the "Massacre
Myth" in Jenin in a big way. ... What made these unreliable and
misleading reports all the more remarkable was that many of the worst
of them emerged in the most respected and influential organizations
in the British media. The British Broadcasting Corporation and three
of the four so-called "quality" daily newspapers - The Times,
The Independent and The Guardian - fell for the "Massacre Myth"
hook, line and sinker. ... Phil Reeves in the London Independent compared
Jenin to the Killing Fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia where between 1 million
to 3 million people were slaughtered from 1975 to 1978. ... Other claims,
such as the one that hundreds of Palestinian victims were buried by
an Israeli bulldozer in mass grave, later proved to have no validity
or verification whatsoever. ... The BBC uncritically swallowed the Massacre
Myth. BBC News headlined a report on April 18 as "Jenin 'Massacre'
Evidence Growing," and the Guardian newspaper's headline on a May
6 analysis piece as 'How Jenin Battle Became a Massacre.'"
"Jeningrad
- What the British media said" (Tom Gross, National
Review, 2002/05/13)
"The British media was particularly emotive in its reporting. They
devoted page upon page, day after day, to tales of mass murders, common
graves, summary executions, and war crimes. Israel was invariably compared
to the Nazis, to al Qaeda, and to the Taliban. One report even compared
the thousands of supposedly missing Palestinians to the "disappeared"
of Argentina. ... On April 17, the Guardian's lead editorial compared
the Israeli incursion in Jenin with the attack on the World Trade Center
on September 11. "Jenin," wrote the Guardian was "every
bit as repellent in its particulars, no less distressing, and every
bit as man-made." ... Whereas the Guardian's editorial writers
compared the Jewish state to al Qaeda, Evening Standard commentators
merely compared the Israeli government to the Taliban. ... Other commentators
threw in the Holocaust, turning it against Israel. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown,
a leading columnist for the Independent wrote (April 15): 'I would suggest
that Ariel Sharon should be tried for crimes against humanity
and be damned for so debasing the profoundly important legacy of the
Holocaust, which was meant to stop forever nations turning themselves
into ethnic killing machines.'"
"How
Jenin battle became a 'massacre'" (Sharon Sadeh,
The Guardian, 2002/05/08)
"But while the British papers, almost unanimously, presented it
from the outset as a "massacre" or at least as an intentional
"war crime" of the worst kind, the US and Israeli papers -
Haaretz included - were far more reserved and cautious, saying that
there was no evidence to back such claims. The left-liberal press in
Britain thought differently. The Independent, the Guardian and the Times,
in particular, were quick to denounce Israel and made sensational accusations
based on thin evidence, fitting a widely held stereotype of a defiant,
brutal and don't-give-a-damn Israel. ... In British broadsheets, the
style of reporting is such that the distinction between commentary and
news reporting is blurred. More often than not, this comes at the expense
of accuracy, depth and perspective. Israel - which perceives the liberal
European press as manifestly hostile and systematically biased - is
entitled to be concerned about the effects of this approach, but it
should also worry the UK audience. ... Selective use of details or information
and occasional reliance on unsubstantiated accounts inflict considerable
damage on the reputation of the entire British press, and more importantly,
do a disservice to its readers."
"The
Battle of Jenin" (Matt Rees, TIME, 2002/05/06)
"The Palestinian fighters had made their own preparations. Booby
traps had been laid in the streets of both the camp and the town, ready
to be triggered if an Israeli foot or vehicle snagged a tripwire. Some
of the bombs were huge - as much as 250 lbs. of explosives, compared
with the 25 lbs. a typical suicide bomber uses. On Day 2 of the battle,
when the town had been secured but the fight in the camp was just beginning,
a huge Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer rolled along a three-quarter-mile stretch
of the main street to clear booby traps. An Israeli engineering-corps
officer logged 124 separate explosions set off by the vehicle. ... A
senior Palestinian military officer tells Time it was probably the gunmen's
own booby traps that buried some civilians and fighters alive. There
were bombs that were certainly big enough to wreck a cinder-block refugee
house more devastatingly than a D-9 ever could."
"The
Independent's 'reporting'" (Andrew Sullivan,
andrewsullivan.com, 2002/05/06)
"Phil Reeves, a Fisk wannabe, sent home this despatch upon arriving
in Jenin: "A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover
up for a fortnight has finally been exposed. ...The sweet and ghastly
reek of rotting human bodies is everywhere, evidence that it is a human
tomb. The people, who spent days hiding in basements crowded into single
rooms as the rockets pounded in, say there are hundreds of corpses,
entombed beneath the dust... ... This was a mass grave, [Kamal Anis]
said, pointing... A few days ago, we might not have believed Kamal Anis.
But the descriptions given by the many other refugees who escaped from
Jenin camp were understated, not, as many feared and Israel encouraged
us to believe, exaggerations. Their stories had not prepared me for
what I saw yesterday. I believe them now." What a difference a
week or so makes. In a subsequent piece in which Reeves details the
lamentable attempt by the Israelis to defend their actions in Jenin,
he bemoans the fact that the Israelis' p.r. "efforts have been
greatly helped by the Palestinian leadership, who instantly, and without
proof, declared that a massacre had occurred in which as many as 500
died. Palestinian human-rights groups made matters worse by churning
out wild, and clearly untrue, stories." And the Independent made
matters even still worse by uncritically reprinting such stories as
news." (See also: "Amid
the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime" (Phil
Reeves, Independent, 2002/04/16) and "Once
upon a time in Jenin" (Phil Reeves, Independent, 2002/04/25))
"Israel
Has Nothing to Hide" (Yuval Steinitz, The New
York Times, 2002/05/04)
"Yet the United Nations committee was asked to examine the Israeli
Defense Force's actions in Jenin and the suffering of Jenin's inhabitants
without reference to the earlier terrorism coming out of the Jenin camp
that had triggered the Israeli action. In short, the committee would
evaluate Israel's war on terrorism without any reference to terrorism.
Imagine a team sent to investigate American military action in Afghanistan
without reference to the attacks of Sept. 11 or Osama bin Laden's boasts
that he would destroy America. ... Stripped of that context, the United
States would inevitably be found guilty of having assaulted one of the
poorest and most backward countries on the face of the earth and of
inflicting unnecessary harm on the civilian population. ... But this
kind of distorted result is exactly what the United Nations' noncontextual
fact-hiding strategy would have arrived at."
"U.N.,
rights group don't find massacre" (Betsy Pisik,
The Washington Times, 2002/05/04)
"Human Rights Watch, and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which
has cared for Palestinian refugees for 54 years, said their research
does not point to a massacre of civilians in the West Bank refugee camp.
But the New York-based human rights group said it found that war crimes
might have been committed during the battle. ... International efforts
to determine what happened in Jenin won't make any difference to Abu
Ali, who has spent his entire life in the refugee camp. "I know
that 500 people died here, and [soldiers] took the bodies away before
they left," he said while sitting in a tent in the center of a
field of rubble that used to be home to 4,000 Palestinians. He said
no report would change his mind, as the half-dozen men lounging around
him nodded yesterday. ... Jenin's anger and misery have been broadcast
around the world, fanning hatred of Israel and support for the Palestinian
Authority. But reports that a massacre did not occur have received scant
attention in the Western news media."
"Jenin:
The Truth" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington
Post, 2002/05/03)
"The "Jenin massacre" is more than a fiction. It is a
hoax. ... And yet for weeks the world has been seized with the question
of the "Jenin massacre." The U.N. Security Council called
emergency meetings. The secretary general appointed a special investigating
committee (now disbanded). The European press published the most lurid
allegations. To say nothing, of course, of al-Jazeera TV. All this for
a phantom massacre. Yet this same Middle East conflict yields no shortage
of real massacres: April 27: Adora, Palestinian gunmen enter residential
quarters shooting everyone, including a 5-year-old girl shot through
the head in her bed. April 12: Jerusalem, suicide bombing at a bus stop,
6 murdered. ... These are massacres - actual, recent massacres. ...
Where was the Security Council? Where was the Kofi Annan commission?
... The fact that such an undertaking is unimaginable is what has made
the past several months so deeply, despairingly troubling. The despair
comes from the bewilderment of living in a world of monstrous moral
inversion. ... For the "international community," as embodied
by the United Nations, such inverted moral logic is the norm. ...
Where is the Churchill of today, the official of any government, prepared
to tell the United Nations that its frantic hunt for a phantom massacre
by Jews - while ignoring massacre after massacre of Jews - is grotesque
and perverse?"
"How
the Times Distorted Jenin" (Daniel Gordon, The
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, 2002/05/03)
Gordon on the agendas of Sheila MacVicar of CNN and Tom Miller of the
Los Angeles Times when reporting from Jenin: "One reservist sensed
MacVicar's hostility. He was a soft-spoken man who approached her and
introduced himself as the reserve unit's medical officer, Dr. David
Zangen. He told her that when the fighting was over, they found photograph
albums of children from roughly 6 years of age up through early and
mid-teens. It was an album of photos of children who would be the next
crop of suicide killers, with notations indicating when each of the
children would be ripe. The reporter had no time for the doctor, however.
"Perhaps you should ask yourself why," she said, dismissing
him. "I do, madam," he said, "I ask myself why. I can't
imagine it. I cant imagine sending one's child out to be a mass
murderer who commits suicide to kill women and children." "Well,
I can explain it," said the reporter. "For me it all comes
down to one word, 'occupation.'" "But madam," the doctor
said, "Jenin hasnt been occupied for nine years." MacVicar
just turned and walked away."
"Burying
the truth" (Mathhew Gutman, The Jerusalem Post,
2002/05/02)
Gutman reports from Jenin: "But, just as the signs of a fight in
this narrow room are clear, so, too, are the efforts of some Palestinians
to paint even this skirmish as one pitting defenseless victims against
the Israeli aggressors. Hopping in and around the mess, Amr, a 23-year-old
Palestinian man, begins to tell the German journalist that the two fighters
were actually civilians, murdered in cold blood by the soldiers. Despite
the clear evidence of the bullet holes, obviously fired from inside
the room at the gaping hole in the wall, Amr insists that the men were
unarmed. Then, leading the small procession of translators, journalists
and gaping children outside, Amr stops where buildings on both sides
of the streets had collapsed onto the alley. It was there, he says,
that 13 Israeli soldiers died when they were caught in an ambush between
Palestinian gunmen with explosives strapped to their bodies. But even
this account is not acceptable to Amr. It was not Palestinian gunfire
and explosives that killed the soldiers, but friendly fire from their
own side. "It was an Apache helicopter," he insists, pointing
up to the sky. Revisionism, along with the elevation to martyrdom status
of anyone who died in the incursion, appears one of the few things the
wretched refugees can rally around."
"Jenin
'massacre' reduced to death toll of 56" (Paul
Martin, The Washington Times, 2002/05/01)
When the "massacre" lie has become unsustainable Palestinian
mythmakers simply fabricate new ones. Now the battle in Jenin was a
"victory", stopping Israel from destroying the whole camp:
"Palestinian officials yesterday put the death toll at 56 in the
two-week Israeli assault on Jenin, dropping claims of a massacre of
500 that had sparked demands for a U.N. investigation. The official
Palestinian body count, which is not disproportionate to the 33 Israeli
soldiers killed in the incursion, was disclosed by Kadoura Mousa Kadoura,
the director of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement for the northern West
Bank, after a team of four Palestinian-appointed investigators reported
to him in his Jenin office. [Two weeks ago, when European and particularly
London newspapers were reporting estimates of "hundreds" massacred,
Israeli sources in Washington said they expected the Palestinian toll
to reach "45 to 55."] ... He no longer used the ubiquitous
Palestinian charge of "massacre" and instead portrayed the
battle as a "victory" for Palestinians in resisting Israeli
forces. "Here the Israelis, who tried to break the Palestinian
willpower, have been taught a lesson," Mr. Kadoura said. He insisted
that Israel had tried but failed, thanks to the heavy fighting, to destroy
the entire warren of homes in the camp that had housed 11,000 people."
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