Reporters Back Down from Jenin 'Massacre'

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday April 19, 2002 04:34 by Ken Davids - Press Monitor

Jenin Massacre that never took place

In Jenin, too, the army has withdrawn its forces from the terrorist stronghold neighborhood in which the fierce battles of the previous two weeks took place. The soldiers continue to surround the area.

After almost two weeks of "Jenin Massacre!" headlines, the world press has been forced to face the truth: There was none. Journalist David Bedein of Israel Resource News Agency reports that since Sunday, when the IDF began allowing reporters into Jenin, the real story has turned out to be somewhat less dramatic than that which some of them had been reporting. Washington Post correspondent Molly Moore wrote, "Interviews with residents inside the camp and international aid workers who were allowed here for the first time today indicated that no evidence has yet surfaced to support allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions by Israeli troops."

This contrasted strongly, for instance, with the way James Bennet opened his report from Jenin for The New York Times last Friday: "Palestinians here describe bodies cut in pieces, bodies scooped up by bulldozers and buried in mass graves, bodies deliberately concealed under collapsed buildings. They describe people drinking out of sewers and people used by Israeli soldiers as human shields." Bedein notes that Bennet's report "did very little to challenge the tendentiousness and questionable nature of such 'eyewitness' testimony."

Col. Gal Hirsh, Head of Operations in the IDF Central Command, explained that Jenin remained a closed military zone even after the fighting was over because, "We are trying to find all these bodies and trying to remove the booby traps from them... It is very complicated, very dangerous... We are trying to take all the explosives, all the hand grenades, all the booby traps from the bodies and the houses..." Several bodies were in fact found to have been booby-trapped.

The PLO's WAFA press service, however, took advantage of Israel's refusal to allow the media into Jenin, making unfounded claims of "500 dead Palestinians piled up in the streets." Bedein notes that organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International uncritically believed these allegations, and were followed dutifully by international media outlets, many of which "devoted huge amounts of ink to such unverified tales of conspiracies, rapes, executions, and war crimes... The credibility of Palestinian 'eyewitness testimony' was barely questioned, despite the PLO track record of fabricating false claims. Who will ever forget the fallacious reports from the Red Crescent in Lebanon back in June 1982 that the IDF had killed 10,000 people and made 600,000 homeless?"

Bedein writes that tens of "European media outlets and Arab foreign ministries described the fighting in Jenin in terms of 'genocide,' 'unprecedented humanitarian disaster,' 'Sabra and Shatilla #2,' 'A campaign of revenge and murder, 'Nazi ethnical cleansing,' and worse. European articles focused mainly on the physical damage to buildings due to Israeli tanks moving through the camp, and failed to mention the fact that many of the buildings and streets were rigged with explosives which were set off by the many terrorist cells operating in the refuge camp.

In general, Israel's comments on what was actually happening in Jenin were mostly ignored by world media. In a briefing last Friday, Col. Hirsh said,
"When you think of the term refugee camp, you think of poor and helpless people. This is not the case! Jenin Refugee Camp was actually a strong combat zone - a real military and terrorist infrastructure. These people decided to fight, and we had to fight back... I've heard the rumors of 500-600 Palestinians dead. These are lies. We had no choice but to destroy the terrorist infrastructure - everyday there were terrorists' acts dispatched from Jenin Refugee Camp. The operation in Jenin cost us the lives of 23 soldiers and many were injured. I regret that some Palestinian civilians were injured and some were killed. We were fighting against armed terrorists. We asked the Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes so they would not get hurt, some chose not to. Most of the Palestinians that were killed were armed terrorists; many had explosive devices strapped to their bodies. We found a lot of evidence of terrorist activity, for example, labs for explosive devices. We are talking about an organized terrorist infrastructure throughout Judea and Samaria."

"The media were forced to cope with the fact that a 'massacre' was turned into a few dozen casualties," Bedein concludes, "but some reporters just could not bring themselves to 'adjust' their story to the facts on the ground."
Reporters Back Down From Jenin "Massacre" Reports
In Jenin, too, the army has withdrawn its forces from the terrorist stronghold neighborhood in which the fierce battles of the previous two weeks took place. The soldiers continue to surround the area.

After almost two weeks of "Jenin Massacre!" headlines, the world press has been forced to face the truth: There was none. Journalist David Bedein of Israel Resource News Agency reports that since Sunday, when the IDF began allowing reporters into Jenin, the real story has turned out to be somewhat less dramatic than that which some of them had been reporting. Washington Post correspondent Molly Moore wrote, "Interviews with residents inside the camp and international aid workers who were allowed here for the first time today indicated that no evidence has yet surfaced to support allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions by Israeli troops."

This contrasted strongly, for instance, with the way James Bennet opened his report from Jenin for The New York Times last Friday: "Palestinians here describe bodies cut in pieces, bodies scooped up by bulldozers and buried in mass graves, bodies deliberately concealed under collapsed buildings. They describe people drinking out of sewers and people used by Israeli soldiers as human shields." Bedein notes that Bennet's report "did very little to challenge the tendentiousness and questionable nature of such 'eyewitness' testimony."

Col. Gal Hirsh, Head of Operations in the IDF Central Command, explained that Jenin remained a closed military zone even after the fighting was over because, "We are trying to find all these bodies and trying to remove the booby traps from them... It is very complicated, very dangerous... We are trying to take all the explosives, all the hand grenades, all the booby traps from the bodies and the houses..." Several bodies were in fact found to have been booby-trapped.

The PLO's WAFA press service, however, took advantage of Israel's refusal to allow the media into Jenin, making unfounded claims of "500 dead Palestinians piled up in the streets." Bedein notes that organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International uncritically believed these allegations, and were followed dutifully by international media outlets, many of which "devoted huge amounts of ink to such unverified tales of conspiracies, rapes, executions, and war crimes... The credibility of Palestinian 'eyewitness testimony' was barely questioned, despite the PLO track record of fabricating false claims. Who will ever forget the fallacious reports from the Red Crescent in Lebanon back in June 1982 that the IDF had killed 10,000 people and made 600,000 homeless?"

Bedein writes that tens of "European media outlets and Arab foreign ministries described the fighting in Jenin in terms of 'genocide,' 'unprecedented humanitarian disaster,' 'Sabra and Shatilla #2,' 'A campaign of revenge and murder, 'Nazi ethnical cleansing,' and worse. European articles focused mainly on the physical damage to buildings due to Israeli tanks moving through the camp, and failed to mention the fact that many of the buildings and streets were rigged with explosives which were set off by the many terrorist cells operating in the refuge camp.

In general, Israel's comments on what was actually happening in Jenin were mostly ignored by world media. In a briefing last Friday, Col. Hirsh said,
"When you think of the term refugee camp, you think of poor and helpless people. This is not the case! Jenin Refugee Camp was actually a strong combat zone - a real military and terrorist infrastructure. These people decided to fight, and we had to fight back... I've heard the rumors of 500-600 Palestinians dead. These are lies. We had no choice but to destroy the terrorist infrastructure - everyday there were terrorists' acts dispatched from Jenin Refugee Camp. The operation in Jenin cost us the lives of 23 soldiers and many were injured. I regret that some Palestinian civilians were injured and some were killed. We were fighting against armed terrorists. We asked the Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes so they would not get hurt, some chose not to. Most of the Palestinians that were killed were armed terrorists; many had explosive devices strapped to their bodies. We found a lot of evidence of terrorist activity, for example, labs for explosive devices. We are talking about an organized terrorist infrastructure throughout Judea and Samaria."

"The media were forced to cope with the fact that a 'massacre' was turned into a few dozen casualties," Bedein concludes, "but some reporters just could not bring themselves to 'adjust' their story to the facts on the ground."