Clwyd had joined a succession of VIP visitors parading through Jenin—members of the European parliament, U.S. church leaders, Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan, Bianca Jagger, ex-wife of pop-music legend Mick Jagger. Clwyd’s voice wasn’t sufficiently croaky, though, to prevent her from calling on all European states to withdraw their ambassadors from Israel.
Not to be outdone by politicians, Britain’s esteemed academics went further. Tom Paulin, who lectures in nineteenth-and twentieth-century literature at Oxford University, opined that the U.S.-born Jews who live on the west bank of the river Jordan should be “shot dead.”
“They are Nazis, racists,” he said, adding (though one might have thought this was unnecessary after his previous comment), “I feel nothing but hatred for them.” (Paulin is also one of BBC television’s regular commentators on the arts. The BBC says they will continue to invite him even after these remarks; Oxford University has taken no action against him.)
ONLY ONE WITNESS?
On closer examination, the “facts” on which many of the media reports were based—“facts” that no doubt played a role in inspiring such hateful remarks as Paulin’s—reveal an even greater scandal. The British media appear to have based much of its evidence of “genocide” on a single individual: “Kamal Anis, a labourer” (Times), “Kamal Anis, 28” (Daily Telegraph), “A quiet, sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis” (Independent), and referred to the same supposed victim—“the burned remains of a man, Bashar” (Evening Standard), “Bashir died in agony” (Times), “A man named only as Bashar once lived there” (Daily Telegraph).
Independent: “Kamal Anis saw the Israeli soldiers pile 30 bodies beneath a half-wrecked house. When the pile was complete, they bulldozed the building, bringing its ruins down on the corpses. Then they flattened the area with a tank.”
Times: “Kamal Anis says the Israelis levelled the place; he saw them pile bodies into a mass grave, dump earth on top, then ran over it to flatten it.”
Evidently, as can be seen from the following reports, British journalists hadn’t been speaking to the same Palestinian witnesses as American journalists.
Los Angeles Times: Palestinians in Jenin “painted a picture of a vicious house-to-house battle in which Israeli soldiers faced Palestinian gunmen intermixed with the camp’s civilian population.”
Boston Globe: Following extensive interviews with “civilians and fighters” in Jenin, “none reported seeing large numbers of civilians killed.” On the other hand, referring to the deaths of Israeli soldiers in Jenin, Abdel Rahman Sa’adi, an “Islamic Jihad grenade-thrower,” told the Globe, “This was a massacre of the Jews, not of us.”
Some in the American press also mentioned the video filmed by the Israeli army (and shown on Israeli television) of Palestinians moving corpses of people who had previously died of natural causes, rather than in the course of the Jenin fighting, into graveyards around the camp to fabricate “evidence” in advance of the now-canceled U.N. fact-finding mission.
But if European readers don’t trust American journalists, perhaps they are ready to believe the testimony given in the Arab press. Take, for example, the extensive interview with a Palestinian bomb-maker, Omar, in the leading Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram.
“We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the [ Jenin] camp,” Omar said. “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. . . . We cut off lengths of main water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four meters apart throughout the houses—in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas . . . the women went out to tell the soldiers that we had run out of bullets and were leaving. The women alerted the fighters as the soldiers reached the booby-trapped area.”
Perhaps what is most shocking, though, is that the British press had closed their ears to the Israelis themselves—a society with one of the most vigorous and self-critical democracies in the world. In the words of Kenneth Preiss, a professor at Ben Gurion University: “Please inform the reporters trying to figure out if the Israeli army is trying to ‘hide a massacre’ of Palestinians, that Israel’s citizen army includes journalists, members of parliament, professors, doctors, human rights activists, members of every political party, and every other kind of person, all within sight and cell phone distance of home and editorial offices. Were the slightest infringements to have taken place, there would be demonstrations outside the prime minister’s office in no time.”
ONLY AN INTELLECTUAL COULD BE SO STUPID
George Orwell once remarked to a Communist fellow-traveler with whom he was having a dispute: “You must be an intellectual. Only an intellectual could say something so stupid.” This observation has relevance in regard to the Middle East, too.
So far only the nonintellectual tabloids have grasped the essential difference between right and wrong, the difference between a deliberate intent to kill civilians, such as that ordered by Chairman Arafat over the past four decades, and the unintentional deaths of civilians in the course of legitimate battle.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the mass-market papers have corrected the lies of their supposedly superior broadsheets. On April 17, the New York Post carried an editorial entitled “The massacre that wasn’t.” In London, the most popular British daily paper, The Sun, published a lengthy editorial (April 15) pointing out that “Israelis are scared to death. They have never truly trusted Britain—and with some of the people we employ in the Foreign Office why the hell should they?” Countries throughout Europe are still “in denial about murdering their entire Jewish population,” The Sun added, and it was time to dispel the conspiracy theory that Jews “run the world.”
The headline of The Sun’s editorial was THE JEWISH FAITH IS NOT AN EVIL RELIGION. One might think such a headline was unnecessary in twenty-first-century Britain, but apparently it is not.
One would hope that some honest reflection about their reporting by those European and American journalists who are genuinely motivated by a desire to help Palestinians (as opposed to those whose primary motive is demonizing Jews) will enable them to realize that propagating the falsehoods of Arafat’s propagandists does nothing to further the legitimate aspirations of ordinary Palestinians, any more than parroting the lies of Stalin helped ordinary Russians.
DR. DAVID ZANGEN
Seven Lies About Jenin
David Zangen views the film Jenin, Jenin
I WAS PRESENT at a private viewing of the film Jenin, Jenin, by Muhammad Bakri, at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. The limited audience included Lia van Leer, Director of the Cinematheque, and some journalists. At the end of the screening, I reacted by pointing out, one by one, the lies and lack of truth shown in the film. One of the participants responded furiously, “If you cannot accept the facts in the film, you apparently do not understand anything, and how can you be a doctor?” For a moment I forgot that I had been in Jenin last April, serving in the capacity of doctor for IDF forces in the area, while this esteemed viewer’s information came, at best, from rumors. Bakri has woven together lies and half-truths so skillfully that it is difficult to withstand the temptation to be drawn into the distorted picture he has created.
I failed to convince the Cinematheque’s management to cancel the screening. I was told that the images of destroyed houses are authentic and that, therefore, there is truth in the film, and that anyway, the film will be screened throughout the world. I was nevertheless invited to the film’s Jerusalem premiere, and I went, so that I could use the opportunity to explain my position to the audience. Following are some of the points that I had hoped to raise.
The director of the hospital in Jenin, Dr. Abu-Rali, claims in the film that the western wing of the hospital was shelled and destroyed, and that the IDF purposely disrupted the supply of water and electricity to the hospital. The truth is that there never was such a wing and, in any case, no part of the hospital was shelled or bombed.
Indeed, IDF soldiers were careful not to enter the hospital grounds, even though we knew that they were being used to shelter wanted persons. We maintained the supply of water, electricity, and oxygen to the hospital throughout the course of the fighting, and helped set up an emergency generator after the electricity grid in the city was damaged.
Bakri himself is seen in the film wandering around the clean, preserved corridors of the hospital, but not in the “bombed” wing. I met him outside the auditorium and asked him if he had visited the western wing. At first he said no, and then immediately corrected himself. “Just a minute, you remember the glass that broke in the film—that was from there.”
It is important to note that Abu-Rali is one of the “authorized sources” on which the claim of a “massacre” is based. At the beginning of the operation, he was interviewed on the TV station Al-Jazeera and spoke of “thousands of casualties.”
Another impressive segment of the film is an interview with a seventy-five-year-old resident of Jenin who, crying bitterly, testified that he had been taken from his bed in the middle of the night and shot in the hand, and, when he failed to obey the soldiers’ orders to get up, was shot again in the foot.
This same elderly man was brought to me for treatment after a clean-up operation in one of the houses used by a Hamas cell in the refuge camp. He had indeed sustained a slight injury to the hand and suffered from light abrasions on his leg (although certainly not a bullet wound). IDF soldiers brought him to the station for treating the wounded, and there he was treated, including by me.
One of the army doctors diagnosed heart failure, and we immediately offered to transfer him for treatment to the “Emek” Hospital in Afula. He requested to be treated at the hospital in Jenin since he was not fluent in Hebrew. After the Jenin hospital refused to admit him, we transferred him to Afula. He was in the internal medicine ward for three days and received treatment for heart problems and anemia, from which he suffered as a result of an existing chronic disease.
Another interviewee told the story of a baby hit by a bullet that penetrated the baby’s chest, passed through its body, and created a large exit wound in its back. According to the information supplied in the film, the baby died after soldiers prevented his evacuation to hospital. However, the baby’s body was never found. Furthermore, if such a wound had been in fact inflicted, it would have certainly been fatal, and evacuation to hospital would not have saved the baby’s life. What was the baby’s name? What happened to the body?
The same person also claimed that he used his finger to open an airway in a child’s neck after he was wounded. Again, this is a total fabrication. It is impossible to perform such an operation with one’s finger. This “witness” also told how tanks rolled over people, again and again, crushing them alive—this, too, never happened.
The film mentions mass graves in which the IDF put the Palestinians who were killed. All of the international organizations that investigated this matter are in agreement that a total of fifty-two Palestinians were killed in Jenin, and their bodies were turned over to the Palestinians for burial. Bakri did not even bother to show the location of these so-called mass graves.
The film claims that Israeli planes bombed the city. This is untrue. In order to avoid civilian casualties, only accurate gunfire from helicopters was used.
Another point worth noting is that Bakri was not in Jenin during the operation; he arrived two weeks after its conclusion. The destroyed area in the center of the city was filmed in such a way as to appear substantially bigger than it really was, and the posters of “martyrs” and Jihad slogans that covered the walls during the operation were all gone.
The film repeatedly manipulates visual images, showing tanks that had been photographed in other places juxtaposed artificially with pictures of Palestinian children. This is crude, albeit well-done, manipulation.
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.
I do not regret going to the Cinematheque that night, and I am certain that some people present did listen to me and that it changed their ideas a little about the “facts” they had just seen. I am also certain that there were other people who were chagrined at the intolerance demonstrated by the crowd. Still, the fact that they were a silent minority is hard for me to accept.
Permit me, therefore, to say what I did not succeed in saying to those hate-filled people that night. I am proud that I was part of the good and moral forces that operated in Jenin, regular and reserve soldiers with motivation and spirit who went out to destroy the infrastructure of terrorism at its capital. Many of the suicide bombers who murdered old people, women, and children in our city streets came from Jenin.
I am proud that we were there and fought, and proud also of our combat ethics. The camp was not bombed from the air, in order to prevent hurting innocent civilians; neither did we use artillery, although we knew of specific areas in the camp where terrorists were hiding out. The soldiers fought the terrorists, and only the terrorists. Before destroying a house from which heavy gunfire was being directed at our soldiers, several warnings were issued and every possibility was given for civilians to get out safely.
Our medical teams treated every wounded person, even if he had Hamas tattoos on his arms. At no stage was medical care withheld from anyone.
This heroic and at the same time moral fighting cost us dearly in the lives of the best of our fighters. We who were there, the soldiers who fell there, their families, and the IDF, don’t deserve to be used by Muhammad Bakri to incite the world to murder and hatred.
TOM GROSS
The Massacre That Never Was
[Written after the “massacre” reports were discredited. Did the “massacre” reporters retract? ]
THE STORY OF the British media and Jenin falls into three parts. First, there was the rush to judgment—judgment against Israel. Then there was the refusal to retract once the true facts became known. Finally, there is the continuing failure to publish adequate corrections of the original reports, even though the United Nations—which even Israel’s fiercest critics don’t accuse of being unduly sympathetic to the Jewish state—has officially confirmed that no massacre took place in Jenin in April, and that the majority of the fifty-two Palestinians killed there (along with twenty-three Israelis) were armed combatants.
Of course, journalists often get things wrong in the heat of the moment, and there isn’t the space—or the need—to correct every mistake. But the extraordinary nature of the falsehoods disseminated during the battle of Jenin surely warrants a little introspection on the part of the journalists responsible. You would have thought they would have been moved to ask themselves how they came to harbor such unfair and unfounded views of Israel.
The language initially used by many reporters and commentators in the British media was sweeping and extreme. Israel’s actions in Jenin were “every bit as repellent” as Osama bin Laden’s attack on New York on September 11, wrote The Guardian
in its editorial of April 17. “We are talking here of massacre, and a cover-up, of genocide,” wrote A. N. Wilson in the Evening Standard, on April 15. “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,” reported Janine di Giovanni, in The Times, on April 16.
The “quality” press spoke with almost wall-to-wall unanimity, backing up their views with horror stories which have turned out to be complete fabrications. The Daily Telegraph, for example, ran headlines such as HUNDREDS OF VICTIMS “WERE BURIED BY BULLDOZER IN MASS GRAVE,” and gave graphic and entirely false accounts of Palestinians being “stripped to their underwear, searched, bound hand and foot, placed against a wall and killed with single shots to the head.”
Newspapers devoted page upon page, day after day, to tales of mass murders, common graves, summary executions, and war crimes. Israel was 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.
The television coverage was, if anything, worse. The BBC’s Orla Guerin cited Palestinians saying that Israelis troops “were scooping dead bodies with bulldozers” and that they had shot Palestinians dead “as they tended sheep.”
But Guerin’s language (“Israel is prepared to go all the way,” Israel is committing “terror from above,” “nothing is sacred” for Israel, and so on) reveals only one element of her misreporting. The choice of camera angles, her tone of voice, her facial expressions, the leading questions she asked of Palestinians (“Are you afraid he is going to die?” etc.)—all these gave viewers a very inaccurate picture of what was actually going on.
In comparison, little air time was given to the Israeli version of events, which was available, in meticulous detail, throughout the operation, and scant attention was paid to the twenty-three Israeli deaths in Jenin—still less to the fact that they were evidence of the dangers which the Israeli forces incurred in order to avoid collateral damage to Palestinian civilians. At the same time, Yasser Arafat’s representatives were given ample opportunity to air their incredible tales of Israeli atrocities, while both TV and print journalists forgot to remind their viewers that Arafat’s spokespeople, like those of the other totalitarian regimes that surround Israel, have a habit of lying a lot.
Those Who Forget the Past Page 19