The origin of the Jenin " massacre " story came from none other than Israel itself, though it's own newspaper, The JPost.
The Jerusalem Post never reported a massacre, what are you talking about? There was an early Israel Radio report that estimated casualties, casualties of the battle mind you, as 'about 200'. The foreign papers, eager to believe in a massacre, leapt at the number.
At about this time, Palestinian spokesmen were claiming a massacre of 3000 civilians, which they quickly revised down to a claim of 500, which they then stuck to for a few weeks, until it became clear that the UN wouldn't get to investigate (At this point they stopped disenterring old corpses for 'mass graves' they were manufacturing). Then WAFA (the PA news agency) revised its figure of dead in Jenin to 56, compared to the Israelis' 52.
No Israeli paper reported a "massacre". No Israelis would believe such a story. The IDF soldiers in Jenin were reservists, from every part of the political spectrum. Each of them had a cell phone in his pocket. If anything like a massacre had happened, the Israelis would have heard about it already -- Israeli soldiers would have been reporting it to friends, family and newspapers. Instead, the soldiers reported hand-to-hand fighting in a cinderblock warren that had been heavily mined. |
