Media Drawn Into West Bank Propaganda War
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 18, 2002; 8:53 AM
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.
How on earth can journalists visiting the same refugee camp reach such different conclusions?
At the moment, there is no hard evidence of deliberate mass killings, as some Palestinians have alleged. The media on both sides of the Atlantic have reported those charges.
There is little doubt that civilians have been killed, as tragically happens in all wars. The Palestinian allegations should be aggressively pursued. But jumping the gun, so to speak, is dangerous business.
Keep in mind that British papers are openly ideological, Tory or Liberal (although some would argue the American press is quietly ideological). Some of the British press reports seethe with anger toward Israel.
The Brits also are willing to make sensational charges based on thin evidence. It was a British newspaper, after all, that ran a piece about American "torture" of Afghan detainees at Guantanamo Bay. That never came even close to being proven, but it fit the European stereotype of an arrogant and unfeeling Uncle Sam.
So caveat emptor.
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. Its troops have caused devastation in the centre of the Jenin refugee camp, reached yesterday by The Independent, where thousands of people are still living amid the ruins. . . .
"A quiet, sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis led us across the wasteland, littered now with detritus of what were once households, foam rubber, torn clothes, shoes, tin cans, children's toys. He suddenly stopped. This was a mass grave, he said, pointing.
"We stared at a mound of debris. Here, he said, he 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."
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.
"This was not only a town of fighters, as Israeli soldiers told me. It was a town of women, children and old men, who have seen the camp grow into a warren of ramshackle homes over half a century. Amnesty International called for an immediate investigation into 'the killings of hundreds of Palestinians,' saying crucial evidence may be destroyed as Israel 'continues to impede access.'"
Now pull back to America and examine the New York Times account:
"Since the Israeli assault on Jenin began nearly two weeks ago, aid groups have complained that Israeli soldiers have blocked ambulances and prevented aid from reaching the camp. A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross was allowed to enter the camp for the first time today to search for wounded, evacuate the sick and remove bodies.
"The Red Cross said it had recovered six bodies and had seen a total of about two dozen dead in a search of a portion of the camp. Red Cross officials said they were unaware of the case of the man who was pulled from the rubble, which has apparently not been reported to them.
"Saed Dabayeh, who said he stayed in the camp through the fighting, led a group of reporters to a pile of rubble where he said he watched from his bedroom window as Israeli soldiers buried 10 bodies. 'There was a hole here where they buried bodies,' he said. 'And then they collapsed a house on top of it.'
"The Palestinian accounts could not be verified."
And The Washington Post report:
"The rubble has obscured many facts, but some are indisputable. Some of the most brutal urban battles, heaviest air barrages and most devastating ground tactics in more than two weeks of Israeli assaults against Palestinian towns and communities across the West Bank have been waged here.
"Others are less clear. 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."
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