The Massacre That Wasn't--II
American journalists haven't been nearly as bad as their British counterparts in reporting on phony charges of an Israeli massacre in the "refugee camp" at Jenin, but they haven't always distinguished themselves either. A case in point is today's Washington Post story, which reports:
Palestinian officials have backed away from earlier charges of a massacre in Jenin. But much about the battle remains a mystery. Mohammed Abu Ghali, director of the Palestinian Authority-run hospital in Jenin, said he is aware of 37 bodies recovered from the camp; 23 of them, he said, are waiting to be claimed by relatives from shallow temporary graves in a dirt lot next to the hospital.
What's wrong with this passage is its placement in the story--it's the fifth paragraph from the bottom. The headline is "In Jenin, U.N. Envoy Witnesses 'Horrifying' Scene." That envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, is quoted as saying: "Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict."
Buried even deeper--it's the last paragraph--is this detail:
"It's been incredibly difficult to tell the difference between fighters and civilians," said Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch in New York, who evaded Israeli checkpoints to sneak into the camp. "I think it's clear that in the end what actually happened in Jenin will fall somewhere in between what the Palestinians are alleging and what [the Israeli army] claims. But only an independent authority can establish what actually happened."
Even Human Rights Watch, in other words, acknowledges that the Israelis are not totally in the wrong, while the Palestinians have dropped their hyped-up "massacre" charges. And yet the Post leads with the United Nations blasting Israel--a dog-bites-man story if ever there was one.
Of course it's true that the scene from Jenin is, as the Post puts it, "a landscape of wretchedness and destruction," with homes bulldozed and dozens, though apparently not hundreds, of people--likely including some innocents--dead. But the devastation both was necessary and is less extensive than advertised. The Jerusalem Post notes:
Brig.-Gen. Eyal Shlein, commander of the troops in the Jenin area, stressed that the area where the buildings were destroyed occupies only a 10th of the camp's total area, a radius of 70 meters by 100 meters. All the destroyed buildings were booby-trapped by the Palestinians or used as fortified positions in attacking soldiers, he said.
Both London's Independent and the U.N. manage to prove themselves even more hostile to Israel than the Arabs are. "Israelis Try to Pin Blame for Jenin on Suicide Bombers," reads today's Independent headline. Oh, those crafty Jews, maligning the innocent suicide bombers. The Independent doesn't mention, as the New York Times does, that "Israeli forces in Jenin had caught 10 would-be suicide bombers who had already videotaped their farewell statements."
The Independent also quotes a U.N. official who "said he did not believe the camp had been heavily booby-trapped." Yet the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram carries an interview with an Islamic Jihad bomb maker identified only as Omar, who confirms that they were:
"Of all the fighters in the West Bank we were the best prepared," he says. "We started working on our plan: to trap the invading soldiers and blow them up from the moment the Israeli tanks pulled out of Jenin last month."
Omar and other "engineers" made hundreds of explosive devices and carefully chose their locations.
"We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the camp. 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," he said.
"We cut off lengths of mains water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four metres apart throughout the houses--in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas."
The Times also notes in passing that the siege at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity is in fact a hostage situation:
Also on Thursday, a young man who escaped from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where about 250 Palestinians have been holed up for more than two weeks, was shown on television saying that there was disagreement among the people inside. The young man, who was being treated by the Israelis after he had been shot, said that some wanted to leave but that Palestinian Authority officials insisted that all should either stay or leave together. The army also released footage taken from the air showing what it said were men pursuing someone trying to vault the wall of the church compound and pulling him back inside.
Do as We Say, Not as We Do
"Britain took Israel to task yesterday for its offensive in the West Bank when Jack Straw proposed an international investigation into allegations of atrocities in Jenin," the Times of London reports. "Speaking in Geneva, where he addressed the UN's Human Rights Commission, Mr Straw accused Israel of using 'disproportionate and excessive force.' "
In 1938 Britain ruled what was then known as Palestine. The Jerusalem Post looks at British documents, declassified in 1989, that "provide details of the British Mandatory government's response to the assassination of a British district commissioner by a Palestinian Arab terrorist in Jenin in the summer of 1938":
Even after the suspected assassin was captured (and then shot dead while allegedly trying to escape), the British authorities decided that "a large portion of the town [Jenin] should be blown up" as punishment. On August 25 of that year, a British convoy brought 4,200 kilos of explosives to Jenin for that purpose.
In the Jenin operation and on other occasions, local Arabs were forced to drive "mine-sweeping taxis" ahead of British vehicles in areas where Palestinian Arab terrorists were believed to have planted mines, in order "to reduce [British] landmine casualties."
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
While the rest of the world beats up on the Jewish state for imagined atrocities, the Jerusalem Post reports some Israeli soldiers are doing good turns for Palestinians:
In Tulkarm, a group of reservists that needed to break down the wall of a Palestinian home took up a collection among themselves when they finished fighting--NIS 1,500 [about $310] in total--and gave it to the family to pay for the damage.
In Bethlehem, another group of reservists gave a Palestinian family NIS 2,000 they raised among themselves after seizing three rooms in their home for 48 hours. Reservists who seized homes in Bethlehem and Ramallah insisted on mopping the floors before departing. Hundreds of reservists have added candy to their regular gear. They hand out the chocolate bars to Palestinian children to try to ease their anxiety.
Would You Like Fries With That McBoycott?
"Calls for a boycott of U.S. products are spreading in the Middle East amid anger over U.S. policies that many Arabs say favor Israel," The Wall Street Journal reports. But while some American companies are nervous, this looks like an empty threat. For one thing, Arab governments, "fearing it would hurt their own economies," aren't going along with the call--not even Syria, a junior member of the axis of evil. For another, American culture is just too tempting, as a vignette in a Jerusalem Post report from Cairo makes clear:
Amr Sayed, 17, says he supports calls raised across the Arab world to boycott US companies because of Washington's perceived pro-Israel bias. But today, as he munched on fries and a burger in a downtown McDonald's, he said there was no Egyptian alternative to the US franchise that he just happens to like.
Powell's Successes--III
This must be a good sign: Jesse Jackson is grousing about Colin Powell's trip to the Middle East. "Powell took nothing and he brought nothing back," Jackson, whom the AP describes as a "civil rights leader," said. He complained that the secretary of state went to the Mideast "without clarity, and without the capacity to, in fact, implement a plan."
Appearing with Powell yesterday, here's what President Bush had to say:
Israel started withdrawing quickly after our call from smaller cities on the West Bank. History will show that they responded. And as the prime minister said, told me, he gave me a timetable and he's met the timetable.
In Ramallah, there is an issue with the Zeevi five killers. They're housed in the basement where Colin visited with Mr. Arafat. And we will work with the Israelis to figure out a solution to the Zeevi five. These people are accused of killing [Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi] a cabinet official of the Israeli government. And I can understand why the prime minister wants them brought to justice. They should be brought to justice if they killed this man in cold blood. . . .
In terms of the Church of the Nativity, hopefully progress is being made. Once the people are out of the Church of the Nativity, Israel will leave--pull back out of Bethlehem. This is good progress. I'm convinced that the Secretary of State's trip helped achieve this progress.
Before Israel can be expected to withdraw completely, the Arabs have to turn over assassins and stop holding clergymen hostage. Where's the lack of clarity in that?
Hamas Honcho Nabbed
Israel has arrested Husam Ataf Ali Badran, a senior Hamas military commander in the West Bank who "is responsible for terrorist attacks that caused the deaths of more than 100 Israelis and wounded hundreds more," the Jerusalem Post reports. "Among the attacks in which Badran was involved were those at the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv, the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, the Nahariya train station, the Matza restaurant in Haifa, and the Pessah [Passover] massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya."
A Newsweek report mentions "Jamal abul Haija, a one-handed Hamas explosives expert." If he's such an expert on explosives, how come he didn't manage to blow himself up altogether?
Soft-Pedaling Suicide
The St. Petersburg Times has a fascinating insight, from Raphael Israeli, a Jerusalem professor and Hamas expert, on the origin of the now-controversial term suicide bomber:
"Suicide bomber" was initially used by the Israeli government after the 1993 Oslo peace agreement with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Afraid of sabotaging Oslo by suggesting Palestinians were continuing carefully planned terrorist attacks, Israel's leaders decided to paint the bombings as the work of "half crazy, unpredictable" individuals, Israeli said. . . .
What changed Israel's attitude was President Bush's reaction to the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings. With the hijackers themselves dead, Bush decided to target al-Qaida, the organization that had trained and financed them.
"Then it clicked here," Israeli said of his own country, "that we have to go after the organizations that are sending these people to kill us." Hence, the Israeli military offensive in the West Bank to stamp out the "infrastructure of terrorism."
The Sharon Interview Hoax
Yesterday we slammed Holger Jensen of the Rocky Mountain News for falsely attributing inflammatory quotes to Ariel Sharon. In the interest of fairness, we should point out that Paul Gottfried, writing in The Spectator, fell for the same hoax--and Gottfried is a Sharon sympathizer.
From Riyadh to Reuterville
Here's a charming dispatch from Reuters:
A top Saudi Arabian Muslim cleric prayed to God on Friday to "terminate" the Jews and urged Arabs and Muslims to abandon efforts to make peace with Israel.
"We must say farewell to peace initiatives with these people (Jews)," Sheikh Abdul-Rahman al-Sudais told worshippers at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest shrine, in a sermon, carried live by several Arabic television and radio networks.
He prayed to God to "terminate" the Jews, whom he described as "the scum of humanity . . . the rats of the world . . . prophet killers . . . pigs and monkeys".
The headline Reuters puts on its report of this call for genocide? "Saudi Cleric Says Peace Not Possible With Israel."
Reuters also reports on the latest al Qaeda videotape, featuring Sept. 11 hijacker Ahmad Alghamdi:
"I say to America make your coffins and dig your graves because death is coming your way by God's will," he said, wearing a checkered Arab headdress and a field jacket.
Alghamdi suggested that bin Laden and other militant clerics had inspired the suicide attacks by sanctioning them as "martyrdom operations" instead of suicide, banned by Islam.
"They issued edicts that these operations are allowed and that they are not suicide but ways to martyrdom," he said.
Reuters describes Alghamdi as a "suspected Saudi hijacker." Gee, what could possibly have aroused the wire service's suspicion?
The Whine Spectator
This is not a joke. Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle contained an article headlined: "Arab-Looking Gays Feel Sting of Sept. 11: Report Says Attacks, Slurs Rose in Bay Area." It turns out that in the entire bay area, 10--yes, 10--homosexuals were "attacked or yelled at because they were perceived as being Arab, Middle Eastern or South Asian after Sept. 11, even though many of the victims were of different nationalities." Although at least one of these cases seems to have been an actual assault, this supposed crime wave seems less than alarming.
A Religion of Peace
Zafran Bibi, a Pakistani woman, "went to the police two years ago to register a case of rape against her brother-in-law, but police later charged her and the man of having an adulterous affair," the BBC reports. Now--you guessed it--Bibi has been sentenced to death by stoning.
Ask Me if I CAIR--III
E-mailed copies of yesterday's column had a bad link for the Council on American Islamic Relations' suppressed "poll" on whether Ariel Sharon should be tried for war crimes. Here's the right link. The site doesn't seem to be accepting new votes, but you can view the final results. In case CAIR makes them disappear too, here they are: 78% against trying the Israeli prime minister, 22% in favor, with 9,218 votes cast.
With Enemies Like These . . .
"India has agreed to buy eight long-range, weapon-locating radars in the first major deal ever struck with former foe America," CNN reports.
Huh? "Former foe"? We don't remember ever reading about a war between America and India. Maybe CNN is thinking of the other kind of Indians.
Taxed to Death
One of the causes of yesterday's plane crash in Milan apparently was taxes, Reuters reports:
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