Manufacturing a Massacre
Vol: 7 Issue: 30 Tuesday, April 30, 2002
According to the Israeli Defense Forces, the Palestinians in Jenin are attempting to inflate the numbers of civilians killed during the incursion into Jenin. Officially, twenty-six civilians were killed during the operation. They are buried in a mass grave in Jenin. The IDF is reporting that the Palestinians are digging up bodies buried in a local cemetery and adding them to the mass grave, bringing the total number to fifty. The IDF also says the Palestinian Authority has instructed Jenin residents to stop searching for bodies buried amid the rubble in the camp. Instead they are to locate them and then discover them while the UN teams are present.
According to the army, Palestinian officials have paid residents left homeless to rent accommodations in Jenin, but have demanded that they return to the camp and be present during the day when UN personnel visit. Residents have also refrained from repairing structures damaged in the camp, at the request of PA officials. They have also been instructed to erase any militant symbols and hide weapons, and refrain from taking any militant action while the UN teams are present.
Assessment:
If the reports are true, well it s unimaginable. Unimaginable that anyone would desecrate a cemetery in order to perpetuate a lie. Unimaginable that the Palestinians could continue to press their claim to a religious mandate, given the Islamic laws concerning the treatment of dead bodies. Unimaginable that the Palestinians believe that they could get away with it. Autopsies could easily separate those who were killed in the battle from those buried previously and then re-interred in a mass grave.
If the report is untrue, Israel has reached a new low in its own propaganda war. If the report is a plant, who could ever believe anything the Israeli Army reported, ever again?
Final Word: No!
The Israeli cabinet overwhelmingly voted to refuse to cooperate with the UN investigation of the Jenin camp. Israel rightly points out there was no suggestion to appoint a similar committee to investigate how the United States fought in Afghanistan, how UN forces fought in Somalia, or international culpability for standing by as Bosnians or Rwandans were massacred by the thousands. The premise of the UN team is that there is doubt between the Palestinian claim that there was a massacre and Israel s insistence that there was not.
Even Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch two organizations that could hardly be more vitriolic toward Israel admit that there was no massacre. The charge, according to Amnesty secretary-general Irene Kahn after her visit to Jenin, has been reduced to serious violations of international humanitarian law.
The evidence that the jury is in before the trial has begun lies in UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan s April 27 letter to Israel laying out the ground rules of the Jenin committee.
Though the letter has not been released, it reportedly states that the committee may make observations, even though the UN resolution that created it speaks only of fact-finding. The committee also reserves the right to call any witnesses it wishes, meaning that Israeli officers could open themselves up to indictment by a future international tribunal.
Assessment:
The Palestinians claim Israel s refusal to cooperate is evidence of a cover-up. The United States has already refused to allow itself to be subject to the UN s war crimes tribunals, fearing the same fate that the UN could decide US action is a war crime and that US leaders could find themselves on the UN s World Court docket.
UK Court Upholds Farrakhan Ban
The UK’s Court of Appeal granted the government’s appeal of a High Court ruling that had overturned the ban that has kept Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam out of the United Kingdom since 1986.
UK officials say they fear his presence could lead to public disorder following anti-Semitic remarks he has made in the past. Farrakhan had challenged a decision to extend the ban in 2000 by then-Home Secretary Jack Straw. The British High Court ordered the government to reconsider the ban. On appeal, the government won, and Farrakhan remains persona non grata.
Farrakhan has described whites as “devils” and Judaism as a “gutter religion,” with Jews being called “bloodsuckers” who got rich by oppressing blacks.
Lawyers for Farrakhan argued that he should be allowed into Britain on the grounds that he had “moved on,” that he was “an extremely prominent spiritual, religious and social leader” and that in the United States he was regarded as a significant spokesman for the black community.
Assessment:
Libya still likes him.