From: mars1933@hotmail.com   
      
   "Ha'aretz reported on April 12, 2002, following the Jenin atrocities,   
   that "military sources" had told  the paper:  "The IDF [Israeli army]   
   intends to bury today Palestinians killed in the West Bank camp.   
   The sources said that two infantry companies, along with members of   
   the military rabbinate, will enter the camp today to collect the   
   bodies.  Those who can be identified as civilians will be moved to a   
   hospital in Jenin, and then on to burial, while those identified as   
   terrorists will be buried at a special cemetery in the Jordan Valley."   
      
   Apparently, no one in Israel was particularly concerned at the   
   time about issues of international law, war crimes and mass graves.   
   Israeli TV even showed, the evening before, refrigerator trucks that   
   were waiting outside the Jenin camp to transfer bodies to "terrorist   
   cemeteries". It was only after international attention began to focus   
   on Jenin that this information was quickly concealed and reinterpreted   
   using any absurd reasoning to explain that nothing of the sort had   
   ever happened.  This is how the respectable analyst Ze'ev Schiff of   
   Ha'aretz later summarized the event (Ha'aretz, July 17, 2002):   
   "Toward the end of the fighting, the army sent three large   
   refrigerator trucks into the city. Reservists decided to sleep in them   
   for their air conditioning. Some Palestinians saw dozens of covered   
   bodies lying in the trucks and rumors spread that the Jews had   
   filled trucks full of Palestinian bodies."   
      
   Israel ...  refused to cooperate with the investigation prevented U.N.   
   investigators from visiting the site. "   
      
   Isaac Goldberg   
      
   JENIN - THE PROPAGANDA WAR   
   Tanya Reinhart   
      
   In Israel, Jenin is perceived mainly as a public relations problem   
   (called in Hebrew "hasbara" - explaining). It appears even that the   
   army and the government believe that Israel is winning   
   the propaganda battle. After all, all relevant principles of this   
   battle have been strictly adhered to:   
      
   The first principle:   
      
   No pictures or information in real time! The IDF (Israeli army)   
   managed to fully prevent the media from entering Jenin during the   
   events. Thus, all we were left with were "conflicting reports" - a   
   stream of horrible accounts coming from Palestinian witnesses who   
   escaped the refugee camp - and the IDF's utter denial. In   
   the meanwhile, the work of destruction could continue undisturbed for   
   ten days.   
      
   On the seventh day of Israel's "operation" in Jenin (April 9), it was   
   reported in the Israeli media that the army was nevertheless worried.   
   "Officers of the IDF expressed their shock" about what happened in   
   Jenin: "When the world will see the pictures of what we have done   
   there, it will cause us enormous damage." (Amos Har'el   
   and Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, Hebrew edition, April 9, 2002). Israeli   
   Foreign Minister Shimon Peres even slipped and mentioned the taboo   
   word "massacre" (which he immediately denied of course).   
      
   Israel's counter attack was immediately launched. "The Foreign   
   Ministry is mobilizing forces to counter Palestinian allegations that   
   IDF forces conducted 'a massacre' in the Jenin refugee camp"   
   (Ha'aretz, April 10, 2002). A special PR center of the IDF and the   
   Foreign Ministry was formed in Jerusalem, and its representative,   
   Gideon Meir, passed to the press the major principles of the   
   Israeli version: a) "What happened in Jenin was a fierce battle and   
   not a massacre." ("The main diplomatic ammunition" in the campaign's   
   "arsenal is that 22 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the   
   fighting"). b) "The battle was fierce because the IDF sought to   
   minimize civilian suffering." c) The PR campaign should direct   
   attention to the Israeli casualties in terror attacks. (Anat   
   Cigelman and Aluf Ben, Ha'aretz, Hebrew edition, April 10, 2002.)   
      
   The second principle of the propaganda battle:   
      
   If you have full control over the local media, you can pass anything.   
   These messages have been repeated since, again and again, not only by   
   all politicians and Israeli spokesmen, but also by almost every   
   reporter, weaved into the news reports, and by the analysts and   
   columnists, disguised as spontaneous acts of expressing an   
   educated opinion. Here is Ha'aretz's editorial version of the   
   propaganda line: "There is evidence of intense combat, but, with   
   appropriate caution, it can already be said what did not happen in the   
   Jenin refugee camp. There was no massacre. No order from above was   
   given, nor was a local initiative executed, to deliberately and   
   systematically kill unarmed people" (Ha'aretz, April 19, 2002,   
   editorial column).   
      
   This line is pretty sophisticated. The word "massacre" may bring to   
   mind soldiers moving from house to house, shooting everyone they   
   find -- men, women and children (as in Sabra and Shatila). Such   
   massacre clearly did not take place in Jenin. No Palestinian source   
   ever described the facts this way. Still, Ha'aretz and everyone else   
   insist on falsifying just this specific interpretation of the word.   
   What did clearly happen in Jenin is that the army simply ignored the   
   fact that there were an unknown number of individuals   
   and families in the areas which were bombarded day and night by   
   missiles from "Cobra" helicopters, or even in some of the houses   
   erased by bulldozers to pave way for the tanks. No one came to shoot   
   them individually; they were just buried under their bombarded or   
   bulldozed homes. Others died of their wounds in the alleys, or cried   
   for days under the ruins, until their voices faded away.   
      
   Bit by bit, testimonies of reserve soldiers are filtering through the   
   back pages of the Israeli media: "After the first moments of   
   the fighting, when a commander was killed ... the instructions were   
   clear: shoot every window, sow every house - whether someone shoots   
   from there or not." To the question whether he saw civilians get hurt,   
   the reservist answered: "Personally - not. But the point is that they   
   were inside the houses. The last days, the majority of those who came   
   out of the houses were old people, women and children, who were   
   there the whole time and absorbed our fire. These people were not   
   given any chance to leave the camp, and we are talking about many   
   people" (Ofer Shelah, Yediot Aharonot's weekend   
   supplement, April 19, 2002).   
      
   For many, such descriptions are sufficient to make them shiver, and   
   they don't really care whether the right word for this is "massacre."   
   For the success of the PR campaign, it is therefore necessary to   
   stress that we are not talking here about shelling and killing   
   civilians, but about a fierce battle, in which civilians may also get   
   occasionally killed...   
      
   MKs Mohammed Barakeh (Hadash) and MK Ahmed Tibi (Ta'al-Arab Movement   
   for Renewal) also filed similar petitions ... The petitioners claim   
   the army's decision violates international law as the Jordan Valley   
   cemetery will, they claim, be basically a mass grave, thus damaging   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)