It might be worth looking at what some of these horrible anti-semites in the foreign press actually reported:

Examples from the Independent of London.

 

1.  'Thirty dead' in heavy fighting as Israelis storm refugee camp.  By Justin Hugglerin Jerusalem.   Independent .  07 April 2002.

Dr Ziad Ayaseh, the hospital director in Jenin, claimed ambulance crews had been warned by Israeli forces they would be fired on if they went to the aid of the injured, and that shots had been fired at one ambulance driver. His claim could not be verified, but the International Red Cross has publicly accused Israel of preventing ambulances from reaching the injured.

2.  Israeli helicopters pound Jenin refugee camp.  By Mohammed Daraghmeh, AP Writer.   Independent .  08 April 2002.

Israeli helicopter gunships pounded a West Bank refugee camp with dozens of rockets this morning, and fire broke in the compound of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity during a gunbattle between Israeli soldiers and armed Palestinians who have been holed up there for a week.

3.  Witnesses tell how elderly were used as human shields for tank forces.  By Justin Huggler and Said Ghazali.   Independent .  09 April 2002.

The accounts are chilling: stories of Israeli forces using the elderly as human shields in front of their tanks, of women and children being rounded up, of homes being demolished, of bodies littering the streets.   ...  The Israeli authorities have been refusing to allow ambulances access to the wounded, which is a war crime under the Geneva conventions. The Red Cross said yesterday it was working to get the Israelis to allow ambulances in. Eventually, three ambulances were permitted. Each was only allowed to bring out one person.  The Red Cross said five ambulances were fired on in the area around Jenin and Nablus yesterday.

4.  Jenin: 'My mother ran for help. A soldier shot her in the head.'   By Justin Huggler in the West Bank.   Independent .  11 April 2002.

Abdullah Washai had to watch his 17-year-old brother, Munir, slowly bleed to death. He took several hours to die. A hole had been ripped in his shoulder by a round from an Israeli helicopter.  When the boy's mother, Mariam, ran into the street screaming for help, Mr Washai says, Israeli soldiers shot her dead.  These are typical of the claims of those who have managed to escape the carnage of Jenin refugee camp, the scene of the worst fighting of Israel's onslaught in the West Bank.

5.  Israel to bury dead from 'massacre' camp.   Independent.  12 April 2002.

Israel will bury Palestinians killed in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin, the army said today, prompting Palestinian allegations that Israel had killed hundreds of civilians and was trying to hide the bodies. ...  Brig. Kitrey told Israel Army radio today that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed in Jenin. But the army subsequently contacted news organisations to say that he meant hundreds had been killed and wounded.  He said the bodies from the Jenin fighting would be buried at a special cemetery in the Jordan Valley where Lebanese fighters killed in cross–border clashes have been buried in unmarked graves.

6.  World finally gets glimpse of refugee camp devastation.  By Justin Huggler outside Jenin.   Independent .  12 April 2002.

The Palestinians are claiming that far more than 100 of their number were killed in Jenin. Many of those who fled say they saw civilians, including women, carelessly cut down. The last thing Israel wants the world to see are the bodies of women in the streets. Rumours abound that the bodies are being hidden, taken away in trucks and buried by Israeli soldiers.  But local Palestinians say they are not going to allow the Israelis to hide the evidence. They have painstakingly documented the stories of those who have fled the camp. They claim their notes account for about 200 dead. The Independent has seen the detailed handwritten notes.

7.  Israel buries the bodies, but cannot hide the evidence.  By Justin Huggler in Jenin and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.   Independent.  13 April 2002.

Israel was trying to bury the evidence in Jenin refugee camp yesterday, but it cannot bury the terrible crime it has committed: a slaughter in which Palestinian civilians were cut down alongside the armed defenders of the camp.  Israeli tanks circled journalists menacingly as foreign reporters tried to get into the camp, cutting off their approach. But a man who had just fled the camp said he had seen Israeli soldiers burying the bodies of the dead in a mass grave.  "I saw it all with my own eyes," said the man. "I saw people bleeding to death in the streets. I saw a 10-year-old child lying dead. There was a big hole in his side and his arm had been blown away. I saw them burying the bodies. They started work on the grave a few days ago. I recognised some of the bodies in it. I can give you the names."

8.  The bloody evidence of the tragedy that is Jenin.  By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem and Raymond Whitaker and Colin Brown in London.   Independent .  14 April 2002.

Palestinians escaping from the West Bank camp, which has been sealed off by the Israeli army for the past 11 days, have spoken of hundreds of deaths, including many who slowly bled to death because ambulances were prevented from entering. But no photographic evidence of the ferocity of Israel's attack had emerged until yesterday, when a Reuters photographer managed to enter the camp briefly before being chased out again by an Israeli armoured vehicle.  His two snatched photographs show a house in Jenin which is littered with three-day-old corpses. Most are covered by blankets, and it is impossible to tell whether they are Palestinian fighters or civilians. But when the US Secretary of State meets Yasser Arafat today, the Palestinian leader is sure to tell Mr Powell that Israel is preventing access to Jenin to cover up evidence of a massacre.

9.  The camp that became a slaughterhouse.  By Justin Huggler.  Independent .  14 April 2002.

A woman with her leg all but ripped off by a helicopter rocket, the mangled remains hanging on by a thread of skin as she slowly bleeds to death. A 10-year-old boy lying dead in the street, his arm blown off and a great hole in his side. A mother shot dead when she ran into the street to scream for help for her dying son. The wounded left to die slowly, in horrible agony, because the ambulances were not allowed in to treat them.  A terrible crime has been committed by Israel in Jenin refugee camp, and the world is turning a blind eye. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, visited the scene of a suicide bombing that murdered six Israelis in Jerusalem, but he did not visit Jenin, where the Israelis admit they killed at least 100 Palestinians. The Israel army claims all of the dead were armed men, that it took special care to avoid civilian casualties. But we saw the helicopter rockets rain down on desperately crowded areas: civilian casualties could not have been prevented.

10.  Israel's war of words gets dirty.  By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.  Independent.  14 April 2002.

We cut straight to the question of Jenin. "Believe me, we would love to let you guys into Jenin, but unlike the Palestinian terrorists, we respect the dignity of the dead," he said. "They want to gather up the bodies and show them off to the international media as evidence of a massacre ­ that is typical of the sort of PR tricks they play."  The press was also not being allowed into Jenin because of the "abundance of terrorists" looking for "Western targets". The Israeli army has frequently shot at journalists, injuring more than 40 and killing one. Suddenly, it was concerned for our safety. A journalist himself, Joel seems to know all about "PR tricks". Asked why the Israeli army is refusing to allow ambulances from the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter the camp and evacuate the wounded, he urged The Independent on Sunday to investigate. "You are on to a good story there. Go to the Red Cross and find out if they are using drivers from Sweden, or Palestinians."

11.  Robert Fisk: Mr Powell must see for himself what Israel inflicted on Jenin.   Independent.  14 April 2002.

Why doesn't Colin Powell go to Jenin? What has happened to the world's moral compass – indeed to the United States – when America's most famous ex-general, the Secretary of State of the most powerful country on earth, on a supposedly desperate mission to stop the bloodshed in the Middle East, fails to grasp what is taking place in front of his nose? The stench of decaying corpses is wafting out of the Palestinian city. The Israeli army is still keeping the Red Cross and journalists from seeing the evidence of the mass killings that have taken place there. "Hundreds'' – on Israel's own admission – have died, including civilians. Why, for God's sake, can't Mr Powell do the decent thing and demand an explanation for the extraordinary, sinister events that have taken place in Jenin?

12.  Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime.  From Phil Reeves in Jenin.   Independent.  16 April 2002.

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. We could not see the bodies. But we could smell them.

13.  Grieving survivors say the Israelis buried war crimes in heaps of reeking rubble.  By Phil Reeves in Jenin.   Independent .  17 April 2002.

A senior UN official said: "Given the deplorable and unprecedented refusal to allow international relief organisations in to the camps while people were slowly dying in the rubble of their wounds and thirst, the onus is definitely on the state of Israel to account for the missing thousands of refugees who lived in that camp until a few weeks ago.  "I have not met one person in the international community who had any other explanation for this refusal other than the fact that they were hiding a war crime, in fact, two war crimes: the mass killing and the denial of humanitarian relief."  The Palestinian minister for planning and international cooperation, Nabil Shaath, called for an inquiry into the "massacre" in Jenin. Amnesty International also called for a full investigation by the UN Security Council. A spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said the camp "looks as if it has been hit by an earthquake". Barred entry for a week, the Red Cross found and rescued a badly injured man trapped under rubble. The Israelis appear to have made no efforts to use heat-seeking equipment, or dogs, to find survivors, aid workers said.  Amnesty investigators in Jenin have taken dozens of witness statements covering the past fortnight. People say they saw bodies being buried in individual graves. One claims Israeli soldiers buried 32 corpses in a trench. They have also interviewed many refugees who fled the camp after their houses were demolished. Derrick Pounder, a professor of forensic medicine from Dundee University working with the Amnesty team, said a "pattern of credible evidence" is emerging from witnesses that residents were not warned by the army before bulldozers crashed into their homes. "The only warning was their house collapsing," he said.  Professor Pounder, who has worked in Sarajevo and Kosovo, believes the Israeli tactics inevitably means large numbers of dead civilians. "Sooner or later those bodies will be discovered and the facts will become absolutely clear."

14.  Fresh evidence of Jenin atrocities.  By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.  Independent .  18 April 2002.

Palestinians who survived the long battle – in which Israeli helicopters fired rockets and machine-guns into a densely populated area – have said the Israeli army committed many atrocities. Witnesses have described people being shot as they surrendered; houses being bulldozed with people inside; the use of human shields; the burial of 32 bodies in a trench, and one case of Israeli soldiers turning on the household gas supply before tossing a stun grenade into a room full of people.

15.  There should be a UN inquiry into the deaths at Jenin.   Editorial in the Independent .  19 April 2002.

This week, however, it has become clearer and clearer that terrible things have indeed happened there. European opinion recognises the full potential horror of the situation. The Independent, for example, remains deeply sympathetic to the situation of the Israeli people, but it can see that to answer terrorism with atrocity is only to recruit new volunteers for Palestinian martyrdom.  Yet the United States has barely registered the possibility of anything untoward. Indeed, President Bush's conduct of the "war against terrorism" has given Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, implied permission to inflict collateral damage on civilians in rooting out terrorists.

16.  Families scrabble in the dust to find their dead.  By Justin Huggler in Jenin.   Independent.  19 April 2002.

When they found the body it was in pieces and so they gathered it all up out of the rubble, great chunks of blackened, rotting flesh with bits of bone sticking out, and piled them up on a blanket. The smell made us retch and stumble away, gasping for clean air. The Palestinians said the putrefying flesh and bone was Mohammed Massoud Abu Sb'a.

17.   Israel completes withdrawal from Jenin.  A.P.   Independent.  19 April 2002.

Israel completed its withdrawal from the West Bank town of Jenin but armed forces maintained a blockade of the town and refugee camp where conditions were described by a UN envoy as "horrifying beyond belief."

18.  From the ruins of Jenin, the truth about an atrocity.  By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem and Justin Huggler in Jenin.   Independent.  20 April 2002.

All the dead in Jenin refugee camp have yet to be collected from the putrid ruins, but a new battle has already begun. It is being fought not with bullets, but words.  Israel has launched a huge publicity drive to counter the international community's anger over the events of the last fortnight. The prize – ultimately – is history itself.

19.  'The soldier shouted, kill them, kill them.'  By Justin Huggler in Jenin refugee camp and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.   Independent.  21 April 2002.

Fathi Shalabi watched his son die. The two men were standing side by side with their hands up when Israeli soldiers opened fire on them. Mr Shalabi's son, Wadh, and another man who was with them died instantly, but the 63-year-old Mr Shalabi survived. He lay on the ground pretending to be dead for more than an hour while his son's blood gathered around him.

20.  Barring aid to Jenin is 'a war crime.'  By Justin Huggler in Jenin refugee camp and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.   Independent.  21 April 2002.

Horrific stories continued to emerge from Jenin yesterday as journalists, aid workers and human rights officials dodged Israeli troops still ringing the West Bank site to learn what happened in the military assault earlier this month.

21.  Amnesty [International] demands war crimes inquiry into Jenin invasion.  By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem and Cahal Milmo.   Independent.  23 April 2002.

International pressure on Israel to explain its army's conduct during the invasion of Jenin's refugee camp grew yesterday after Amnesty International accused it of "very serious human rights abuses", and called for a war crimes investigation.

22.  Once upon a time in Jenin: What really happened when Israeli forces went into Jenin? Just as the world is giving up hope of learning the truth, Justin Huggler and Phil Reeves have unearthed compelling evidence of an atrocity.   Independent.  25 April 2002

The rubble in Jenin reeked, literally, of rotting human corpses, buried underneath. But it also gave off the whiff of wrongdoing, of an army and a government that had lost its bearings. "This is horrifying beyond belief," said the United Nations' Middle East envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, as he gazed at the scene. He called it a "blot that will forever live on the history of the state of Israel" – a remark for which he was to be vilified by Israelis. Even the painstakingly careful United States envoy, William Burns, was unusually outspoken as he trudged across the ruins. "It's obvious that what happened in Jenin refugee camp has caused enormous suffering for thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians," he said.

23.  Human rights group finds evidence of war crimes in Jenin.  By Justin Huggler and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem.   Independent .  03 May 2002.

The truth about Jenin is coming out, despite a concerted campaign by Israel to cover it up and the United Nations decision this week to abandon a fact-finding mission in the face of Israeli refusal to co-operate. In a report published today, the Human Rights Watch organisation (HRW) says it has found prima facie evidence that the Israeli army committed war crimes in Jenin refugee camp, and calls for criminal investigations of those responsible. Today's 48-page report is proof that the details of Israel's violations of the Geneva conventions in Jenin are slowly emerging, despite Israel's efforts to conceal them.

24.  Gaza assault will be bloodier than Jenin.  By Robert Fisk Middle East Correspondent.   Independent  12 May 2002.

Officially, the Israeli offensive has been postponed because the element of surprise – thrown away by extensive reporting on the plans on Israeli television – has been lost. This, according to Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli defence minister, would have cost his army more lives. Pressure, of the usual modest kind, has also come from Washington. The Israelis know that civilian casualties in Gaza would far outnumber those in Jenin last month. And lastly, there is a growing suspicion that the Hamas suicide bomber who killed 16 Israelis in an explosion at a gaming hall at Rishon Lezion last Tuesday may not, as was thought, have come from Gaza. He has still to be identified.

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25.  On the 1 August 2002 UN Report:  UN issues 'seriously flawed' report on Jenin killings.  By Justin Huggler in Jerusalem.

Independent 2 August 2002.

Yesterday's report was carefully worded not to offend Israel or its allies. It only came into being after Israel refused to cooperate with a UN fact-finding mission mandated by the Security Council to visit Jenin and establish what happened there – a mission Israel had originally said it would co-operate with.

The UN relied entirely on evidence from secondary sources. Despite being invited to, the Israeli government did not provide any evidence.

Israel did not allow the UN to visit Jenin but [Human Rights Watch's] investigators did visit the site and found prima facie evidence of war crimes – including evidence that Palestinian civilians were used as human shields by Israeli soldiers. An investigation by this newspaper reached the same conclusions.

Of the many victims whose stories were published on 3 May in The Independent, only Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse who was shot through the heart while trying to tend a wounded man, is mentioned by the UN. She was in full uniform and could be clearly seen.

Fourteen-year-old Faris Zeben, who was shot dead by an Israeli tank when he went shopping for groceries when the curfew was lifted, is not mentioned.

Nor is Afaf Desuqi, who was killed when Israeli soldiers blew open the door of her house as she tried to open it for them. Nor Kemal Zughayer, shot dead as he tried to wheel himself up the road in his wheelchair.

The report notes that 150 buildings were destroyed in the Jenin camp – it does not note that a residential area measuring 400 metres by 500 metres was completely bulldozed by the Israeli army.