Fifteen inconsistencies that suggest there was a massacre in Jenin I am an ordinary British person. Not a member of any group and my interest in the Middle East comes from following news, and through access to the net, a broad range of sources. Whilst the attack on Jenin was happening in April I was engaged in an online debate with a number of Israeli and diaspora jewish people about what was happening. Because of this I was forced to defend my ideas through sources. When the UN Report came out which received the headline 'UN finds there was no massacre in Jenin' - and was trumpeted as such by my online debaters - I decided to systematically look through all my clips and sources. I was troubled as there were so many inconsistencies to the Israeli 'line', which was what was being repeated back at me. I found fifteen major inconsistencies, the sum of which point to a systematic and large-scale cover-up. I am posting this here not as an expert or a witness but as a resource for those who can make best use of this information. ---- shimon peres calling it a massacre and then correcting himself "Peres even slipped and mentioned the taboo word "massacre" (which he immediately denied of course)." Ha'aretz et al, April 9 2002 the first number given by an army colonel was several hundred "The Israeli army acknowledged on Friday it had killed hundreds of Palestinians earlier in the week in the Jenin refugee camp. "There were apparently hundreds of dead," the army's chief spokesman, Brigadier-General Ron Kitrey, told Army Radio. Kitrey's estimate of hundreds of dead sharply revised upwards the army's previous figure of some 100 Palestinian fighters killed in Jenin." Al-Bawaba, April 12, 2002 "The IDF intends to bury today Palestinians killed in the West Bank camp. Around 200 Palestinians are believed to have been killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers since the start of the operation last week... Military sources said until now the IDF has not buried any of the bodies... One Israeli source said that the decision to bury the bodies was taken to prevent the Palestinians from using the bodies for propaganda purposes...The Palestinian Authority has expressed concerns that Israel is trying to hide the large number of dead, since it has blocked Palestinian medical teams from evacuating the dead and wounded from the camp during the past week." Ha'aretz, April 12, 2002 "The [British] foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said today he was 'deeply shocked' by the Israeli army's disclosure that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed in fighting at the refugee camp at Jenin. Mr Straw said he had instructed Britain's ambassador in Tel Aviv, Sherard Cowper-Coles, to find out the precise circumstances in which the deaths had occurred." The Guardian, April 12, 2002 "Israel Defense Forces officers now estimate that dozens - not hundreds - of Palestinians were killed as a result of the army's activities in the Jenin refugee camp. As of last night, 46 Palestinian corpses have been located in the camp. Updated estimates concerning the total number of Palestinian fatalities in the camp now range between 70 and a little over 100. Officials believe that some of the corpses are still buried under the rubble of houses demolished by IDF bulldozers." Ha'aretz, April 15 2002 the appearance of refrigerated trucks on israeli tv en masse "The Israeli authorities unwisely contributed to the confusion by announcing that terrorists killed in the camp were to be spirited away in refrigerated trucks for burial at a military cemetery in the remotest corner of the Jordan Valley." The Telegraph, April 21 2002. that israeli arab mlks went to the high court to prevent burials in a secret mass grave in a military base in the jordan valley "Plans by the "Israeli" Army to begin burying the dead in mass graves in the Jordan Valley prompted petitions by the MPs and by two Palestinian human rights groups. A temporary halt to the removals was ordered last week by the court, but it has now said they can continue. The ruling says that bodies should not be buried by the army but released to the Palestinian Authority." BBC, April 15 2002 "The Israelis say that they will begin to return the bodies of dead Palestinian civilians, but transport the remains of 50 fighters to an unknown destination in the Jordan Valley." The Telegraph, April 13, 2002 "The IDF intended to bury those identified by the army as terrorists in a special cemetery for fallen enemy troops in the Jordan Valley. The IDF said that the bodies of Palestinian civilians killed in the fighting would be taken to the hospital in Jenin and later buried. According to [MK Ahmed Tibi], removing the bodies from the city is a violation of international law and is intended to hide the truth from the public about the killing that occurred there." Ha'aretz, April 13, 2002 "Total numbers of dead inside the camp range from 200 to 500. No one really has any realistic idea yet and no one here knows how many where removed by the Israelis, but witnesses in the camp saw at least two large refrigerated semi trailers in the camp, and the UN aid people here maintain it is a relatively open secret that the Israelis maintain an "enemies" graveyard in the Jordan valley for events like this." Indymedia reporter Kevin Skvorak from inside the Jenin refugee camp, April 16 2002 IndyMedia, NY "It was reported that following the temporary Supreme Court decision of Friday [April 12], the IDF stopped "clearing the bodies" from the camp, waiting for the final decision on Sunday. However, on Sunday, the media was already allowed to the camp, and they found a scene of mass destruction, but with roads clean of bodies." 'Jenin - The Propaganda War', Prof. Tanya Reinhart, Yediot Aharonot, April 21, 2002 "On the ground, yesterday, only one Palestinian body was to be found in the open, in an area where most of the fighting took place." Ha'aretz, April 15, 2002 that soldier reports have indicated a willingness of commanders to sanction rogue soldier activity "We will continue until we make this camp submit." Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan, chief of the Israeli army central command, in a briefing for reporters in Jerusalem, April 9, 2002 "Israel made at least three mistakes in Jenin: It overestimated the army's ability; it underestimated the motivation and fighting skills of the Palestinians; and most importantly (by the admission of the IDF's top brass), the strategic decision to go into Ramallah first, in order to humiliate Arafat and crush the PA, gave the fighters in the northern parts of the West Bank time to organize, and many on Israel's most-wanted list reached Jenin, booby-trapped large areas, and prepared for a long battle. The origin place of 'Izz ad-Din el-Qassam, after whom the military wing of Hamas is named, Jenin has a long tradition of tough resistance. Sharon was aware of that, yet chose to begin the attack in Ramallah, an intellectual, cultural and commercial center whose military significance was nil. This choice may indicate that the government's intention was not to eliminate "the infra-structure of terrorism," but rather, to destroy the Palestinian Authority. Still, no one dreamed that the Palestinians would stage such a fight, and so the IDF's victory was obtained only through total destruction." 'Jenin: The Military Fiasco', Yosef Grodzinsky, Electronic Intifada, Friday, April 12, 2002 "The orders were to shoot at each house," recalled the sergeant, a member of a heavy weapons company in the Yoav regiment of the army's Fifth Brigade, a reserve unit that did the bulk of the fighting in Jenin. "The words on the radio were to 'Put a bullet in each window.' The sergeant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was troubled by the orders, which did not require soldiers to actually see the gunmen they were trying to kill. But he said the Israeli soldiers didn't hesitate .. he was troubled not only by the order to fire through open windows without specific, identifiable targets, but also by what he said were insufficient efforts by the army to allow civilians to leave their homes in safety. He also questioned the decision to use bulldozers to knock down houses at a time when he said the fighting had mostly subsided. " Ill-Prepared For a Battle Unexpected - Israeli Reservists Tell Of Jenin Camp Assault, The Washington Post, April 26, 2002 "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"" Yediot Aharonot, April 19, 2002 "There were severe professional and ethical problems... things should be resolved within the system." Lt.Col. Ofek Bukhris, Ma'ariv May 31, 2002 ""Bad things did happen, for which we are truly sorry, but there was never any desire to harm civilians," acknowledges Colonel Miri Eisin, an intelligence specialist." Telegraph, April 21 2002 "Moshe Nissim... In the Jenin refugee camp, he was called, over the military radio: "Kurdi Bear". Kurdi, because this is the name he insisted on. Bear, after the D-9 he was driving, demolishing house after house. There was not one soldier in Jenin that did not hear this name. Kurdi Bear was considered the most devoted, brave and probably the most destructive operator. A man, that the Jenin camp inquiry committee, would want very much to have a word with. For 75 hours, with no break, he sat on the huge bulldozer, charges exploding around him, and erased house after house... "No one refused an order to knock down a house. No such thing. When I was told to bring down a house, I took the opportunity to bring down some more houses; not because I wanted to - but because when you are asked to demolish a house, some other houses usually obscure it, so there is no other way. I would have to do it even if I didn't want to... They were warned by loudspeaker to get out of the house before I come, but I gave no one a chance. I didn't wait. I didn't give one blow, and wait for them to come out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible. Others may have restrained themselves, or so they say. Who are they kidding?... I didn't give a damn about the Palestinians, but I didn't just ruin with no reason. It was all under orders... No one expressed any reservations against doing it. Not only me. Who would dare speak?"." Yediot Aharonot, May 31, 2002 This is part of a wider acceptance of brutality, including torture. "The Israeli Supreme Court yesterday refused to overturn an army order denying Palestinian prisoners legal rights, despite hearing allegations of torture at a detention camp near Ramallah. The tribunal threw out a petition from four Israeli human rights groups, which quoted an Israeli source at the Ofer detention centre as saying detainees were being subjected to torture during interrogation, including repeated instances of them having their toes broken." 'Israel Court Ruling Confirms Denial of Prisoners' Rights: Torture Claims 'Extraordinary Measures' Permitted', Financial Times, April 8, 2002 In September of 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that torture of Palestinians was permissible "in emergencies in which civilian lives are at stake." "The IDF effectively grants immunity to soldiers who open fire illegally. Since the beginning of the intifada, the IDF has ceased to automatically open an investigation into every case in which a Palestinian is killed by IDF fire." B'tselem (Israeli Human Rights Organization) Information Sheet, March 2002 the presence of soldiers who support kahane and similar extremists "I tied the 'Beitar' football team flag to the back of the tractor and told them: "Move away, let me work."... If I had a say in the matter, there would be a Beitar flag on the top of the mosque in the camp." Yediot Aharonot, May 31, 2002 the soldier reports of extreme reactions following the ambush and death of a large group of israeli soldiers "The real thing started the day 13 of our soldiers were killed up that alley in the Jenin refugee camp... The moment I drove the tractor into the camp, something switched in my head. I went mad. All the desperation, caused by my personal condition, just vanished at once. All that remained was the anger over what had happened to our guys." Yediot Aharonot, May 31, 2002 "After the 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in a booby-trapped bomb and crossfire ambush, say these reservists, the soldiers simply lost control. It is a version, curiously, given credit by the Palestinian residents of the camp. For their accounts, taken together, describe a breakdown of command at the height of the fighting. Some describe one group of soldiers calling to them to evacuate their homes before destruction then being threatened with being shot by other soldiers who insisted that a curfew was still in force. What they describe is a panic that seems to have taken hold of the Israeli army in Jenin camp, and in its panic it laid the camp to waste." The Observer, April 21, 2002 "Many died as a result of a change in Israeli tactics. On April 6, with only half the camp under Israeli control, Brig Gen Eyal Shlein, the increasingly frustrated officer running the operation, himself under heavy pressure from superiors to wrap things up swiftly, ordered the deployment of armoured bulldozers to smash down stubborn outposts of resistance and clear broader lanes that tanks could use. The impact of this decision on Palestinian civilians as they cowered in terror was instant and brutal... That bloody incident provoked the most intense Israeli onslaught of the operation, with fresh troops from regular army battalions pitching in alongside the exhausted, dirt-caked reservists behind bulldozers tearing down everything in their path. There was now a raw edge of savagery to the fighting: one officer admitted to an Israeli journalist that troops had sometimes fired at Red Crescent ambulances and refused to allow Palestinian medics to treat wounded gunmen, some of whom died as a result." Telegraph, April 21 2002 arab tv showing hand-held video footage of lines of bodies in the street "Officers of the IDF expressed their shock [about what happened in Jenin]. "the soldiers are almost not advancing on foot. The bulldozers are simply 'shaving' the homes and causing terrible destruction. When the world sees the pictures of what we have done there, it will do us immense damage."." Ha'aretz, April 9, 2002 "Though Jenin was sealed to the press, pictures of the battlefield, shot with local amateur video cameras, were broadcasted, mainly on Arab TV. They showed alleys lined up with male bodies (many armed). This is to be expected, given that there was indeed a serious battle in Jenin. In early reports of the Israeli army, the number of these bodies was estimated as 200. The Palestinian figures were much higher. As the time was reaching to open the camp to the press, the army expressed, as we saw, serious concerns regarding the 'PR' effects of the scenes on the ground. It is appropriate to wonder what happened with these bodies." Jenin - The Propaganda War, Prof. Tanya Reinhart, Yediot Aharonot, April 21, 2002 "AlJazeera has announced that overnight in Jenin Israeli bulldozers have been demolishing the homes in the camp and callers to AlJazeera from the camp tell of how the soldiers are burying the bodies of the dead under the rubble and carefully 'cleaning up' the streets erasing all evidence of their crimes. One caller said that through the night there were sounds of digging and sifting through the houses followed by the sounds of tanks and bulldozers driving over each one many times until none of the house's features including human flesh was evident. Another caller said they were cutting each body into so many parts before burial and mixing them all together so an exact count cannot be achieved." 'The Massacre in Jenin', Palestine Chronicle, April 10 2002 Also, from other journalists: "The Guardian was among a handful of newspapers whose reporters managed to enter the town yesterday. But the accounts of the massive destruction of civilian homes, and of the firing on civilians, could be confirmed as they also occurred in the town of Jenin, suggesting a widespread and systematic pattern of human rights abuses that is only now beginning to emerge." The Guardian, April 12, 2002 "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." London Times, April 16, 2002 palestinian witness testimony "Eyewitnesses stated that Israeli forces are now digging large holes inside Jenin refugee camp and in surrounding areas. They have stated their fears that these are mass graves, where the several killed (numbers still to be confirmed) in the refugee camp will be buried. Eyewitnesses saw Israeli forces putting bodies inside the holes. The area is located in the middle of the camp, also known as Haret al-Hawarish." LAW statement "The deputy governor of Jenin, Haider Rashid, confirmed that Israeli troops are bulldozing houses. He put the number of dead at 200 and the homeless and displaced at 3,000 minimum." ibid, April 10, 2002 "Today I have found Israeli booby-traps in homes. The armorment are in English and some have inscriptions of 'Made in USA' so it is not conjecture that the IDS is claiming that they had not left these traps anywhere. Yesterday, I was in a house next door to a 16 year-old Palestinian boy who picked up a trap not knowing what it was and it blew his hand off. It was just a bloody stump and I was the first person there to respond and saw another 10 year-old child who was not hurt but was in absolute shock." Heather Guyton, International solidarity movement, Washington Post, April 19, 2002 "Ali Mustapha Abu Sani, a 42 year old Palestinian school teacher testified to the wholesale bulldozing of Palestinian homes by Israeli tanks and D-9 bulldozers. He says many families were wiped out. He provided the names of those who died in this way: "The household of Abu Naif Zagrah," says Ali Mustapha with certainty. "The households of Mazen al-Ghul and Abura al-Ghul." He continues: "Abu Jawad Narseh and Abu Jawad al-Asmar." Maaz Staty, age 22 , says his mother died in this way, her home bulldozed with her inside. Witness Isa Weshaky mentions his cousin, Ataf Dasouki, aged 52, who opened the door of his home when commanded to by Israeli soldiers, and was then shot down.." The Observer, April 14, 2002 "Few experiences capture the terror of the assault like that told by Khadra Samara, 33, whose husband, Hisham, 40, is the Al Razi [Jenin] hospital's cook. She first noticed a tank outside her home at 11 p.m. Sunday (April 7), she said. At 11:30, it knocked down the front gate. 'We screamed and lighted candles to make the Israelis aware that people were in the house,' she said, but the tank kept coming. It fired a missile into the second and third floors, she said, causing a bright flash, shattering the windows and sending all 15 people in the home to the ground floor. The demolition halted until 5 a.m., when the household was awakened by the sound of a bulldozer outside. It slammed into the front of the house, crashing into a large bedroom in which the family had been sleeping, she said. Houses in the camp abut each other, so Samara and her relatives hammered a hole in a side wall and broke in next door, where her sister-in-law's family lives. Less than an hour later, she said, that house came under attack, and 30 people crawled through to the next house in line, which had been abandoned. That refuge stood up until 3 p.m. Monday, when it fell after a three-hour bulldozer assault, she said. 'We moved from the bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen--wherever we thought was safest,' Samara said. 'The children started vomiting. I phoned the hospital. My husband said to leave the camp immediately. I demanded an ambulance. He said the Israelis won't let one through.' It took them five more hours to talk their way through Israeli checkpoints and reach the hospital, waving white prayer scarves and dodging stun grenades from helicopters that followed them." L.A. Times, April 12 2002 "Before Ali Khatib left Jenin on April 11th, he saw dump-trucks filled with the remains of the Palestinian houses bulldozed by the Israelis. Inside those houses, the Palestinian father of eight said, were dead Palestinians. Inside the trucks, mixed in with the rubble and the concrete, were their remains. "There were ten or fifteen trucks," he said. "After the Israelis bulldozed the houses, they scooped everything up. Then they drove away." One man spoke of receiving a call on his cell phone on April 11 from a Palestinian family trapped beneath the rubble of his bulldozed home inside the camp. On April 12 the family's phone went dead." Media compliation, Michael A. Hoffman II, Independent History & Research the scale and nature of the israeli pr response "If Israel doesn't win the public-relations war this time, it won't be for want of trying." 'Israel revamps media approach', Jewish Chronicle, April 12 2002 "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." Ha'aretz, April 9, 2002 "The most damning evidence about what happened is the fact that immediately after the end of the fighting, top government and army officials started to discuss ways of preventing a shock reaction in Israel and abroad once the facts became known. This was no secret discussion, it was held in public, in the media talk shows. All of us heard. The decisions made were extremely effective in Israel, and extremely ineffective abroad." Uri Avnery (Gush Shalom/Peace Coalition), 20 April, 2002 "Believe me, we would love to let you guys into Jenin, but unlike the Palestinian terrorists, we respect the dignity of the dead," [Joel, a reserve captain in the "Israeli" Army + media spokesman] 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." 'Israel's war of words gets dirty', Independent, April 14 2002 "The IDF is one of the most humanitarian armies in the world," Israeli army commander Brigadier-General Eyal Shlein, Ibid, April 12, 2002 "A journey through the TV and radio channels and the pages of the newspapers exposes a huge and embarrassing gap between what is reported to us and what is seen, heard, and read in the world - not only in the commentaries and analytical pieces, but also in the reporting of the dry facts." 'The War Looks Different Abroad - and Maybe So Do the Facts', Ha'aretz, April 3, 2002 "I watched as an English-speaking French journalist spent 15 minutes manipulating a 10-year-old boy into saying, "I want to be a fighter. I will kill Jews with my kalishnikov." It was quite a labor for him to get the child to enunciate 'kalishnikov' clearly enough to suit his eager cameraman. I saw an American photojournalist pressure a clean-up crew with one of the rare and much-needed bulldozers working to find bodies in one house to stop their work there and move to another area in order to get a 'better shot'. More than anything, I saw journalist after journalist ask person after person who came to them with their story, "Are you a fighter?" When the answer was, "No, I'm just a regular person," the journalist moved on... The stories of their suffering are barely listened to and are instead hastened to an end so that the journalist might get down to the real business at hand - justifying Israeli claims that it was targetting 'militant terrorists'... what about the evidence they refused to find? They refused to interview a lawyer who had taken affadavits claiming that refrigerator trucks had carted off hundreds of bodies from the hospital. They refused to interview a woman who says she saw the dead bodies of people she knew and who have not been accounted for put into black bags and moved to the hospital, where no one but the Israelis were allowed to enter. They refused to interview a noted war crimes investigator who asked questions about missing bodies and the lack of severely injured, as well as what happened during the five days between when the shelling stopped and the Red Cross was allowed into the camp, that the Israelis had no answer for... This time, like all the others, the pleas of the Palestinian people were drowned out by the demands of the Israeli government and their international accomplices in the Fifth Estate." 'Journalism in Jenin: No Honor Among Thieves', Electronic Intifada, Sunday, April 28, 2002 "Israeli army officials claimed that Palestinians were staging fake burials and recording them on tape, in an attempt to convince the international community that the casualties in Jenin were much higher than Israel claims. The Law Society interviewed a Palestinian film producer who was in the area, shooting for a film. The Israeli's caught the performance on tape, and fabricated a story that the producer was staging burials to strengthen the Palestinian position that a massacre took place in Jenin. At the press conference, LAW will host the producer of the film, as well as show excerpts of what the producer was filming, which shows the same persons as the so-called staged 'burial'." LAW Statement, May 6 2002 "A campaign has been launched to improve Israel´s image in the United States. A series of television advertisements are already airing on television news channels in Washington, with plans to make the campaign national. A million pamphlets designed to help Americans support Israel are being sent around the country. The Simon Wiesenthal Center is mailing a million pamphlets to Jewish community centers, campuses and synagogues that urge people to fight against the campaign to "delegitimize Israel" being waged by Muslims. The mailing offers specific responses to a number of "lies and misconceptions" and urges people to contact U.S. and world leaders and the media."" Campaign to improve Israels U.S. image, JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), May 10, 2002 "Much of the British media fell for the lie that the Israelis massacred 3,000 Palestinians in Jenin. Israel says the toll was THREE - Human Rights Watch says 54 - but there was NO massacre." The BIG Lie, The Sun, March 7 2002 "Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations envoy to the Middle East, cut through the propaganda by stating the obvious: "No military operation can justify this scale of destruction. Whatever the purpose was, the effect is collective punishment of a whole society." He and his family received telephone death threats from Israeli callers for his pains." Sunday Times, April 21, 2002 "Arab responsibilities are to stop what he said was news media incitement of hatred against Jews." White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, NY Times, April 9, 2002 footage of the shelling of the town and mass apache assault which was shown on british tv "We have eyewitness reports of arbitrary attacks by Apache helicopters on the refugee camp that has led to civilian deaths." Peter Holland, an Oxfam-Québec relief worker, Washington Post, April 19, 2002 "What we could see was a long-range assault, unequal in every part. We could see the tanks maneuvering and shelling houses from the plain. We could hear them firing from the ridge behind us. Most shocking, however, were the Apache helicopter gunships that hovered like an angry swarm above the city, approaching, often in pairs, and firing bursts of cannon-fire every five minutes into the camp. Every now and then they would fire a pair of missiles which would explode and send a plume of darker smoke above the white haze of gunsmoke already hanging above the camp." The Observer, April 14, 2002 "Tens of Israeli tanks and seven Israeli attack helicopters have continued to shell the refugee camp with heavy artillery and missiles. In the past 16 hours, more than two hundred missiles and artillery shells have been fired on the refugee camp... tens of Israeli bulldozers are randomly demolishing refugee shelters to make room for Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers to the camp. This has been accompanied by air and surface shelling." LAW, April 8, 2002 "For the first time in its history of aggression, Israeli F-16 fighter jets have bombarded the Jenin refugee camp, in an offensive clearly meant to exact the maximum number of civilian casualties." PMC, April 6 2002 "Every wall is speckled and torn with bullet holes and shrapnel, testimony of the awesome, random firepower of Cobra and Apache helicopters that hovered over the camp." 'Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime', The Independent, April 16, 2002 "Major Rafi Lederman, a brigade chief of staff, told a press conference on Saturday that the Israeli armed forces did not fire missiles from its Cobra helicopters - a claim dismissed by a Western military expert who has toured the wrecked camp with one word: "Bollocks." There were, said the major, "almost no innocent civilians" - also untrue." The Independent, April 25 2002 the low numbers of injured "What was striking is what was absent. There were very few bodies in the hospital. There were also none who were seriously injured, only the 'walking wounded'. Thus we have to ask: where are the bodies and where are the seriously injured? Firstly, there were no severely injured persons in the hospital, and secondly, there were very few corpses. It is inconceivable that there were not also, as well as dead, large number of severely injured. You would expect in this type of situation to have a ration of severely injured to dead in the order of 3 to 1, so the question to be posed to the Israeli government and the IDF is, where are the severely injured? It is not surprising that civilians were killed given the circumstances of the fighting; a densely populated area, with a large area now leveled. The site was completely flattened after the fighting, and so literally the bodies were covered up physically. There was a constantly changing statement of fact from the Israeli government as to the number of dead. In Jenin there has certainly been mass killing, both of combatants and of civilians. There is prima fascia evidence of a serious crime having been committed, and therefore this area is a crime scene and should be treated as a crime scene. In other words what we require is the same type of investigation that has been conducted in the Balkans so successfully by those working for the Hague tribunal." "[The autopsy on the 38-year-old Palestinian revealed that] he was either shot in the foot, and then in the back, or shot in the back first – receiving a fatal wound – and his corpse was for some reason shot in the foot. Whichever order the shots occurred in, it was highly suspicious." Amnesty delegate and forensics expert Derrick Pounder, 'Burying Jenin', Palestine Chronicle, The Guardian et al, May 6 2002 the exclusion of reporters and other potential witnesses "After the fighting was over, we got orders to pull our D-9's [bulldozers] out of the area, and stop working on our 'football stadium', because the army didn't want the cameras and press to see us working." Yediot Aharonot, May 31, 2002 "International aid agencies ... confided to The Independent yesterday that they had reached the inevitable conclusion: a crime has been committed which Israel is trying to cover up. 'It is clear they have something to hide – that is the bottom line,' said one senior diplomatic source."" Independent, April 13, 2002 "Peter Hansen, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency , who had served in the Balkans, said: 'I and my colleagues working in crisis situations for decades do not recall a situation where co-operation from the authorities has been less than what we have experienced from the Israeli government. It is beyond any human decency to let ambulances, food and water stand outside the camp, as has been the case.'" The Scotsman, April 19, 2002 "I disagree that the truth about Jenin will probably never be told. The evidence of what happened in Jenin is available in the camp and in the hands of the IDF and if all parties would cooperate with the U.N. fact finding mission as well as with the work of international human rights organizations, such as the Human Rights Watch, it will not be difficult to reconstruct what happened in the camp. Israel refusal to cooperate with the U.N. fact finding mission will only ensure that its side of the story will not fully be told." Human Rights Watch investigator Peter Bouckaert, Washington Post, April 26, 2002 "As we drew near the tank, the soldiers shot over our heads. A clear message: this far and no further. So we turned our armoured Land Rover round and drove through the olive groves, and along the tractor paths. The Israeli forces were determined that no journalists should see the destruction they had wreaked on Jenin... But we were equally determined to defy them." Lindsey Hilsum (BBC correspondent), New Statesman, 22 April 2002 "Israel won't sit in the place of the accused. Israel will sit in the place of the accuser. [Charges of Israeli war crimes in Jenin are] baseless blame, almost a blood libel, on Israel." Shimon Peres, AP, April 28 2002 the admittance to the use of human shields butressing reports of out-of-control soldiers and/or commanders "Last night, 7 May 2002, the Attorney General's Office submitted a response to a request for an immediate injunction, filed to the Supreme Court by seven human rights organizations, to stop the Israeli army's use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, as hostages, and for other military purposes. The State's response implicitly confirms the Israeli army's use of these practices." H.C. 3799/02, Adalah, et. al. v. Yitzhak Eitan, Commander of the Israeli Army in the West Bank, et. Al., www.adalah.org, May 8 2002 "Scores of interviews in the camp did show consistency... Story after story - from people who had not yet met one another since they fled - indicated the Israelis had used Palestinians as human shields and had taken families hostage to protect their makeshift posts set up in their houses." Sunday Times, April 21, 2002 the camp was not evacuated as has been claimed "The report refers to Israeli claims that approximately 11,000 inhabitants of Jenin refugee camp were allowed to 'depart voluntarily', when the Israeli army first surrounded the camp. However, as Kofi Annan was informed by LAW and others, the Israeli government acknowledged in its own state response to three High Court petitions (HC 3114/02, 3115/02, 3116/02) submitted by LAW and others to stop the removal of dead bodies from Jenin refugee camp, that 'up to the evening of April 7th 2002, hardly anyone had left the camp, and then around 100 people left'. By the state's own admission, the vast majority of residents remained in Jenin refugee camp during the aerial and ground assaults and bombardments in the first few days of the invasion." 'LAW Responds to Failures of Disappointing Kofi Annan Report', August 1 2002 ---- postscript "In a Commons debate, Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP who is Britain's most prominent Jewish parliamentarian, launched a ferocious attack on the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, denouncing him as a "war criminal". With MPs on both sides of the Commons condemning the Israeli incursion, Mr Kaufman said Mr Sharon had "ordered his troops to use methods of barbarism against the Palestinians". Expressing fear that something dreadful had happened in Jenin, he said: "It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews and not to his repulsive government. His actions are staining the Star of David with blood." The Guardian, April 17, 2002 Kaufman is not the only Jewish person who refuses to believe the Israeli PR line on Jenin. "Like everything else in our corrupted life, it comes down to the number of dead: ten dead Israelis are a massacre; 50 Palestinians not enough to count... Gas chambers are not the only way to destroy a nation. It is enough to destroy its social tissue, to starve dozens of villages, to develop high rates of infant mortality. The West Bank is going through a Gaza-isation. Please don't shrug your shoulders. The one thing that might help to destroy the consensus in Israel is pressure from Western Europe, on which the Israeli elite is dependent in so many ways." 'After Jenin', Yitzhak Laor, LRB, May 29, 2002 Since April we have had scores more deaths in Jenin including one journalist with 'Press' in big white letters on him. We have had footage shown on British TV of Israeli tanks firing on unarmed children. We have twice seen tanks fire at old men, women and children struggling to get provisions during a break in curfew. My understanding is that the tanks are currently contending with locals throwing tomatoes and melons at them and that it is the presence of internationals that has finally caused a switch to less lethal forms of 'crowd control'. The UN Report does not say 'there was no massacre'. It acknowledges that it has limited sources of information. "The report doesn't move us forward in terms of establishing the truth," said Hanny Megally, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch in a HRW Press Release. "Its watered-down account of the very serious violations in Jenin exposes the risk of compiling a report without any first-hand information." In early May, the Israel Defense Forces made a commitment to investigate every incident documented in the report. To date, Human Rights Watch has had no response from the IDF as to the progress of any such investigations. It is my belief after reviewing all the material available online that there was a massacre in Jenin.