The So-Called Jenin “Massacre”: The Media at its Worst
April 19, 2012 10:57 by Simon PloskerThe myth of Jeningrad, ten years on
Media commentator and analyst Tom Gross who originally took the media to task for its coverage of Jenin in 2002, has recently published the following in his Middle East Dispatch, which is adapted here with his permission.
“ISRAELI SOLDIERS STRIPPED HIM TO HIS UNDERWEAR, PUSHED HIM AGAINST A WALL AND SHOT HIM”
Ten years ago, in April 2002, Israel was subjected to the most incredible wave of media misreporting and nastiness I have ever witnessed on any subject. This followed a supposed massacre of hundreds (or thousands, according to some initial CNN reports) of Palestinian civilians in Jenin. In fact at most 14 Palestinian civilians died (together with 23 Israeli soldiers). This was far fewer than the hundreds of Israeli civilians killed in Israeli towns by suicide bombers dispatched from Jenin, a wave of attacks that Israel was trying to prevent from continuing.
I attach two articles below. The first concentrates on The Guardian’s coverage and is by a British university student who (fearing for his reputation with other students and professors) uses the pseudonym “Myrrh”.
[This article can be viewed separately on the HonestReporting site here.]
The second article is my own analysis of the Jenin massacre myth, originally published ten years ago, which I titled “Jeningrad” after British journalists took seriously Yasser Arafat’s claim that the “massacre” of Palestinians in Jenin could only be compared to the World War Two Nazi sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad. (800,000 Russians died during the 900-day siege of Leningrad; 1.3 million died in Stalingrad.)
As I noted in my piece, the British media was particularly emotive in its reporting. In April 2002, they devoted page upon page, day after day, to tales of mass murders, common graves, summary executions, and war crimes. Israel was invariably compared to the Nazis, to al Qaeda, and to the Taliban. One report even compared the thousands of supposedly missing Palestinians to the “disappeared” of Argentina. (No Palestinians were in fact missing.) A leading columnist for the Evening Standard, London’s main evening newspaper, compared Israel’s actions to “genocide.”
“THE KILLING FIELDS”
By contrast on the very same days, American reporters in Jenin – unlike their British counterparts – reported accurately. Molly Moore of The Washington Post wrote there was “no evidence to support allegations by aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions.” Newsday’s reporter in Jenin, Edward Gargan, wrote: “There is little evidence to suggest that Israeli troops conducted a massacre of the dimensions alleged by Palestinian officials.”
The Boston Globe correspondent reported that after extensive interviews with “civilians and fighters” in Jenin “none reported seeing large numbers of civilians killed.” On the other hand, referring to the deaths of Israeli soldiers in Jenin, Abdel Rahman Sa’adi, an “Islamic Jihad grenade-thrower,” told The Boston Globe “This was a massacre of the Jews, not of us.”
By contrast the Jerusalem correspondent for the (London) Independent, Phil Reeves, began his report from Jenin: “A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a fortnight has finally been exposed.” He continued: “The sweet and ghastly reek of rotting human bodies is everywhere, evidence that it is a human tomb. The people say there are hundreds of corpses, entombed beneath the dust.”
Reeves spoke of “killing fields,” an image more usually associated with Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
Even the right-wing Daily Telegraph ran headlines such as “Hundreds of victims ‘were buried by bulldozer in mass grave’” and utterly fabricated accounts such as “Israeli soldiers had stripped him [the Palestinian] to his underwear, pushed him against a wall and shot him.”
Only one British paper, the Rupert Murdoch-owned daily tabloid The Sun, castigated the rest of the British media for their lies.
[Read "Jeningrad: What the British media said by Tom Gross here.]
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Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com, flickr/Photo Giddy, ZombieWagon.com.
EthanP
5:19 pm
Apr 19, 2012
It’s not just Israel. Any politicly incorrect topic is tweaked to give a preponderance of hits to left
wing politicly “correct responses. If you doubt it, try any controversial topic. most of your early
hits will be from the left.
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Abu Nudnik
7:28 pm
Apr 19, 2012
@Ethan P: Coincidentally it’s the left. I think the real thing is the hot news/hot money/higher revenue from advertisers cycle. A feeling of crisis is critical to the news cycle and reporting on stability isn’t sexy: it doesn’t sell. Since the Left represents the mob it makes good business sense for these news outlets to stoke those fires.
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Philip lewis
5:50 pm
Apr 19, 2012
I visited Jenin March 2011 and counted only 12 partial rebuilds where the fighting took place.
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DAVID KAPLAN
6:12 pm
Apr 19, 2012
As this event was progressing, anyone could have easily seen the satellite pictures, as I did, that proved what was written in the press was an outrageous and deliberate lie. Heads should have rolled over this, but nothing of the sort happened.
It has now long been accepted that the free press prints news created to fit its agenda, just like the old days in Pravda. Why have we all fallen asleep while a rockbed foundation of our democracy was subverted and destroyed? How can anyone think the voters can make informed decisions when they are fed propaganda instead of real news (based on journalistic standards that were once sacred)?
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Abu Nudnik
7:23 pm
Apr 19, 2012
The fascinating thing is that there were two war crimes admitted to – and proudly – by the Palestinians, rarely reported on by the media:
1) It is a war crime to use a white flag to lure combatants into ambush. This is intended to prevent massacres and to save lives of those surrendering. By luring 26 Israelis to their deaths, the Palestinians will have made all future combatants question whether or not to honor the white flag.
2) It is a war crime to dress in civilian clothes and fire upon targets from civilian areas so the opposition cannot tell combatant from civilian. This causes civilian deaths which are then blamed on those following the rules of war instead of the war criminals.
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Gary Katz
9:14 pm
Apr 21, 2012
The Palestinians investigated war crimes committed by their people. They investigated why their people didn’t commit more war crimes.
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Abu Nudnik
7:26 pm
Apr 19, 2012
@David: Don’t discount the profit motive. News media like their media hot to lure in the suckers to watch their advertisements so they can increase the rate-per-minute billing. They wet themselves when they caused the Rodney King riots. Money money money… so… not necessarily agenda…. staying in business is always the no. 1 of business. Vanity shouldn’t be discounted either.
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Brent Pudsey
2:26 pm
Apr 20, 2012
Thanks once again to the fine people of Honesty Reporting. it is invaluable work you are doing in holding the media responsible for its biases against Israel. It is quite shocking and sickening how the media distorts truth for the sake of a story.
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Ed Frias
6:24 pm
Apr 20, 2012
Keep in mind, Derrick Pounder till this day has not retracted his lie that their was a massacre in Jenin.
It proves these people are just about hating Israel and promoting Pallywood.
Read this brilliant article which shows what a liar Pounder is about Jenin.
http://israeldefender.com/?p=118
Some of the best points are.
Palestinian propagandists never apologize for misleading both the news media and the public. They rely on our short memories. It doesn’t take all that long for the public to forget.
Where’s the apology?
Did BBC ever apologize for the daily Jenin blackening of Israel, until Israel’s truth was finally and undeniably confirmed? Nor did the malevolent, malice-aforethought Pounder apologize.
This pretentious expert must be required to apologize, publicly, for his blatant lie. Or be consigned by his university to a well-deserved oblivion. His continued employment as an Amnesty investigator is also untenable.
Has BBC learned a lesson they will never forget?
That’ll be the frosty Friday. The only lesson they learned was they can continue to quote lie after Palestinian lie with impunity. Sadly, the BBC would rather propagate Palestinian lies than Israel’s truth. Should you research the massacre that never was you will be sickened by the plethora of plainly anti-Semitic reports that played out in British media.
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Bob Poplar
7:44 pm
Apr 20, 2012
The Israeli Adventure was created in the early 1900′s by the British as a necessity to controlling the Arab world so the western Royals – and their family’ could enjoy the oil riches. Read Winston Churchill’s book “Lost War”. We knew what we were getting into and bit the bullet for these many years but now is the time ti drop the “woe-is-me” and acceptance and point out for what it is. I think we are doing better but not enough. Does the World know that the Saudi’s are running out of oil? How the Arab World is tied to the English Royals? We should have our own campaign and let them worry and work on rebutting us for a change.
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The So-Called Jenin “Massacre”: The Media at its Worst | The Conservative Papers
1:52 am
Apr 21, 2012
[...] Continued on Page 2 VN:F [1.9.17_1161]calculating…Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)Source material can be found at this site.topsyWidgetPreload({ "url": "http%3A%2F%2Fconservativepapers.com%2Fnews%2F2012%2F04%2F20%2Fthe-so-called-jenin-massacre-the-media-at-its-worst%2F", "style": "big", "title": "The So-Called Jenin “Massacre”: The Media at its Worst #Freedom #HonestReporting #Islam #Israel #Jihad #Palestinians #Terrorism" }); Take Action Related posts: [...]
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Mike lampard
9:57 pm
Apr 26, 2012
This is quite alarming how a story in 10 years can be so distorted by the passage of time. It is very clear that the british media are both anti-semitic in a very subtle and dishonest way, promoting anti-semitism in an ‘equality’ type way to make such prejudice sound acceptable. The Guardian is past master at this liberal left ideology of the stupidity dressed up in academic language, and they should realise that the Jenin ‘massachre, so-called was no massachre at all. The whole scenario was started by the Arabs, as all disruption is so started simply because they refuse to accept the right of Jews to take charge of their own country, and are prepared to do all by fair means or foul to destroy the Jewish state and deny the Jews their homeland. Newspapers like the Guardian are quite willing to assist them with their evil course, and i am sad to say that this represent so-called British ‘intelligentsia’. How far has the british nation fallen?!
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EthanP
10:23 pm
Apr 26, 2012
I agree Mike except I don’t think they are at all “subtle”. Otherwise, well said.
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Bombenanschläge in Boston offenbaren journalistische Unzulänglichkeiten | Medien BackSpin
11:21 pm
Apr 24, 2013
[...] die jahrelang haften bleiben.” Da fallen einem sofort Vorfälle wie das so genannte “Jenin-Massaker” [...]
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