Posted on 05/03/2002 6:05:14 AM PDT by tomahawk
Human Rights Watch: No massacre in Jenin camp
By The Jerusalem Post Internet Staff
IDF troops did not carry out a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp, the international Human Rights Watch organization has announced following it's investigation of the recent events.
According to the HRW report, Palestinian gunmen endangered the lives of local residents by preparing and setting explosive devices inside the refugee camp.
Armed Palestinians also utilized the camp area in order to plan terror attacks, the report determined.
During interviews with Human Rights Watch researchers, local Palestinian residents of the refugee camp did not claim IDF carried out a massacre....
The organization's chief investigator told Israel Radio that Human Rights Watch intends to publish a separate report on Palestinian suicide attacks on Israeli civilian targets - a phenomenon that he termed a crime against humanity.
The report will also investigate the involvement of sovereign nations in the preparation and execution of Palestinian suicide attacks.
By The Associated Press
JERUSALEM - A U.S.-based human rights group said Israeli troops may have committed "war crimes" during the house-to-house battle at the Jenin refugee camp, but there was no evidence supporting Palestinian claims of a massacre.
In a report to be published Friday, Human Rights Watch said three of its investigators spent a week gathering testimony in the Jenin camp and documented the deaths of 52 Palestinians, 22 of whom were civilians.
"Many of the civilians were killed willfully or unlawfully," a summary of the 48-page report said. "The abuses we documented in Jenin are extremely serious and in some cases appear to be war crimes."
An army spokesman said the military was studying the summary. Israel has said that Palestinian militants themselves broke the rules of war by setting up bases and stockpiling arms and explosives in a civilian residential area.
Danny Ayalon, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said, "I flatly reject the war crimes charge. It was a war zone. It was full of booby traps and explosives," adding that the Israeli army "did everything to be reasonable."
He also disputed the group's figures. "Of the 51 bodies found, 44 were of armed terrorists and seven of civilians, which we very much regret," he said.
The Jenin Hospital said Wednesday that 52 bodies had been recovered so far.
The eight days of fierce fighting in the camp ended April 11 and left 23 Israeli soldiers dead and dozens more wounded.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Thursday called Jenin "the new Stalingrad," referring to the Russian city now known as Volgograd where about 1 million Soviet soldiers and civilians died during a 200-day offensive by the German army, in the bloodiest battle of World War ll.
Other Palestinian officials have alleged that hundreds of Palestinians were killed during the Israeli invasion of the Jenin camp. Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat told CNN that 500 Palestinians had been killed in the fighting, although he later told The Associated Press he could not document the figure.
Human Rights Watch said its experts had found nothing to back such allegations.
"Human Rights Watch did not find evidence to support claims that the (Israeli military) massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the camp," the report said.
Fakhri Turkman, a Palestinian Legislative Council member and the head of an emergency committee set up to help camp residents, criticized Human Rights Watch and other groups who did not use the term "massacre" to describe the Israeli operation.
"Sometimes we call it a massacre when you kill one innocent person," he told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Citing specific cases, Human Rights Watch charged that troops killed a wounded Palestinian gunman hours after he had been disarmed. The group also alleged that fire from an Israeli armored vehicle killed a 14-year-old boy on his way to buy groceries after the army lifted its curfew in the camp.
It said a 57-year-old man, Kamal Zghair, was shot and then run over by tanks as he was moving along a main road in a wheelchair, displaying a white flag. The report said a paralyzed man was crushed in the rubble of his home after soldiers refused to give his family sufficient time to carry him away before the army bulldozed the house.
According to the HRW report, Palestinian gunmen endangered the lives of local residents by preparing and setting explosive devices inside the refugee camp.Imagine that. A human rights group with integrity.
who'da thunk it ??
Hmmmm.....I wonder who tomahawk is talking about...
And other times, like when we kill Jews at pizza parlors and Passover seders, we don't.
"Palestinians claim there was a massacre in Jenin. Israelis deny that a massacre took place." This is accompanied by pictures of collapsed houses, a body being pulled from the rubble, and a staged portrayal of the "homeless" sitting under part of a torn canvas.
This kind of reporting is the type of "truth" we are getting from all of our major news media. Journalism in the U.S. has reached an abominably low level.
Thanks for clearing that up. This is the paragraph that you left out:
However, the report discussed cases of war crimes and human rights violations on the part of IDF soldiers and requested Israel investigate such incidents.
It still omits details and could leave readers with the false impression that the report only requested an Israeli investigation.
If that were true, the Israelis would have admitted it and apologized by now. This is bunk.
We have not killed thousands of innocents in Afghanistan any more than there was a massacre in Jenin.
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