Israel defends destruction in Jenin

NAHAL GINAT, West Bank, April 18 (UPI) -- A female Israeli intelligence colonel, a loaded M-16 slung beside her, Thursday urged reporters to pick up binoculars and TV crews to zoom cameras in on a light brown area in the center of Jenin's refugee camp.

From the hilltop where Col. Miri Eisin stood, it seemed as though a giant crushed houses and shoved debris aside, piling it up.

It was impossible to see people digging through the rubble for lost loved ones, let alone smell what U.N. Mideast envoy Terje Roed-Larsen described as "the stench of decaying corpses."

Two bulletproof buses brought the reporters and TV crew to the tree-covered hilltop of what used to be called Nahal Ginat, a military settlement west of Jenin. It was a military attempt to pre-empt world criticism of the deaths and destruction in Jenin as troops moved out and journalists were expected to swarm in the minute they were allowed.

"This is what one would see after harsh urban warfare," Eisin argued. "The only place where you had harsh urban fighting in the last 30 years is down here."

She pointed out the vast majority of the buildings in Jenin were intact. Mosques were not hit, even though the army produced pictures showing Palestinian militants had fired from them.

It is not clear how many Palestinians were killed in the camp. Thursday morning Palestinian human rights groups convened a news conference in Jerusalem alleging hundreds had died, that an Israeli truck dumped bodies into a pit and then retrieved them. They alleged people were executed and soldiers allowed women into a house to evacuate a crippled man only to begin demolishing the building when they went inside.

The allegations were not backed by witnesses or signed testimonies. One speaker told United Press International that next week they will publish testimonies.

The Israelis denied there had been a massacre. Eisin said the army could have crushed the camp with four or five F-16 bombs but instead sent infantry for house-to-house combat.

The army operated "with tweezers," the division's commander, Brig. Gen. Eyal Shlein said. The Israelis paid for it, he said, with 23 soldiers killed and 75 wounded in Jenin.

It was not clear how many Palestinians were killed there but Eisin said a couple of hundred Palestinians fought, fewer than 100 surrendered and 25 bodies were found. "Some probably got away," she said.

Four dead bodies were found with explosive suicide belts. The army confirmed two of the dead were civilians.

Shlein accused the militants of using civilians as human shields and not letting some of them go. He said one of his officers saw Palestinians force two women to stand in front of a gunman who stuck his gun between them and fired.

"Even if there are more bodies buried here and there, this is not a massacre," he stressed.

Shlein said thousands fled before the soldiers came. The first houses the troops encountered were rigged with bombs and empty, and he said he believed the families did not want to stay in them. It may explain why the evacuation of corpses has gone so slowly; live bombs are in the rubble.

The ultimate weapon, however, seemed to be the huge, bullet proof, D-9 bulldozers whose mere arrival shook the ground.

Shlein said soldiers called out to people to leave their homes and gave them time to do so. When they heard civilians in distress who wanted to leave, "we stopped the fire and stopped the tractors," he added. "Sometimes people came out, and sometimes they did not."

Shlein said appeals for lulls became more frequent as soldiers neared the heart of the camp. He said it was assumed militants called for them to buy time to escape to neighboring homes or tunnels.

The only massacre in Jenin was of the truth. The PA/Eurotrash media Goebells-like campaign of lies is being exposed as nothing but lies. Palestinians lie. All the time.

I'm waiting for the press to publish even one uncropped photo taken from the vantage point which would depict the small percentage of Jemin that was actually destroyed. No, the press prefers to crop their photos to imply total destruction like those aerial post-destruction shots of Rotterdam or Hiroshima.

Reminds me of the ceaseless replay of the worst 90 seconds of the Rodney King beating from the six minute tape to exclude how threatening and uncooperative he was.

Ah, yes. The truth dribbles out slowly. Now that cameras are going to go inside Jenin, we won't hear another peep on the news about what really happened there. We won't see any massacre pictures because they don't exist.

Nothing more to see here...Move along folks, move along...

Well, let us wait and see. The IDF kept every-one out for 11 days. Let us see what transpires over the next few weeks. You won't believe it, even if evidence is shown of indiscriminate slaughter will you? Judging by what the Israeli Ambassador was saying on the news this morning, the line is : - there has been no massacre, Jenin was not a refugee camp, the Palestinians blew the buildings up themselves, any palestinian civilians killed where killed by PLO fighters, any dead palestinian male was a suicide bomber or a militant. Let us see what comes out of the rubble.

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