Posted on 04/20/2002 4:44:02 AM PDT by Jurist
This is a transcript of AM broadcast at 0800 AEST on local radio.
Jenin massacre uncovering
AM - Friday, April 19, 2002 8:08
LINDA MOTTRAM: To the Middle East and as more information comes out of the cities of Jenin and Nablus on the West Bank, it's becoming clear that Israel will have to answer allegations that it's committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during its occupation of the West Bank.
One British forensic expert says the evidence points to a massacre by Israeli forces. That expert is Professor Derrick Pounder from Amnesty International who's inspected the devastation and examined some of the now rotting bodies that are still being pulled from the rubble in Jenin.
He says the truth will come out, just as it did in Bosnia and in Kosovo before and the UN envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, who has also inspected the Jenin refugee camp says the sight is horrific beyond belief and that Israel's failure to allow in rescue teams was morally repugnant.
The ABC's foreign affairs editor Peter Cave reports from Jerusalem.
PETER CAVE: As he picked his way through a pile of rubble the size of several football fields which was once a crowded ghetto of houses in the refugee camp, Terje Roed-Larsen was clearly taken aback by the scale of the devastation, the bodies and the knowledge that many who died underneath were buried alive for days.
TERJE ROED-LARSEN: I think I can speak for all in the UN delegation here that we are shocked, this is horrifying beyond belief. Just seeing this area looks like as if there's been an earthquake here and the stench of death telling its own story around here.
PETER CAVE: Mr Roed-Larsen has called for a full withdrawal of Israeli forces and a lifting of a curfew in the area, not only to allow the retrieval of the dead but also to provide urgent help for those still alive.
DERRICK POUNDER: The stench of decaying corpses are all over the place. I saw personally an about 12-year-old boy being dug out, his body totally destroyed. I saw two brothers digging out of the rubble their father and their brothers.
There are people all over the place digging with their hands, looking for their relatives and dear ones. It's a horrible scene.
The devastation is nearly total at the heart of the refugee camp and we assess that about 2,000 people are now without roof over their heads. There's lack of food, there's lack of water, the electricity grids are destroyed, the water is cut.
It's a catastrophic situation particularly in the refugee camp but also in the whole town of Jenin.
PETER CAVE: Despite growing international outrage over the apparent massacre, the Israeli Government remains unrepentant. Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir.
GIDEON MEIR: Jenin is a symbol of Palestinian brutalitism. Jenin is a capital of suicide bombers. Jenin, there was a huge infrastructure of terror. We went there to fight the terrorist cells to eliminate terror. There was heavy fighting there and great fighting there. We lost 23 of our boys. Jenin is not a recreation area, Jenin is not a resort.
LINDA MOTTRAM: Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir, that report from Peter Cave in Jerusalem.
As I've said before, the sight was not nearly as horrific as the WTC bombings. Most of the bodies there couldn't even get dug up, they were so deeply burried. If you ask me, the Palestinians didn't get what they deserved... there should have been more of them killed. Revenge is a bitch, isn't it?
But ever since these terrorist animals have put me and MY family in danger, I've become a little biased. Can you blame me?
And by the way, why is it that journalists never use the same adjectives when a homicide bomber kills a bunch of innocent people. That's just another day in the hood, huh?
A little angry? You bet I am. Terrorists deserve to die, any time, anywhere, any way. (And please don't tell me about the women and children being innocent!) Unless there's direct and devastating retaliation, none of us will be safe.
PAYBACK'S A B!TCH
Three more:
WAR IS HELL
Here, let me fuel your ill will:
Numbers (In the Wilderness) 33: 50-56
And the Lord said to Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho, “Say to the people of Israel, When you pass over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their figured stones, and destroy all their molten images, and demolish all their high places; and you shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given the land to you to possess it. You shall inherit the land by lot according to your families; to a large tribe you shall give a large inheritance, and to a small tribe you shall give a small inheritance; wherever the lot falls to any man, that shall be his; according to the tribes of your fathers you shall inherit. But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell. And I will do to you as I thought to do to them.”
Absolutely!
You seem to think there's something wrong with that.
How do you suggest we fight the terrorist bastards?
Israel hurt the feelings of the surrender happy Euro wee wees? SO WHAT?
THIS IS WAR!! How would you feel if your wife and been shredded and your two year old had lost her legs in a homicide bombing? GO ISRAEL !!
April 20, 2002
U.S. backs Jenin battle probe
By Bill Sammon and Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The White House yesterday said President Bush supports an investigation into the battle at the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin, and the U.N. Security Council later unanimously approved a fact-finding mission to the West Bank site where scores were killed before Israel withdrew yesterday.
"He wants the facts to be found," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters. "I have not heard the president micromanage who should find those facts, but the president is interested in the bottom line and facts."
With U.S. support and a green light from Israel, the Security Council last night approved the mission to Jenin, where Palestinians have accused Israeli forces of massive humanitarian abuses. Israeli officials have strongly denied the accusations.
The resolution says U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan may send a "fact-finding team" to gather information on recent events in Jenin, scene of the heaviest fighting since Israeli incursions into the West Bank camp some three weeks ago. It does not specify a time frame for the mission.
U.S. officials earlier had threatened to veto an Arab-drafted measure calling for a formal U.N. investigation of the "massacres" in Jenin. But then Washington presented its own milder text after Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres telephoned Mr. Annan from Washington to say his representatives would be welcome.
Earlier yesterday at the U.S. State Department, Mr. Peres met with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and appealed for continued U.S. help in bringing the Middle East back from the brink of war.
"We cannot permit a lull in the situation. It cannot end as it is," Mr. Peres told reporters after the meeting.
"We expect the continuation of the diplomatic, security, economic and humanitarian activities, both by sending a representative of the United States in the near future and, we hope, also the return of the secretary to the region in due course," he said.
Mr. Peres also said the United States should nominate "somebody to have a look how to offer immediate help to the Palestinian people, economically and otherwise."
Although Mr. Bush on Thursday called Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon, "a man of peace," yesterday he stopped short of explicitly backing Israel's denials of wrongdoing in Jenin. Instead, the White House took a wait-and-see position by endorsing a full investigation.
Mr. Powell acknowledged increasing U.S. concern over accusations of a humanitarian disaster in Jenin and other Palestinian towns invaded by Israeli armor and troops in the past three weeks.
"We spent quite a bit of time lingering on the humanitarian issue that is becoming uppermost in our mind, and how the international community has to be positioned to assist with humanitarian relief, reconstruction, and economic activity in the territories, once we get to that point," Mr. Powell told reporters.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said that, in the phone call with Mr. Annan, Mr. Peres only mentioned a mission to the city of Jenin, but "the secretary-general would hope that any fact-finding mission he sends would have full access to all areas of the West Bank."
The resolution reaffirms previous Mideast resolutions demanding an immediate Israeli withdrawal from all Palestinian cities and outlines a blueprint to end the violence and achieve a peace settlement leading to a Palestinian state.
While there has been criticism of Mr. Powell's recent Middle East trip for failing to win either an immediate end to the Israeli military operation or a clear rejection of violence by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Mr. Peres said the trip was a success.
Mr. Peres cited "the harmonization of the international mind" at a meeting in Madrid last week of Europe, the United Nations, Russia and the United States.
"If there will be disagreement between Europe and the United States and Russia, or disagreement between the United States and the United Nations, we shall feel it in the region," said Mr. Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians in the early 1990s.
He and U.S. officials are uncomfortably aware that European public opinion and official statements have clearly been unsympathetic to Israel and to the United States, seen as Israel's strongest supporter.
The second Powell achievement listed by Mr. Peres "was the tranquilization in the north," where Syrian and Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas have largely ended a series of rocket attacks on Israeli positions.
"I think since the visit of the secretary to Syria, we can see now a quiet north," Mr. Peres said.
He also called for renewed political efforts to reach peace, including the Saudi plan calling for Israel to give up conquered Arab lands in return for recognition of Israel by all Arab nations.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher yesterday dismissed reports of widespread Arab resentment at the United States for its perceived backing of Israel.
"What we are hearing from friends in the Arab world is they want to see the U.S. commitment sustained, and we can tell them the U.S. commitment is there," Mr. Boucher added.
He noted that Mr. Powell met yesterday with Tunisian Foreign Minister Ben Yahia and that President Bush meets next week with King Mohammed of Morocco and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Despite Israeli and U.S. opposition, Mr. Annan Thursday renewed appeals for a "robust" international force in Palestinian territory to halt the latest upsurge of violence that began in September 2000, saying the parties could not calm tensions on their own.
Speakers from some 30 nations, mostly from developing countries, called on the council to move immediately toward that end on Thursday. And yesterday, when the debate resumed, French Ambassador John-David Levitte gave his support and said a "significant American commitment appears to us indispensable."
GIDEON MEIR: Jenin is a symbol of Palestinian brutalitism. Jenin is a capital of suicide bombers. Jenin, there was a huge infrastructure of terror. We went there to fight the terrorist cells to eliminate terror. There was heavy fighting there and great fighting there. We lost 23 of our boys. Jenin is not a recreation area, Jenin is not a resort.
But I am sure that's WAY WAY more than enough for the hatefilled blame Israel firsters to convict.
And BTW why are the Palestinians never thought to have committed war crimes? They deliberately attack civilians all the time.
Oh silly me, I forgot, they're poor, brown, and Muslim so they can't possibly be held to any standard.
Oh, I love this BS. THe French--who just can't love mass murderers who love to blow up people in discos, pizza restaurants, at Passover Seder & the like--want the US to put our troops on the line (and I certainly haven't forgotten our troops being blown up in their barracks in Beruit), but want to keep their butts far from the action.
Of course, I'd put France in the category of "developing nation." Their mindset is positively third world.
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