Talk:Jenin
- filmed what IDF claims to be Palestinians carrying out a phoney funeral procession
I think that the "IDF claims" part is unnecessary. The pictures are self-evident and undeniable - looking at them makes anyone with half a brain think "this is a Palestinian funeral". Of course, the Palestinians could claim that the pictures are a fabrication. However, I've not heard so far of such a claim, and if it appears, it should be written down as another sentence, "Palestinians claim the IDF phootage is a falsification". --Uriyan
- Actually I was trying to change to article in a way that anyone who follows the link to the images / movie will watch it with a open mind and then decide what they think about it. Now I found a article where the Palestinians say that this is wanted Palestinians fleeing. I will try to find some other sources confirming this. --Peter Winnberg, Saturday, May 4, 2002
- That's surely a funny way to flee - in the middle of nowhere (the pictures were filmed from a pilotless aircraft, almost impossible to notice), with a stretcher, bearing a man that can obviously walk on his own, accompanied by a mob and with green (Hammas) flags. One needs only to apply Occam's Razor to determine what was that. --Uriyan
For those who keep inserting major changes, talk about them here first in the "Talk" section! You can't force major changes in a communal project by brute force, as you are currently doing. Encyclopaedia are made by intellectual consensus, not force. If you wish to back up your conspiracy theory claims that Jenin was somehow not the source of many homicide bombers against Israel, then you must back up these extraordinary claims with firm evidence. We're willing to read what you have to say, as long as you have logical arguments and reliable sources to back up your claims. [[RK]]
Perhaps we could tolerate the occasional parenthetical phrase such as the Israelis, regarded as an occupation force by Arabs, did X. After all, the key to this and related articles on the Arab-Israeli conflit is both (A) what happened (facts) and (B) the meaning of what happened (intrepretation).
To give a personal example, when I was in the US Army I once bit another soldier; he had to have stitches. His statement and mine agreed on that fact. I was not punished, however, because my purpose for biting him was to make him release me from a headlock. The company commander accepted that interpretation of my actions.
I find in discussions of the Middle East partial to close agreement on facts but major disagreement on interpretation. This makes our task as article contributors rather difficult.
Ed Poor, Friday, May 31, 2002
I added an Arab POV, which I think I have attributed properly. Ed Poor, Friday, May 31, 2002
- It should be noted that many Arab writers justify anti-Israeli terrorism on their view that Israel is unjustifiably "occupying" the West Bank.
- Indeed many of these writers disdain the use of the term terrorism to describe their resistance, reserving the term solely for Israel, which they label "terrorist" and "racist".
Of course, the late Sheikh Izz Ad-Din El-Qasam was resisting against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. No, wait. There weren't an Israel or West Bank back in 1935. There were dead Jews though, Jews that he had killed. I will not reintegrate this passage, but link to the general discussion of Palestinian terrorism. --Uriyan
NPOV query: Why is there a "Munich massacre" (2 Israelis, 1 policeman and 5 Palestinians dead) but no "Jenin massacre" ("at least 52 Palestinians, of whom up to half may have been civilians, and 23 Israeli soldiers" dead UN Report)?
- First of all, in Munich Massacre, 11 Israelis died. Secondly, the non-combatant Palestinian casualties were not killed deliberately, but rather died in the course of heavy fighting, which most parties recognize as justified on Israel's behalf, considering the terrorist infrastructure that existed in the city. Declaring it a "massacre" would demand that (a) Israeli soldiers had a choice of killing or not killing the Palestinians and (b) The Palestinians were not anyhow fighting the Israelis. Neither of these conditions was fulfilled. --Uri
Regarding the changes that I reverted: declaring El-Qasam a "fighter against the Israeli occupation" is simply ludicrous. He died before 13 year before there was an Israel, and 32 years before Israel took over the Territories. Also, is there something wrong in mentioning the streets of Jenin were covered with posters hailing suicide bombers? --Uri
I moved the text from over from [[Jenin Massacre]]. I find having an article with such a title, while no serious party still entertains the notion that a massacre took place (e.g. systematic killing, see above for how I define a massacre) offensive, both to the soldiers that fought in Jenin, to the families of those soldiers who were killed, and to the victims of suicide bombers that came out of Jenin. --Uri
The alleged Jenin massacre of 2002, wherein supposedly 3,000 peaceful Arab Palestinians were killed in cold blood by Israeli troops was acknowledged by Palestinian Authority leaders to have resulted in far fewer deaths than originally announced. The final death toll was around 60 persons.
The Human Rights Watch report stated that it found "no evidence to sustain claims of massacres or large-scale extrajudicial executions by the IDF". However, the same HRW report did accuse Israel of war crimes, including shooting and running over with a tank a man whose wheelchair flew a white flag, and crushing a paralyzed man in his home.
Amnesty International also came to the conclusion that there was no massacre.
See: Jenin
Uri, I have no problem with your movement of the Jenin massacre or even with deleting the article. I only created it to answer someone's question. However, the information needs to be merged into an article somewhere. Would you do this, when you get a chance? --Ed Poor
- Most of the information is already in Jenin. The only information not found in the text is the description of the alleged war crimes. The discussion about the "shooting and running over with a tank a man whose wheelchair flew a white flag, and crushing a paralyzed man in his home." would need much more than just the HRW POV, and ultimately including them would do more harm than good. The major complaint about Israel's conduct is about the use of human shields. That is included in the article. --Uri
I have never, ever been able to locate any direct quotation of the Palestinian officials who supposedly claimed 3,000 were killed in Jenin. I've come across right-wing Zionist websites saying so -- that's it. They did say that 3,000 were made homeless, which no one contests.
I've never even seen a mainstream source like FOX or NBC make the claim that Palestinian officials have said so. Rather, these sources say that a PA official, Saeb Erekat, claimed 500 were killed -- also false, but with a seed of truth to it.
On April 10, 2002, Erekat told CNN anchor Jim Clancy, "What we're saying, we see an opportunity in the secretary's visit. We want to help in order to insure the success of the secretary's visit, because insuring the success of implementing [UN resolution] 1402 means stopping the killing fields out there, and you know as the numbers I am receiving today is that the numbers of killed could reach 500 since the Israeli offensive began. Thousands of wounded. You know, the Jenin refuge camp is no longer in existence, and now we've heard of executions there."
There you have it. Erekat *never* said that 500 were killed in Jenin, but that 500 had been killed throughout the West Bank during Operation Defensive Shield.
Israeli officials, on the other hand, initially did much to make people suspect a massacre. On April 10, according to Ha'aretz, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres characterized the attack on Jenin as a "massacre". Unnamed military officers said, "When the world sees the pictures of what we have done there, it will do us immense damage."
"According to the Israeli Defence Forces, Israel chose not to bomb the spots of resistance using aircraft as it entered in order to minimize civilian losses [1], but rather to take hold of the city using infantry."
- Well I think since the Battle of Hue military experts agrees that it's a very bad idea to bomb concrete buildings in an urban zone. A bombed building is a perfect refuge for snipers.
- Ericd 19:49, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- With the amount of explosive Palestinians planted in the camp - there were no bombed building left for a sniper to hide in.
- User: annon
Can someone help me with math? From the Jenin page "They agreed with the total casualty figures provided by the IDF but reported triple the civilian casualties" The IDF reported 52 Palestinian casualties of which 22 were civilian. "They" (not sure if its Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International) agree on 52 but claim 3 * 22 civilians. 3 * 22 = 66. 66 > 52. can this be fixed? does someone have the report that says 3 times? perhaps it was 2 times? (at least 2 * 22 = 44 < 52 is mathematically correct.) OneVoice 21:56, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)
changed "triple the civilian casualties" -> "higher proportion of the civilian casualties" so that the arthimatic works after waiting 10 days for a response to the above. OneVoice 20:31, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Is there any truth to and seriousness in the 3000 casualty figure claim claim (yes, two words) or is this the same tactic that was used with Deir Yassin where the casualty figures were inflated by the perpetrators themselves only to trivialize the incident altogether by discrediting the opponents after they took over what appeared to be a self-confessed truth? Pretty disingenuous if you ask me. -- Dissident 23:06, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)