> ------------------- > Ha'aretz - Article > Back to Jenin > By Ze'ev Schiff > > What was the spark that set off the rumors about a massacre in > Jenin's refugee camp? It's been weeks since the controversy broke > out during the hard battle the IDF conducted there during Operation > Defensive Shield, and now two stories have come up that might be > able to shed some light on how the rumors spread. > > At one point in the fighting, the army used loudspeakers calling on > all the men between the ages of 16 and 50 to turn themselves in. > Many came out and were sent to Kafr Salem for questioning. Some of > those questioned were sent for further questioning to Shin Bet > facilities, while the rest were not allowed to go back to the city, > where the battle continued. They were transferred to mosques in the > villages of Rumna and Zabuba and the northern West Bank. Their > families did not receive word from them or about them, and rumors > began to fly that they had been executed. > > At the same time, another story developed. Toward the end of the > fighting, the army sent three large refrigerator trucks into the > city. Reservists decided to sleep in them for their air > conditioning. Some Palestinians saw dozens of covered bodies lying > in the trucks and rumors spread the Jews had filled trucks full of > Palestinian bodies. > > Some Palestinians went to the Civil Administration to ask. When it > turned out the rumors of executions were baseless, the myth of the > Jenin massacre evaporated on its own. But Palestinian Minister Saeb > Erekat continued lying, though he lowered the number of dead from > three thousand to five hundred. At the same time the Arab and > European media began writing about a massacre. Some described > monstrous Israeli war crimes that Israel was trying to cover up for > two weeks. Others compared Israel to the Qaeda and Taliban. None has > since retracted the mendacious claims nor tried to find out how they > were misled. > > Many of these details came out during a conference held by the > Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies on Israel's media strategies, > with the Jenin episode used as an example. Lt. Col. Fuad Halhal of > Shfaram told the most fascinating story, about serving as the Civil > Administration officer in Jenin. Previously he had been in Tul Karm > and Hebron. He illustrated his talk with photographs, including > meetings with International Red Cross and Red Crescent > representatives, who were surprised to see the pictures after they > claimed the meetings never took place. > > After 13 soldiers were killed in Jenin, there was indeed a tendency > on the part of some soldiers to be quick on the trigger. > Nonetheless, even during the combat and explosions there were > efforts made to assist the civilian population, including supplying > food, oxygen canisters and an Israeli generator to the Palestinian > hospital, the transfer of 83 patients from that hospital to Israeli > hospitals, sending technicians from the Jerusalem Electric Company > to fix damaged lines in Jenin, repairs to the drinking water pipes, > and repairs to a well that ceased to function. This was all > documented, and sometimes photographed by Lt. Col. Halhal. > > A representative from the Foreign Ministry, Gideon Meir, said he was > hearing all this for the first time and that during the fighting > none of this reached the communications department he heads at the > Foreign Ministry. In other words, a strange blockage took place in > the Israeli public relations pipeline. The information was there, > but it was stuck, in one of the bureaucratic channels. Sometimes it > was because the pubic relations arms were in competition. That fact > is also mentioned in a report issued by the Jaffee Center. Despite > years of preaching to the army that it has to change its basic > assessments to include the public relations element and to deal with > it as an element as critical as the weather, the enemy's positions > or the topography, it has not been done to this day. The case of the > massacre that never was in Jenin is a good example of the mud that > can stick to Israel even when it wins the battle while suffering > many casualties. > > � Copyright 2002 Ha`aretz. All rights reserved
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