Palestinians agree with Israel shock horror!

Saturday May 04, 2002 05:48

by Mark Steyn - Columnist

I USUALLY save the I-told-you-so gloat for the year-in-review column, but I can't resist noting that Yasser Arafat's Fatah organisation has now come round to my way of thinking on the Jenin refugee camp. "There was no massacre," I wrote here two weeks ago, when Robert Fisk and Fleet Street's other sob-sisters were running around weepin' and a-wailin' about mass graves and war crimes. The Israeli government's latest figures for Jenin put the death toll of Palestinians at 52. The Palestinians themselves put the death toll at - wait for it - 56.

That's right: 56. There are no missing zeroes on the end. The only missing zeroes are those gullible British hacks who swallowed that line about hundreds of dead civilians but have fallen mysteriously silent as the figures have been revised downward. The total of 56 dead was announced by Kadoura Moussa, the Fatah director for the northern West Bank, after four Palestinian Authority investigators reported their findings to him at his office in the camp. Is a discrepancy of four enough to qualify as a "massacre"? Twenty three Israeli soldiers died at Jenin, so the comparative death tolls sound less like a "massacre" and more like a - what's the word? - "battle".

So the Israelis and Palestinians are more or less agreed. The only guys who don't agree are excitable chaps such as Gerald Kaufman, who's demanding sanctions against Israel, and my colleague Armando Iannucci, whose droll killer-Jews-on-the-rampage column appeared on this page yesterday. Considering that the Telegraph Group is routinely dismissed by Richard Ingrams and co as a Zionist lackey, I do think we could do more to live up to the name.

In contrast, the other day the Independent's Phil Reeves criticised "the Palestinian leadership, who, instantly and without proof, declared that a massacre had occurred in which as many as 500 died. Palestinian human rights groups made matters worse by churning out wild, and clearly untrue, stories." They obviously weren't quite so clearly untrue a week and a half earlier, when a presumably entirely different Phil Reeves wrote about Israeli "atrocities committed in the Jenin refugee camp, where its army has killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians".

So, 52-56. Hmm. Where have I heard those numbers before? Why, in another famous media illusion - "the brutal Afghan winter", under whose gruelling conditions Kabul this January had to cope with average daytime temperatures of 52-56! It would, however, be unfair to suggest that in every ludicrous Fleet Street fiction the correct figure will prove to be 52-56. For example, when the Yanks were torturing al-Qa'eda suspects in "the searing heat of Guantanamo", the overnight low was 66 and breezy, or about the same as a late January day in Kandahar in the brutal Afghan winter, when the warlords and their catamites stroll arm in arm down the sun-dappled streets.

None the less, in recognition of my colleagues' spectacularly inept record since September 11, I am proud to announce the inauguration of the British Press Award For Total Fantasy. Journalists can enter as many of their reports as they wish. Can't decide whether that story based on a Hamas press release is more risible than that dispatch based on the Radio Taliban lunchtime news? Hey, send us both! Winners will receive a grand prize of FIVE THOUSAND POUNDS!!!! However, in keeping with traditional Fleet Street standards of numerical accuracy, when the cheque eventually shows up a month later it'll be for £8.47. The lucky winners will also get a year's subscription to the Independent, which will expire after six weeks. We'll announce the results in mid-September - the first anniversary of early sightings of "the fast-approaching brutal Afghan winter". Who knows? It may even have shown up by then.

But that's not the only columnar innovation this week. I gather Mr Kaufman is upset that Kofi Annan has called off his UN investigation into Jenin. The reason, according to taste, is either that the Israelis are being unco-operative or that there wasn't much point in the commission schlepping all that way just to discover that it wasn't 52-56, but 58, or 61, or 47. One of the three members was Cornelio Sommaruga, the former president of the International Red Cross who once compared the Star of David to the swastika. Anyone interested in pondering this comparison further can find the two emblems conveniently displayed in close proximity at an increasing number of European synagogues.

Anyway, as Kofi's commission isn't going ahead, I'm pleased to announce my own fact-finding investigation into - drumroll, please - the UN. Ex-ambassadors, European Foreign Ministers and former presidents of humanitarian organisations are welcome to apply to join my commission, but, if they're too busy, we'll make do with jes' regular folks. Among the issues we'll be examining: UN participation in the sex-slave trade in Bosnia; the UN refugee extortion racket in Kenya; UN involvement in massive embezzlement in Kosovo; the UN's cover-up of the sex-for-food scandal in West Africa involving aid workers demanding sexual favours from children as young as four; the UN-fuelled explosion of drugs, Aids and prostitution in Cambodia; the UN's complicity in massacres in pre-liberated Afghanistan; and, if we've any time left, the UN's collusion in terrorism in the Jenin refugee camp. As the organisation's own internal investigations usually put it, UN seen nothin' yet!

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Comments (5 of 5)

Response to a dangerous column

by Eoin Maher

Sat May 04, 2002 11:49

eoin_maher at hotmail dot com

Mark,

Well written column. You have made a
number of allegations against many figures in
the journalistic community, including phil reeves,
of the Independent who you say criticised the
Palestinian leadership for lying, and then
saying he was being hypocritical by saying:

"atrocities committed in the Jenin refugee camp,
where its army has killed and injured hundreds
of Palestinians".

No doubt the Palestinian Authority allegations of
a massacre were totally exagerated, but the above
comment does not dispute the facts (i.e. that around,
for arguments sake, fifty were killed), he does
however, accuse the IDF of killing and injuring
hundreds of Palestinians. Is it not reasonable to
think that if 50 have died (Personally i think the
death toll will rise, but only slightly) that at
least another 50 were injured? You should read my
report on the Irish - Palestinian protest in Dublin last week:

http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=2753

Look at the piece on Pronsious De Rossa's speech.
(Pronsious is a veteran of Irish politics and a
respected man who was on a the recent EU mission to
Jenin)

As for atrocities commited by the IDF, i think that
speech sats it all. If you need more proof, you
should have listened to Morning Ireland on Friday
Morning when a spokesperson from the Swiss human
rights agency, human rights watch, who published a
report in the UN's absence. She confirmed that the
IDF used ten year old Palestinian children as human
shields. Some men rested their rifles on the childrens
shoulders as they fired.

You have made a number of accusations against the UN,
for which you have given no evidence, show me some
or you are in breach of our editorial policy. You may be in breach
of liable law.

Jenin Deaths

by Oliver O'Driscoll

Sat May 04, 2002 18:19

There has been no investigation in the Zionist crimes in Jenin. The Zionists have refused totally to co-operate in any way and effectively
sabotaged the "fact finding" mission proposed by Kofi Annan. There had been no search for bodies under the rubble of houses destroyed by the Zionists because the Zionist "army" refused to allow such equipment to be used. There has been no investigation and I fail to understand how any journalist even one who is obviously a zionist sympathiser, can conclude that there was no massacre without such an enquiry been carried out.

There is also the question of the hundreds of Palestinian people kidnapped by the Zionists. Given their apppalling human rights record, the torture techniques employed on Palestinian and Lebanese prisoner in South Lebanon, grave concern must be felt for the people abducted in the West Bank. Hopefully, the ICRC may be able to help in this regard, but of course just like the "fact finding" farce, the Zionists, supported by Washington will simply refuse to co-operate again.

U.N. No written evidence required.

by Maerton Davis - NONE

Sat May 04, 2002 21:28

maertondavis at yahoo dot co dot uk

Kibbutz Lavi

00972 4 6799332

I don't understand why Eoin Maher requires written proof of the United Nations collusion in the sex trade or other accusations as per Mark Steyn's article. All have been well documented and reported on the B.B.C. World service as well as in many newspapers articles. It is also well known that Kofi Annan allowed the masacre in Rwanda to be carried out and has never ordered any investigations of massacres of Jewish people by Arabs.
Regards Kofis inaction regarding Rwanda see U.N. documentation between him and his Belgium counterpart and rep. in Rwanda during and just before that period. In fact, in my opinion Kofi should be tried as a war criminal for allowing that atrocity to happen.

Jenin -

by David Swiss - ----------------------

Sat May 04, 2002 23:27

dave_swissch at yahoo dot com

dave_swissch@yahoo.com

----------------------------------

Why does no one ask why the Israeli forces felt they had to go in to Jenin in the first instance ? Did it not happen after the Nethanya Passover night massacre ?
If they knew that over 20 of the suicide bombers had come from there it is obvious that the UN run " camp " which seemed to be a densely packed area of 2 and 3 storey houses
which haboured the master minds of the bombing capaign needed to be winkled out . Film footage taken at the time in Jenin shown a few days ago on a British TV station [ I T V ] showed how many civilians of that area moved out unharmed and then showed how Israeli soldiers were ambushed by snipers and killed by an extensive range of booby traps .
It was only then when 15 of their men were killed that bulldozers were brought in to widen the narrow alley ways in order to clear a path . Aerial photos show the demolished area to be minute compared to the rest of the UN "camp "
township and even more minute compared to the whole of the town of Jenin . I think the total area affected was less than the size of asoccer pitch .

Kofi Annan

Sat May 04, 2002 23:33

The genocide in Rwanda took place because the "Democracies", Clinton and co. were not interested/took the view that their "vital national interests" were not at stake. Instead, the U.N. forces in Kigali, withdrew and left large numbers of people to be murdered in one of the most brutal ways possible. The fault lies with Clinton, Blair, Chirac et al, It was not the fault of Kofi Annan who was/is only a servant of the major powers, U.S. etc. a functionary in other words. Without their support, he would not be U.N. numero uno.

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Palestinians agree with Israel shock horror!

Comments (5 of 5)