What Happened in Jenin?

[Mark Pavlick]

>
>                                FAIR-L
>                     Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
>                Media analysis, critiques and activism
>
>MEDIA ADVISORY:
>What Happened in Jenin?
>
>May 10, 2002
>
>As violence continues in Israel and Palestine, so does debate over what
>exactly happened during Israel's invasion of the Jenin refugee camp.
>Israel barred journalists and aid workers alike from the camp during the
>invasions, but as access restrictions have eased, human rights groups have
>issued graphic reports detailing evidence of human rights violations by
>the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and possible war crimes.
>
>Some media accounts, too, have vividly described the damage across the
>West Bank: One New York Times story (4/11/02) reported that "it is safe to
>say that the infrastructure of life itself and of any future Palestinian
>state-- roads, schools, electricity pylons, water pipes, telephone lines--
>has been devastated." Lately, however, much U.S. coverage and commentary
>has passed over investigations of whether the IDF committed widespread
>rights abuses in favor of narrower-- and less meaningful-- wrangling over
>whether or not the IDF committed a "massacre."
>
>Amnesty International has emphasized that "there is no legal definition in
>international law of the word 'massacre'," and that using the term in
>reference to Jenin "is not helpful" for determining whether the IDF
>violated human rights there (AI press release, 4/29/02). Nevertheless, the
>"massacre" question has become central to many journalists' approach to
>the story-- even when they don't have a working definition of the word.
>
>One illustration of how poorly media have thought through the concept came
>when CNBC's Chris Matthews (Hardball, 4/16/02) asked chief PLO
>representative to the U.S. Hasan Abdel Rahman whether he had evidence of a
>massacre in Jenin. Rahman turned the tables, asking, "Well, first of all,
>what's a massacre?" With disquieting vagueness, Matthews replied, "Oh, a
>couple hundred people or civilians or ten or 20 civilians."
>
>Most early estimates in the U.S. press of the number of Palestinians
>killed in Jenin ranged from 100 to 200. Media were caught up in the
>implications for Israel's image, declaring Jenin a "diplomatic and public
>relations minefield" (CBS Evening News, 4/24/02). As initial excavation
>work got underway, however, those original figures were downgraded, and
>the question for many news outlets became whether Palestinians had
>manufactured "massacre" claims. In fact, many of those early casualty
>figures had been provided by Israeli officials. "The Israeli army
>estimates that it killed 100 to 200 people in eight days of fighting,"
>reported CBS Evening News on April 12. On ABC's Nightline (4/11/02), Dave
>Marash reported that Israeli defense forces "estimate 100 Palestinian
>fighters were killed there, but refused to say where the bodies are, and
>they continue to bar news people from the camp."
>
>Once Human Rights Watch (HRW) gained access to the camp, the group was
>able to document 52 people killed by the IDF, including 22 civilians, many
>of whom "were killed willfully or unlawfully" (press release, 5/3/02).
>HRW's report on Jenin didn't focus on the sheer numbers of dead, however.
>Instead, the bulk of the report catalogued a pattern of serious human
>rights violations in Jenin, some of which the group says may be war
>crimes. The abuses include attacking and killing medical personnel, using
>civilians as human shields, failing to distinguish between military
>targets and civilian homes, and causing "extensive and disproportionate
>destruction of the civilian infrastructure"-- so much so that more than a
>quarter of Jenin's population is now homeless.
>
>Amnesty International announced similar findings in a May 4 report, "The
>Heavy Price of Israeli Incursions," which condemned the IDF invasions of
>the Occupied Territories as collective punishment of Palestinians. The
>report documents "unlawful killings, destruction of property and arbitrary
>detention [and] torture and ill-treatment" by the IDF, and states that
>many of these actions violated human rights and international law.
>
>The HRW and Amnesty reports were very direct in their conclusions, but
>some journalists nonetheless managed to miss the point. On NPR's May 4
>"Weekend Edition," anchor Scott Simon asked NPR analyst Daniel Schorr to
>explain what the newly released reports said about Jenin. Schorr said:
>
>"Human Rights Watch has found that there was no massacre as such. Yes,
>there were a couple of things that were not very nice. They found Israelis
>destroyed more buildings than they absolutely had to. The Israelis say
>they had to 'cause they thought they were booby trapped, but Human Rights
>Watch says sometimes human beings were used as human shields. Maybe. Some
>things happened which were not terribly, terribly nice, and I'm sure they
>happened a lot. But if the question is raised that 'Was there a deliberate
>massacre of civilians in Jenin?' the answer seems to come out no. "
>
>It's hard to imagine a mainstream U.S. commentator characterizing
>civilians being "killed willfully or unlawfully" as "a couple of things
>that were not very nice"-- if the perpetrators were an official U.S.
>enemy, like Serbia or Iraq. And, of course, in large part it's up to
>Schorr and his media colleagues to decide which questions are raised about
>Jenin.
>
>Some of those colleagues gave up even on the narrow question of a
>massacre, taking the troubling stance that the facts may never be known,
>or might not even matter. As CBS Evening correspondent Mark Phillips put
>it on April 18, "Did a wholesale massacre take place here? In terms of the
>hostility between Palestinians and Israelis, it almost doesn't matter.
>Perceptions are what count, and Jenin has already become another reason
>for mistrust, hatred and revenge."
>
>The following night, CNN's Christiane Amanpour reached a similar
>conclusion: "Jenin will remain for the Palestinians a place of myth and
>legend and perhaps even a place of revenge." The same day, NPR's Julie
>McCarthy commented that "The story of Jenin is set to live on in memory
>and myth." On April 20, CBS's Phillips still didn't know who to trust:
>"What happened in Jenin depends on who you believe."
>
>Of course, the job of a journalist is to separate myth from fact, and to
>investigate conflicting claims to see which are true. Even when
>journalists did try to report what happened at Jenin, however, that
>reporting was sometimes sanitized beyond recognition. Consider this
>description from the New York Times on April 21: "As Israeli forces
>pursued militants, civilians continued getting in the way and dying as a
>result."
>
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