Collounsbury, do you have some evidence of the disinformation that Israel has been spouting from Jenin? I’ve been following the conflict, and right from the start the Israeli military has been saying that there would be civilian casualties, and at the time the reports of the ‘massacre’ surfaced, Israel was saying that the total casualties would be ‘a few dozen’, with an indeterminate number of civilians. That’s not only accurate, it shows that the Israelis were trying very hard to keep tabs on the situation.
If you can think of some whoppers the Israelis have told that have been proven to be false, I’ll be glad to hear it.
As for all Palestinians being liars… don’t put words in my mouth. But the fact is that there HAVE been so many lies out of the Palestinian camp, even by people in the street, that I believe the burden of proof has shifted to them. After all, they originally were saying that there were thousands of dead. There were reports of mass graves with hundreds of bodies in them. The media repeated these stories verbatim, which caused a number of organizations to say that a massacre was going on.
Another interesting tidbit from that article is that the Palestinians are saying that the U.S. is not on the human rights commission because ‘it pulled out in support of Israel’. That is a bald-faced lie. The U.S. was pushed off the commission because two European countries grabbed both slots open in violation of convention, and much to the embarassement of the U.S.
From the Associated Press: The Israeli military on Thursday released film of what appears to be a fake funeral in Jenin. The film, taken by a pilotless plane, shows a man being wrapped in a blanket, put on a stretcher and carried in a funeral procession. Col. Miri Eisin of army intelligence said it was one of several similar incidents.
Forgive me if I tend to be skeptical about yet more ‘war crimes’ committed by Israel, and ask for proof.
Sure, I have a few quibbles with the report: stating an allegation by a witness as “fact”, alleging Israeli use of “human sheilds” without describing the actual allegation (having a prisoner ring doorbells for you, not shooting behind them) and while stating that terrorists hiding in civilian homes and boobytrpping them is not using "human shields, believing witnesses who have already been proven to have made some information up entitrely … and so on.
But I doubt that HRW has a systematic bias against Israel. They have a one interest mission: holding governments and other organizations to the highest standards of preserving human rights. For them there is never a justification for curtailing human rights and they have tough standard.
I admire that, but it is a standard that few governments have ever met. Israel is not filled with angels, it has an army filled with real people. I am sure that they were not perfect.
HRW also says the USA violates human rights … the death penalty … “cruel and unusual” punishment for drug offenses … the prison system having maximum security prisons … Atalata, the city, violates human rights standards … and oh yeah the use of indiscriminate bombs in Afganastan and Iraq.
Has any government fighting terrorists hand to hand, house to house in a civilian environment ever met the satandards set up by HRW?
Tough standards, tough to meet, achievable? maybe. Often acheived by any government in a similar situation? I doubt it.
HRW states that there is evidence of “war crimes” committed at Jenin. When I think of war crimes, it conjures everything from My Lai and Wannassee to international tribunals at the Hague to Goering dangling at Nuremberg.
This term has become loaded, especially with Sharon’s marvelous history. Accusing an Israeli of war crimes will always get you press. Now I am a little hazy on international military law, but I don’t know of any treaties apart from the Geneva Convention that govern the modern rules of law. As a humanitarian organization with no military expertise, I wonder if HRW is the correct group to tell us when war crimes are being committed. This is not really a denial of their claims, but rather a question of their expertise to tell legitimate military action from war crimes.
Take, for instance, their claim that Israel has been using “human shields.” As DSeid has pointed out, this is not the traditional sense that we think of human shields. If anything, the Palestinian extremists who planted bombs in perhaps occupied houses (about one-third down, from the Egyptian Al-Ahram Daily) were using human shields.
The main thing I see Israel being accused of is the prevention of humanitarian aid into Jenin during the fighting. Apparently, ambulances were not allowed to enter, humanitarian workers were kept at bay, etc. Israel has had good reason to limit the activity of the Red Crescent, who has not been immune to abetting extremism. IMHO the IDF has had good reason to keep humanitarian groups from the midst of a bloody, door-to-door, close combat situation where almost nothing determined noncombatant from combatant. Again, I can’t see how HRW could judge what is a war crime versus what is minimizing noncombatant casualties. I can’t see how HRW can judge who is a noncombatant from who is a combatant.
I ask you this: Has there ever been a battle fought in a modern war where the losing side can’t claim war crimes committed?
I could go off on how the UN runs the camps, and that investigation of Israel for dealing with camps by the UN, who at least took no steps in preventing them from becoming homebases of exremism, is rather one-sided. I could go on about human rights abuses by the Palestinians, about mobs killing Israelis who made wrong turns and Palestinians suspected of collaborating.
I hate to play the pro-Israel/pro-Arab media bias game. I find it gets nowhere. But, Israel had been attacked from Jenin, and went in there in nearly the least tactical way (with ground troops going door-to-door) in order to minimize civilian death. In doing so, they sacrificed 23 soldiers. It was an ugly, bloody battle. Most door-to-door battles are. Civilians were killed. In most door-to-door battles they are. One could argue that they fought a relatively successful, relatively humane battle in Jenin. While I see many things wrong with Israeli policy in the territories, the Battle of Jenin is certainly not one of them. This should be a clear PR victory for Israel, and I am puzzled to see those who put it otherwise.
In another thread on the alleged “massacre” Collounsbury said
I predicted that when no “hundreds” of bodies were to be found that such would either be not reported or buried on pg 17 or copackaged with how horrible what else the IDF did was. That no attention would be paid to the fact that such allegations had been fabrications that the media ate up and that many were only too anxious to believe without any evidence. Such has been the case.
Are you “indeed” watching, sir?
For those who get the Chicago Trib., how do you like today’s balanced, non biased coverage? Oh wait, a front page article reporting as fact Arafat’s thoiughts as he looks past the “carnage” to consider how to rebuild what Israel has destroyed, and a Perspective section devoted to two different Palestinian views - one on how the IDF destroyed Ramallah and the other on how the Palestinian people have been exiled from historic Palestine to atone for Europes sins, and no Israeli or Jewish POV at all, all this is a Pro-Israeli bias. To think other is “absurd”.
What exactly is Sam saying that is not even-handed?
He points out that there are many documented episodes of fabrication and disinformation coming from the Palestininian side, and provides links to support his assertion. He asks that Collounsbury provide some similar documented examples for his allegation of IDF disinformation. I for one would not surprised if some exists, but "even-handedness’ mandates that proof of it be provided once the allegation has been made. Or the cahrge retracted.
He states that once a set of “witnesses” have proven themselves to be tellers of false information on multiple occassions (and Sam has provided the documentation of that allegation) that other information provided by them should be held in an elevated state of suspicion proportional to the amount of false information previously provided.
The HRW report (what I read of it - a couple of pages) seems to be a useful exercise. It is necessarily a partial story, since the IDF “has not agreed to Human Rights Watch’s repeated requests for information about its military incursions into the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” (from paragraph 1 of the report).
It is difficult to know what to make of it, though. I see some evidence for violations of international law, but I didn’t see evidence that blatant atrocities had been committed.
Hovering in the background is my suspicion that, in an analogous situation, the US would have skipped the door-to-door fighting and just bombed the camp to near-oblivion. YMMV.
I would be interested in learning of an active military force with higher humanitarian standards than the IDF (in Jenin). I would also be interested in learning the extent to which the IDF investigates and punishes soldiers who allegedly use disproportional force. Finally, I wonder about what sort of rules of engagement could have permitted Israel to pursue its military objectives in Jenin at a lower cost to human life.
Finally, according to HRW, 22 civilian deaths were documented. The actual number could be higher, though they stated that the total number of deaths should not go much higher than 52.
Relevant quote:
“Human Rights Watch found no evidence to sustain claims of massacres or large-scale extrajudicial executions by the IDF in Jenin refugee camp. However, many of the civilian deaths documented by Human Rights Watch amounted to unlawful or willful killings by the IDF. Many others could have been avoided if the IDF had taken proper precautions to protect civilian life during its military operation, as required by international humanitarian law.”
I’m not so sure about that last sentence.
Re: Sam’s last post: Well, I’m glad we got that clarified.
Though I haven’t read the entire report, I have read the sections that detail the alleged human rights violations. I’m not impressed with the evidence.
Don’t get me wrong. Bad things clearly happened to civilians in Jenin. But damn few bad things happened to civilians in Jenin. In twelve days of fighting, 22 civilians were killed, according to HRW.
1.8 civilian deaths per day.
Bloody amateurs. Talk to Lt. Calley if you want to know how to commit a war crime.
I focus on the overall numbers rather than the individual incidents simply because the evidence of any particular event is necessarily sketchy and incomplete, not to mention politically biased in many instances. Even then, it strikes me that most of the individual deaths descibed by HRW can very easily be attributable to either mistakes of identification made in the fog of battle or the random happenstance of shit being blown up and tens of thousands of rounds being fired in a very small area.
What ought to be blatantly obvious to any rational observer–that includes you, Col–is that the Israelis could not have possibly gone in there with the intention of committing any sort of massacre. In a “refugee camp”/city filled to the gills with people, twenty-two civilians ended up dead. A pittance. Meanwhile, Israeli tactics were clearly calculated to minimize incidental civilian deaths, even at the cost of more than a few IDF lives.
Yes, it appears that some bad things happened in Jenin. A handful of civilians (but nowhere near the 22 reported dead) appear to have been intentionally targeted. The apparent use of civilians as booby-trap detectors is appalling. But then again, if I’d have been in command of the IDF, I would have just leveled every damn house that I had even the slightest suspicion was booby-trapped. So even there, I’m willing to see a couple different shades of grey.
It’s a war. Bad shit happens. Hand-wringers wring their hands. And Palestinian suicide bombers keep murdering Israeli civilians.
Oh wait, that last bit hasn’t happened in the last month or so, has it?
Ah, well, Dseid is spoiling ain’t he. Much as my hangover bothers me, I can hardly disappoint.
Well I suppose in your universe the presentation of a fair-minded report by HRW in HRW’s normal tone and format is somehow in the league with the anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian ‘bias’ you ludicrously claim to find in the US media.
I will note parenthetically that I do agree that the HRW sets an idealized standard, and that is a perfectly reasonable critique. Indeed, one I would make myself. What I find rather despicable are the attempts to discredit HRW per se, e.g. Sam’s comment in re HRW has lots of criticism of Israel, a backhanded way of suggesting bias, in addition to his sweeping dismissal of all P testimony, no matter how cross-checked (a rather typical investigative technique noted in the report is to cross-match disparate testimony to weed out fabrication.)
I have long followed HRW and they do set well-nigh impossible standards, but they apply them equally. In re the issue of human shields, the active siezure of civilians and use of them as combat shields is a war crime of long standing, and of a different moral character than that of resistance fighters mingling with the population. Understandable as that may be, it is something IDF needs to look into.
Returning to the issue: For those of us not afflicted with an unbounded case of ideological blinders, I would say the fair assessment has been (in re NYT and WP, as well as Economist and FT, which are my English lang. news reading):
(a) Front page reporting on the report noting clearly
(i) no evidence of original claims of a massacre
(ii) dispassionate characterizations of HRW’s own reporting re possible crimes, etc.
(iii) notation of the difficulties in re both (HRW report, IDF ops).
(iv) reporting in WP, e.g., in re reservists characterizing some aspects of the operation as badly planned, some degree of panic, etc lending a degree of support to HRW concerns that “unnecessary” --prob. panic driven-- events happened, e.g. human shields.
(b) General editorial page support for Israel, with some even handed critiques in re general Sharonista policy as a long-term possible liability.
Unless one confounds critical assessment and a general striving for objectivity with ‘bias’ – as a certain Dseid seems prone to do, there seems to me no basis for the claim. I find Cohen’s recent column in the WP in re this to be of no small relevence. As also this week’s Economist’s critical editorial on efforts to characterize critiques of Israel in an ‘anti-Israeli’/anti-Jewish bias light also springs to mind. To quote an extract:
The overall thrust of the ed. dealing with American opin. (as seen in the press with specific ref. to Krauthammer), relevance here in regards to an outside analysis of American op making…
The Guardian similarly notes in “Middle East crisis: Muted criticism in American newspapers: US reaction: Scepticism at reports of Jenin bloodbath”
Similar obs from the Financial Times. Finally FAIR’s recent obs on the issue: http://www.fair.org/media-beat/020404.html which I find to go too far, but offer for its quotes and obs for triangulation in re the overall character of American/North American coverage.
So in the end my dear ideologue and I retain my characterization of your claim as absurd on its face to those with a modicum of distance on the matter.
You can skip the sir by the way, I neither require it or desire it, old boy.
Really? A data point.
As I don’t read the CT, I can’t come to a conclusion about its coverage in general. A review of available on-line articles fails to lead me to the conclusion there is anti-Israeli bias. Let’s see, I’m not sure which Arafat article you refer to as I looked at the internet site, but the articles I found reported Arafat’s words, i.e. what he said/claimed and described P. reaction to the same. Unless it is necessary to insert ‘lying Arab scum’ or something along those lines in any story mentioning Arafat’s words, I’m not sure where bias comes in.
Forgive me if I have the sense that your assertion is likely to suffer from self-reinforcing ascertainment bias, never mind the distorted lens. (which is to say you seem to perceive articles not attacking the PA, Arafat etc. as being biased) I ran a Lex-Nex quickly but they seem not to hold the CT, so again there is something of a vacuum here in terms of actual data.
Now, as to the Israeli agitprop issue, well here we get into a rather different realm. My comments in that area were made in annoyance with the rather expected attempt to dismiss HRW report. My observation was in part revolving
(a) One needs to find out rather more about Jenin, the blanket denials in re use of human shields etc. seem to be contradicted by WP reporting of interviews with Israeli reservists and other sourcing.
Now it seems to be an opinion here that IDF actions can not be an issue based on their opponents actions. As the Economist noted in “The flattening of Jenin:
Israel’s “war crime”” 18 April 2002:
For what it is worth I also refer to some obs from B’Tselem, an Israeli based HR org:, although they seem to take something of a rather too innocent view of things.
http://www.btselem.org/English/Press_Releases/2002/020314.asp
(b) Characterizations of the UN team, indeed character assassinations of the members as noted elsewhere on this board. The full court press on this is rather obvious IMO. And why the volte-face:
[sub] The Economist Arafat’s great white hope 2 May 2002
with further analysis over Israeli official positioning
[sub] An international spectre over Sharon[/sub]
Larger political game.
Of course, my comment when I wrote it was not in regards to Jenin per se but in regards to the larger conflict.
E.g. the characterization of ‘going after terrorist infrastructure’ as a cover for destroying the PA form top to bottom. Wonderful spin that. Hand in hand with the A is a terrorist, PA is terrorist ergo we need not talk, all nice and all, but a dead-alley. I’m sure the Brits and others involved in trying to settle 48 felt the same way deep down after the assasination of UN Mediator Count Bernodotte back in the day
To rely once more on one of my favored sources of clear-headed analysis, The Economist
[sub]“The Palestinians: Vacuum at the centre” 25 April 2002[/sub]
A fair characterization of a policy designed to turn back the clock on Oslo.
All in all Israel has a much more sophisticated and useful agitprop regime. Look at the posters here who continue to spout un-historical stories in re '48, P id, etc…
None of this is to say that the P side, and the Arab media etc. in general are any good. Quite the contrary, and as I said in many other places, my abiding respect for Israel comes from its capacity to look into the inevitable sordid sides of its conflicts honestly and grow from them. They did that (excepting Likoud evidently) in re Lebanon, etc. Makes from stronger society and policy, again in the long run.
As such it strikes me that while HRW has held up a harsh mirror to Jenin and IDF practice there, it is the same mirror they hold up to all, including the US. One can discount the standard to one’s prefered level as one wants, although I would say one should be careful to apply the same discount across the board. My disregard for some folks scepticism is their ever so interesting elastic scepticism, rather ramped up according to ideological position of the subject rather than across the board. Call it a form of connected lending.
Now then, where does that leave us? Well, in re the HRW report, we have some items which probably the IDF might wish to address, esp. in re the human shields. We also have a report that when taken in the context of a warzone, actually is not that bad, now is it?
Now, as to the ‘success’ of the operation, minty old man, I direct you to the history of Algeria. Or Lebanon.
I don’t recall large walls being built around either Algeria or Lebanon at the end of their conflicts, but I defer to your superior knowledge of the region in that regard, Col.
I oppose the occupation. I fully support the impending isolation. The Palestinians are entitled to their own nation, just as they deserve to stew in their own poisonous juices.
They were given an upside a couple years ago, including virtually all the West Bank and sole or dual sovereignty over much of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, there was more of the same, except worse. I repeat: Stew. Poison. Juices.
The poison in the community has been fed not only by piss-poor Palestinian leadership without so much as a shred of a productive vision for the future, it has also been fed by the cynical manipulations of the ‘greater Israel’ faction which has worked to kill the peace process since day 1.
Give the Palestinians a real state, with full withdrawal, give them something to lose and you’ll see the same evolution as happened in Lebanon and Jordan. Israel has every right to respond strongly. It does not, however, have a right to occuption --including the settlements and the annexation of all of Jerusalem-- and moreover that occuption, however shrouded in the mantle of war on terror, is self-destructive.
While FMEP does focus rather more on the Israeli side of the equation in terms of its critiques, it strikes me as a useful and reasonably balance critical antidote to the nationalist propaganda that is regularly served up.
None of this, however, let me be quick to add, is to imply that Israel is somehow a worse actor than the PA, which is clearly not the case.
Sorry for the delay, but I missed your response yesterday.
That is very close to my own position. I’d quibble that Israel does have a right to hang onto territories taken after being invaded by its neighbors, but that doing so would be short-sighted and counterproductive. Other than that, I believe we and in close agreement.
Collounsbury,
Gawd, I hate this. Just when I think I can peg someone as being blinders on, one-sided, they go and say some reasonable things. Damn.
Sorry if I “spoiled”.
Nevertheless, the point remains that the lack of a massacre, the fact that “witnesses” had lied, has gotten very little press … retractions rarlely do … and other accusations get center stage.
You read a very select group of media. Only the best. I am also limited in my reads, but more breadbasket America. The Trib gets delivered and is about as pro-Palestinian as it gets. Your brief perusal of headlines on the internet site just doesn’t capture the flavor of what gets left out of reports, what gets put in, and in what placement. This Sunday’s paper, the same day the NYtimes was discussing what Israel was showing off of evidence linking Arafat and the PA directly to terror and Bush was leaking out how he would pressure Sharon to deal with Arafat anyway, had The Trib writng the reports mentioned in my last post instead. I listen to NPR, which in Jewish circles is being called National Palestinian Radio. We each see a small selection of all media out there. Maybe I’m gettting an unfair representation of all of it. You may be as well.
My critique of your posts persists as well. You were very eager to believe that the IDF had participated in a massacre. The news that there was none should have been significant to you, in fairness. Instead there was the jumping onto the IDF “war crimes anyway” bandwagon. It is hard to reconcile such behavior with even-handedness.
Should the IDF investigate their own and discipline as appropriate? Yep. Will any such self evaluation and self regulation be crowed upon by the Palestinian side. Yep.
As to what really happened at Camp David 2, I refer you to the “myths” thread. This much is agreed upon by all of the American side: Arafat did not come to CD2 with any intention of dealing unless he heard the ideal offer first. Barak was going for broke. If Arafat had negotiated in good faith, then even Malley concurrs a deal would have been reached.
And the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza would be looking at a better future than they are now.
