As I read this thread about people reading different news sources, and as I hear Israel getting crucified in the media. I am reminded of past events.
While undoubtedly there are a lot of civilians that have died and while there are presumably some evil soldiers in the Israeli army (as there are in American and British army in Iraq and Afghanistan), the bulk of the soldiers are just good boys. Watching the evening news in America, you don't hear the stories of the American soldiers fighting the war 'properly' (not sure else how to phrase that, hope you understand what I mean), you hear about Lindey England and those who should be rightly jailed. But I digress...
Regardless of what news you are reading, take it all with a grain of salt. When a UN truck gets shelled and 'eyewitnesses' (who are obviously on one side of the war or the other - they weren't UN employees) tell a story, and it gets picked up on every major news source, remember there is another side. And for those who feel the western media is pro-Israeli, read on.
The 'Jenin Massacre' occurred in the West Bank in 2002. Israel was crucified for a massacre of civilians. Hundreds, even thousands of civilians killed. War Crimes! The Hague! Palestinians witnesses claiming this and that, and the UN backing up whatever they say.
A month later, it turned out not to be true. It turns out there was a surprising well-matched opposition, and while there were civilian casualties, there was no massacre. But here is what the 'Standard' of England had to say.
4/13/02 Estimates of the dead in the battle of Jenin range from 150 to several hundred.
4/14/02 More than 100 Palestinians died, perhaps twice that number, many of them civilians...The Palestinians have called it a 'massacre', alleging that their houses were bulldozed with families still inside, that helicopters fired indiscriminately on a civilian area
4/16/02 When the international media cannot be kept out any more and the pictures of horror are published, two possible versions may emerge: Jenin as a story of massacre, a second Sabra and Shatila; and Jenin, the Palestinian Stalingrad, a story of immortal heroism. The second will surely prevail....A few dozen Israelis killed, many hundreds of Palestinians dead.
4/16/02 Palestinians accuse Israel of a massacre, and there are convincing accounts from local people of the occasional summary execution.
4/17/02 "Israel faces rage over 'massacre'" A senior Palestinian, Nabil Shaath, accused Israel of carrying out summary executions and removing corpses in refrigerated trucks. He said close to 500 people had been killed.
4/21/02 Whatever crimes were committed here - and it appears there were many - a deliberate and calculated massacre of civilians by the Israeli army was not among them.
4/23/02 The Red Cross says Israel breached the Geneva conventions by recklessly endangering civilian lives and property. Amnesty International says the Israeli authorities gave civilians trapped in the camp no opportunity to escape.
5/6/02 Despite flimsy evidence British papers jumped the gun to apportion blame when a West Bank refugee camp was attacked, says Sharon Sadeh. As a result, the reputation of the press has been damaged
6/3/02 The second factor was the hasty claims - made by Palestinian and Israeli spokesmen in the absence of concrete facts - that hundreds of Jenin's inhabitants had been killed. Given the world's inflated expectations, the talk of a massacre seemed grossly disproportionate once the camp was opened to scrutiny. The casualties sustained by the Israeli army, including 23 soldiers killed, only fed the view that Jenin was a messy but essentially fair fight.
The massacre theory was soon discounted. The numerical threshold, wherever it lay, had not been crossed - and neither, argued Israel, had the moral threshold. This position was justified by Israel's assertion that almost all of Jenin's victims were fighters. The evidence from UNRWA, however, is that at least a quarter of the dead were women, young children, pensioners or disabled, as were many of the injured.
8/1/02 A UN report into the fighting in the Jenin refugee camp will reject Palestinian claims of an Israeli massacre, but will criticise both sides for putting civilian lives at risks, western diplomats said today.
The violence in the camp came during an Israeli offensive in the West Bank, launched after a suicide bomb attack that killed 29 Israelis.
The Jenin incursion, which began in early April, was the heaviest fighting in Israel's six-week campaign that began on March 29 this year. The Israeli army lost 23 soldiers in the camp and, in the weeks after the battle, the Palestinian cabinet minister, Saeb Erekat, said that 500 people had been killed.
The UN report, prepared by the secretary general, Kofi Annan, after Israel refused a fact-finding mission access to the camp, said 52 Palestinian deaths had been confirmed by April 18, and that up to half may have been civilians.
--------------------------------------
The Mohammed Al-Dura case is another example. This tragic case is still under dispute (and is running through French courts).
--------------------------------------
So take all news with a grain of salt.
Swapping land
)
)
)
)