Jenin--The camp that became a slaughterhouse Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - Ali Abunimah April 14, 2002 Here are three articles from today's The Independent about the emerging evidence of the Israeli-committed atrocities in Jenin refugee camp. This is hard reading, and sometimes I feel that I do not want to know any more details, that I cannot function if I have to know one more story of the agony and anguish. But it is our duty here to bear witness to this and to tell the world the truth. There is a strong contrast, as usual, between the timorous way much of the US press handles Israel's war crimes (as compared, say, with those alleged to have been committed by approved villains such as Milosevic), and the rest of the world's press that treats Israel by the same standards others are judged. Yet, the scale of the atrocities is such that even the usual American media self-censorship is not able to hide it. Here are the articles: *The camp that became a slaughterhouse (Justin Huggler) *The bloody evidence of the tragedy that is Jenin (Reeves, Whitaker, Brown) *Mr Powell must see for himself what Israel inflicted on Jenin (Robert Fisk) Ali Abunimah http://www.abunimah.org ******************************************************************* The camp that became a slaughterhouse By Justin Huggler The Independent April 14, 2002 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284823 A woman with her leg all but ripped off by a helicopter rocket, the mangled remains hanging on by a thread of skin as she slowly bleeds to death. A 10-year-old boy lying dead in the street, his arm blown off and a great hole in his side. A mother shot dead when she ran into the street to scream for help for her dying son. The wounded left to die slowly, in horrible agony, because the ambulances were not allowed in to treat them. A terrible crime has been committed by Israel in Jenin refugee camp, and the world is turning a blind eye. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, visited the scene of a suicide bombing that murdered six Israelis in Jerusalem, but he did not visit Jenin, where the Israelis admit they killed at least 100 Palestinians. The Israel army claims all of the dead were armed men, that it took special care to avoid civilian casualties. But we saw the helicopter rockets rain down on desperately crowded areas: civilian casualties could not have been prevented. The Israeli army sealed off the entire area around Jenin yesterday, arresting journalists who ventured into it. That is because they have something to hide in Jenin: the bodies. The Israeli army has told the Israeli courts that it will not start burying the bodies until Sunday. But there are abundant eyewitnesses who say they have already seen the soldiers piling the bodies in mass graves. Hiding the bodies is what Slobodan Milosevic did in Kosovo. Either way, the Palestinians are not allowed to bury their own dead, because Israel does not want the world to see what happened inside Jenin refugee camp. The grieving have no way of knowing where to find the bodies of those they have lost. For nine days, Jenin camp became a slaughterhouse. Fifteen thousand Palestinians lived in a square kilometre in the camp, a packed warren of narrow lanes. Thousands of terrified civilians, women and children, cowered inside their homes while the Israeli helicopters rained down rockets on them and tanks fired shells into the camp. The wounded were left to die. The Israeli army refused to allow ambulances in to treat them, which is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. The Red Cross has publicly said people have died because Israel blocked the ambulances. Slobodan Milosevic is on trial in the Hague for breaking the Geneva Conventions, while Ariel Sharon shakes Colin Powell's hand for the television cameras. The Geneva Conventions are in tatters in Israel. The Israeli authorities may be able to hide the evidence, but they cannot silence the stories that have been pouring out of those who managed to escape the carnage in the camp. These stories cannot be verified yet, but there are scores of them, and many agree in details. Fikri abu al-Heija was one of those who came out of the carnage in the camp. "At the beginning the soldiers came and surrounded the camp with tanks," he says. "There were two Apache helicopters. A rocket hit our house they were concentrating the rockets on the houses. All the windows were broken by the explosions. All you could hear was explosions. When the rocket hit the house, everybody gathered together on the lower floors. A woman was with us from the second floor who had had her leg almost cut off by the rocket. It was just hanging on by a little piece of skin. We saw the ambulance coming for her but the soldiers stopped it." Six days after the attack, Mr abu al-Heija was captured by the soldiers. "They made us take off our clothes and tied us in groups of five with metal wire. As we were walking through the camp we saw demolished houses, burning houses, bodies in the street. Every 10 or 20 metres there was a body. I recognised some. One was a cousin of mine. His name was Ashraf abu al-Heija." The Palestinians have been writing all the accounts like Mr abu al-Heija's down: they are not going to allow what happened at Jenin to be covered up. The Independent on Sunday has seen these meticulous handwritten notes, of which several copies have been made. There are records of everybody who used to live in the camp, and it will be possible to match the missing with the accounts of the dead. The Palestinians say there are 200 missing. The names are coming out now: Mohammed Hamad, Nidal Nubam, Mustafa Shnewa. A man who asked to remain anonymous says he saw their bodies being put in a mass grave in the Haret al-Hawashin neighbourhood. Yusra Ahmad, a mentally disabled woman, was killed by a helicopter rocket in her home. Her nephew Mufid Ahmad says he saw it happen. Munir Washashi bled to death over several hours after a helicopter round came through the wall of his home. When an ambulance came for him, Israeli soldiers shot at it. Munir's mother, Maryam, ran into the street screaming for help for her son and was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers. Abdullah, her other son, told The Independent on Sunday he saw it all happen. The events of the last two weeks in Jenin will not go away, however hard Israel tries to keep the refugee camp away from the eyes of the world. For the Palestinians, this is the place where they finally stood and fought, and where Palestinian fighters armed only with rifles managed to hold off the Israeli tanks and helicopters for nine days. It is also the place where at least 100 Palestinians were slaughtered by the Israeli army. *************************************************************************** The bloody evidence of the tragedy that is Jenin By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem and Raymond Whitaker and Colin Brown in London The Independent April 14, 2002 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284810 The first evidence emerged yesterday of the scale of the carnage in Jenin refugee camp an atrocity which could derail Colin Powell's Middle East peace mission. Palestinians escaping from the West Bank camp, which has been sealed off by the Israeli army for the past 11 days, have spoken of hundreds of deaths, including many who slowly bled to death because ambulances were prevented from entering. But no photographic evidence of the ferocity of Israel's attack had emerged until yesterday, when a Reuters photographer managed to enter the camp briefly before being chased out again by an Israeli armoured vehicle. His two snatched photographs show a house in Jenin which is littered with three-day-old corpses. Most are covered by blankets, and it is impossible to tell whether they are Palestinian fighters or civilians. But when the US Secretary of State meets Yasser Arafat today, the Palestinian leader is sure to tell Mr Powell that Israel is preventing access to Jenin to cover up evidence of a massacre. Yesterday Mr Powell secured a statement crucially in Arabic from Mr Arafat, condemning Friday's suicide bombing in Jerusalem, in which a woman from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades blew herself up at a bus stop, killing six Israelis. The attack caused the Americans to call off a meeting with Mr Arafat planned for yesterday. But after his announcement of "strong condemnation", read on Palestinian TV, the US State Department said the meeting would go ahead today in Mr Arafat's devastated compound in Ramallah. It was always clear that Mr Powell would have to meet the Palestinian leader if his attempts to enforce a ceasefire are to stand the slightest chance of success. The odds, however, remain strongly against success Britain's Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, admitted to the Independent on Sunday yesterday that the mission was "hanging by a thread". Israeli tanks and troops thundered into three more Palestinian towns yesterday, underscoring the decision of the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, to ignore pleas from the United States, his closest ally, to halt his invasions of the West Bank. Dealing a further snub to Mr Powell, the Israeli armed forces moved into Arabe, Hashmiyah and al-Yamoun as their government forged ahead with what it insists is destroying "terrorist" structures and not as many in the international community believe fanning the flames of violence. Mr Arafat's statement condemning terrorism was coupled with an accusation that Israeli forces had committed "massacres and slaughters" against the Palestinians during their 15-day offensive in the West Bank, in which hundreds have died. Israel has made clear that it regards Mr Arafat as an enemy, and has described Mr Powell's plans to meet him as a "tragic mistake". Public opinion in Israel has hardened with repeated suicide attacks. Attitudes on the Palestinian side have become increasingly more hardline and anti-American, and were hardened further on Friday by the sight on TV of the Secretary of State sharing a joke with Mr Sharon about Israel's claim to all Jerusalem including the eastern half which it illegally occupies and by Mr Powell's apparent inability to stop the Israeli offensive. But it is the suspicions about what happened in Jenin that have overshadowed Mr Powell's mission. Israeli forces went in on 3 April as part of Operation Defensive Shield, carried out in the name of winkling out "terrorists". Twenty-three Israeli soldiers were killed in the bloodiest engagement by far with Palestinian fighters, but how many died on the Palestinian side remains a mystery. It is one which Israel is in no hurry to solve. ***************************************************************************** Robert Fisk: Mr Powell must see for himself what Israel inflicted on Jenin The credibility of US policy on the conflict has been shattered By Robert Fisk The Independent April 14, 2002 http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=284647 Why doesn't Colin Powell go to Jenin? What has happened to the world's moral compass indeed to the United States when America's most famous ex-general, the Secretary of State of the most powerful country on earth, on a supposedly desperate mission to stop the bloodshed in the Middle East, fails to grasp what is taking place in front of his nose? The stench of decaying corpses is wafting out of the Palestinian city. The Israeli army is still keeping the Red Cross and journalists from seeing the evidence of the mass killings that have taken place there. "Hundreds'' on Israel's own admission have died, including civilians. Why, for God's sake, can't Mr Powell do the decent thing and demand an explanation for the extraordinary, sinister events that have taken place in Jenin? Instead, after joshing with Ariel Sharon after his arrival in Jerusalem on Friday, Mr Powell is playing games, demanding that Yasser Arafat condemn Friday's bloody suicide bombing in Jerusalem (total, six dead and 65 wounded) while failing to utter more than a word of "concern'' for the infinitely more terrible death toll in Jenin. Is Mr Powell frightened of the Israelis? Does he really have to debase himself in this way? Does he think that meeting Arafat, or refusing to do so, takes precedence over the enormous humanitarian tragedy and slaughter that has overwhelmed the Palestinians? Is President Bush whose demand that Ariel Sharon withdraw his troops from the West Bank has been blandly ignored so gutless, so cynical, as to allow this charade to continue? For this is the endgame, the very final proof that the United States is no longer morally worthy of being a Middle East peacemaker. Even for one who has witnessed so much duplicity in the Middle East, it is a shock to reflect on the events of the past nine days. Let's just remember, as the Americans would say, "the facts". Almost two weeks ago, the United Nations Security Council, with the active participation and support of the United States, demanded an immediate end to Israel's reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza. President Bush insisted that Mr Sharon should follow the advice of "Israel's American friends'' and because our own Mr Blair was with the President at the time of "Israel's British friends", and withdraw. "When I say withdraw, I mean it," Mr Bush snapped three days later. But of course, it's now clear that he meant nothing of the kind. Instead, he sent Mr Powell off on his "urgent" mission of peace, a journey to Israel and the West Bank that would take the Secretary of State an incredible eight days just enough time, Mr Bush presumably thought, to allow his "good friend'' Mr Sharon to finish his latest bloody adventure in the West Bank. Supposedly unaware that Israel's chief of staff, Shoal Mofaz, had told Mr Sharon that he needed at least eight weeks to "finish the job'' of crushing the Palestinians, Mr Powell wandered off around the Mediterranean, dawdling in Morocco, Spain, Egypt and Jordan before finally washing up in Israel on Friday morning. If Washington firefighters took that long to reach a blaze, the American capital would long ago have turned to ashes. But of course, the purpose of Mr Powell's idleness was to allow enough time for Jenin to be turned to ashes. Mission, I suppose, accomplished. As Israel's indisciplined soldiery yesterday continued to hide their deeds from the outside world by preventing the Red Cross, aid workers, ambulances and journalists from entering the rubble of Jenin, Mr Powell was sitting idly by in Israel, calling for the "utmost restraint'' from an army that has not yet finished filling the mass graves of Jenin. That he should see a visit to Yasser Arafat the grotesque, corrupt old man of Ramallah as the make-or-break issue of his "peacemaking" shows just how skewed Mr Powell's morality has become. Mr Arafat's advisers (let's not give any credit to the would-be "martyr-chairman" of the Palestinian Authority for this) shrewdly announced that it is for Mr Powell to condemn the killings in Jenin, for Mr Arafat could be expected to condemn the vicious suicide bombing in Jerusalem on Friday. And even though Mr Arafat mouthed the relevant words of contrition and condemnation yesterday afternoon, it makes little difference. All last week, while Mr Sharon's soldiers were running amok in Jenin, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was playing the role of Mr Sharon's point man in Washington. When Israel announced that its army was pulling out of three tiny West Bank villages so tiny that no one had ever heard of them before Mr Fleischer announced that this was "a step in the right direction''. Then by Friday morning, when even the most dimwitted observer had grasped that something was terribly wrong in Jenin, Mr Fleischer was telling us that Sharon was "a man of peace''. How much longer, one wonders, could this nonsense continue? Of course, the Palestinians or whoever directs the sepulchral, nightmarish campaign of suicide bombing, for it surely cannot be the preposterous Mr Arafat are going for the jugular. The Al Aqsa Brigades or Hamas or Islamic Jihad clearly intend to ensure that Mr Sharon's ruthless operation fails (the Israeli reoccupation, after all, was supposed to be preventing these wicked Palestinian crimes) and to ensure that Mr Powell is made to look impotent. They seem certain to accomplish both goals. The Palestinian Authority, to all intents and purposes, has for now ceased to exist. That was surely one of Mr Sharon's intentions. And Mr Powell's weakness, his failure of nerve, his cowardice, are now likely to set off an Israeli-Palestinian war even more terrible than what we have witnessed so far. But let's pause for a quick journey down memory lane; to September 1982, when Ariel Sharon was "rooting out the network of terror" in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut. Before sending Israel's murderous Phalangist militia allies into the camps, Mr Sharon told the world that the Palestinians had assassinated the Phalangist leader, Bashir Gemayel. This was totally untrue, but the Phalange believed him. And evidence is now emerging in Beirut that, long after the Americans had called for Israel to withdraw the killers from the camp, the Israeli army, commanded by then Defence Minister Sharon, handed more than 1,000 survivors over to those same murderers to be slaughtered over the following two weeks. This, primarily, is why Mr Sharon is so worried by the attempts to indict him for war crimes in Brussels. Hasn't Mr Powell glanced through the State Department archives for 1982? Hasn't he read what Mr Sharon said back then, the same ranting about "terror networks" and "rooting out terror" that he employs today? A lexicon which Mr Powell himself is now enthusiastically using? Has he forgotten that the Israeli Kahan commission held Mr Sharon "personally responsible'' for the massacre of those 1,700 civilians? Does Mr Powell really think that Jenin, albeit on a smaller scale, is much different? Even if we dismiss all the Palestinian claims of civilian butchery, extrajudicial executions and the wholesale destruction of thousands of homes, what on earth does he think the Israelis are hiding in Jenin? Why doesn't he go and look? Yes, the Palestinians' suicide campaign is immoral, unforgivable, insupportable. One day, the Arabs never ones to look in the mirror when it comes to their own crimes will have to acknowledge the sheer cruelty of their tactics. They have not done this so far. But since the Israelis never attempted to confront the immorality of shooting to death child stone-throwers in the early days of the intifada or the evil of their reckless death squads who went around murdering Palestinians on their wanted list, along with the usual clutch of women and kids who got in the way, is this any wonder? In the annals of war, the conflict in the Middle East has reached a new apogee, but the story of the United States' involvement in the Middle East will never be the same again. Thanks to Mr Powell, President Bush and Mr Sharon, America's credibility has been shattered. Israel, it turns out, does indeed run US policy in the region. The Secretary of State sings from the Israeli songbook. So when, oh when, will the Europeans screw their courage to the sticking-place and become the peacemakers of the Middle East? * MAILING LIST INSTRUCTIONS: Your e-mail address is considered private and will not be passed to any third party by either me or Yahoo Groups who hosts my mailing list. To JOIN my mailing list, which will provide you with a high quality, low-volume selection of news and analysis about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, please send a blank e-mail to aliabunimah-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. To subscribe the list, send a blank e-mail to aliabunimah-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. More information about the list, including its archive, is available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aliabunimah/ ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytact-04.14.02-13:50:28-11643