Jenin Massacre and Media Spin
by Eric Blair in Israel
April 13, 2002
I'm sure that all who are reading delegation journals from Palestine are
aware of the ongoing massacres in Jenin. Maybe people have also noticed the
media angle, which is of course providing damage control in numerous ways,
such as: 1) By validating Israeli estimates of the dead, rather than
estimates by Palestinian and independent sources 2)By emphasizing that the
dead were "killed in the fighting."
As much as the first distortion dishonors the human victims - victims who
will remain nameless and faceless in the rubble of their homes, in their
mass graves - it is the second that is most destructive to the truth. "Died
in the fighting" implies that there are two sides fighting in this war.
What is in fact happening, as we are all too painfully aware, is that heavy
tanks, attack helicopters, and military bulldozers are leveling a refugee
camp - a civilian neighborhood, collapsing homes on thier occupants, killing
children in the street with high caliber bullets, killing whole families.
The Palestinian "resistance" is a few men with rifles and home-made bombs,
now out of ammunition. There is no "fighting" to be killed in, no
"cross-fire." This is a massacre, and a deliberate policy of ethnic
cleansing straight from Ariel Milosevik Sharon, designed to make refugees of
refugees. I write this not because people are unaware, but because I am
finding my own mind too easily bent by the media in moments of inattention,
even with the shells of Bethlehem still ringing in my ears.
In solidarity,
Eric Blair
* Eric is one of four Coloradans currently in Palestine joining many
internationals in solidarity with Palestinians in ending the illegal Israeli
military occupation of Palestine. More on their trip at:
www.ccmep.org/palestine.html