For two weeks in April of 2002, the Guardian , the blog Harry’s Place reminded readers in a 2012 post, ran wild with lurid tales of an Israeli “massacre” in the West Bank city of Jenin, a massacre of a “500″ Palestinians that – like a more recent libel that promoted the same even number – never happened.
As some may recall, in Spring of 2002, Israel embarked on a military offensive, knowns as Operation Defensive Shield, during the height of the bloody Palestinian terror campaign known as the 2nd Intifada. The operation came on the heels of a thirty-day suicide bombing campaign which killed 128 Israelis, culminating in a deadly suicide attack on a Passover Seder at a Netanya hotel which killed 30.
The fiercest fighting in this offensive occurred in the “refugee camp” just outside the town of Jenin, the launching point for dozens of Palestinian suicide bombers in the previous year and a half. In this fierce, often house to house battle, which lasted less than a week, and in which bombs and booby traps were planted throughout the camp, 23 IDF soldiers were killed as well as 52 Palestinians, of whom at most were terrorists.
But, before the facts were in, the Guardian – and much of the MSM – immediately published articles based on unevidenced Palestinian claims that hundreds of civilians were killed in an Israeli atrocity.
Seamus Milne, who would later become Jeremy Corbyn’s communications chief, but who in 2002 was the Comment editor at the outlet, wrote of “hundreds” killed, “evidence of atrocities”, and Israeli “state terror”. Their Jerusalem correspondent at the time, Suzanne Goldenberg, reported from Jenin’s “lunar landscape” and of “a silent wasteland, permeated with the stench of rotting corpses and cordite”. She found what she described as “convincing accounts” of summary executions.
In the next day’s report from Jenin, Goldenberg reported that the morgue in Jenin had “just 16 bodies”. But this, as HP observed, didn’t cause her to doubt that there were “hundreds” more buried beneath the rubble (sound familiar?), or to hesitate in promoting conspiracies from a Palestinian “source” that bodies were transported “to a special zone in Israel”.
Chris McGreal – who, to this day, continues in his decades long effort to demonise Israel and diaspora Jews who support the state – weighed in with his own equally flawed reporting the following week, continuing to promote the false claim of “hundreds of Palestinian civilians” killed.
A Guardia April 17 leader “The Battle for the Truth”, included the following sentences: “Jenin camp looks like the scene of a crime”, “Jenin smells like a crime”, “Jenin feels like a crime”, “Jenin already has that aura of infamy that attaches to a crime of especial notoriety”, and the assertion that Israel’s actions in Jenin were ‘every bit as repellent’ as the 9/11 attacks in New York only seven months earlier.
Two days later, Peter Beaumont, who would later become the outlet’s Jerusalem correspondent, finally conceded that there wasn’t in fact a massacre in Jenin.
Yet, astonishing, no correction was ever issued for any of their appallingly false and incendiary reporting.
Now, let’s flash forward to a Guardian article by Emma Graham-Harrison and Sufian Taha published last week, reporting on a new IDF anti-terror operation – code named “Operation Iron Wall” – in West Bank cities, including Jenin (“Family mourns grandfather’s death as Israel brings Gaza tactics to West Bank”, Feb. 26).
The piece evokes the 2002 operation in several paragraphs.
First, there’s this:
The last major military operation across the West Bank was during the second intifada, more than two decades ago, when Israeli forces moved in to crush a coordinated uprising across the occupied territories and in a series of suicide attacks inside Israel.
First, note how the terror campaign of the 2nd Intifada, which was launched by Palestinians leaders during the height of the peace process, and would end up killing over 1,100 Israelis, while maiming thousands more, is described benignly as a “coordinated uprising”.
Then, the journalists also add this:
Jenin camp is a dense urban area settled by families expelled from homes in what is now northern Israel during the war surrounding the state’s creation in 1948. It has long been a centre of armed resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and has been repeatedly targeted by Israel.
As we noted to a complaint to Guardian editors, which they’ve failed to respond to, the language used – “armed resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories” – serves to legitimise terrorism. “Armed resistance” is the euphemism of choice by terrorists and their supporters to describe murderous attacks against Israelis, both inside and outside of the ‘green line’, by proscribed groups such as Hamas.
Finally, they add this, an allusion to Operation Defensive Shield:
In 2002, after a 10-day operation in Jenin camp, a UN envoy described the situation as “horrific beyond belief”.
It’s telling the statement in question by the UN envoy, which also included the lie being promoted at the time that “hundreds” had been “massacred” in Jenin, was issued on April 18th, 2002, as this was three days before the Guardian itself acknowledged the actual death toll, and conceded that, contrary to their reporting until then, there was NO massacre.
In fact, a couple of months later, the UN issued a report on the Jenin battle, similarly concluding that there had been no “massacre”, largely backing Israeli reports that 52 Palestinians, mostly fighters, were killed.
It seems clear that the Guardian journalists, in an attempt to frame Israel’s current Jenin operation in the context of a past Israeli ‘atrocity’ in that ‘camp’, deceptively cited a quote from 2002 about the IDF’s anti-terror campaign there based on the lie that there was a “massacre”, a lie, as we noted, which was accepted as such a mere two days later, even by their own outlet.
In addition to the gross immorality of effectively being pro-Hamas in its coverage of the war prompted by the terror group’s Oct. 7th massacre, the outlet, in case anyone needs reminding, is also appallingly dishonest.
