THE BIG LIE
JULY 12, 2001 -- 12:03 EST
Questions Over West Bank Newborn Death
By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH
Associated Press Writer
BARDALA, West Bank (AP) -- Israeli soldiers did not bar a Palestinian woman in labor from passing an Israeli checkpoint, her relatives said Thursday, contradicting initial claims by two Palestinian doctors who blamed a checkpoint delay for the newborn's death. The baby boy was born in a taxi at the checkpoint Tuesday, and was dead on arrival at a nearby Palestinian clinic, the family said. A doctor said the boy suffocated because the family members assisting in the birth did not know how to keep his airway open. The Israeli army had said in an initial response that the doctors' claims were unfounded, but that it was investigating the case. The army reiterated Thursday that soldiers did not bar the woman from passing the checkpoint.
The events began Tuesday afternoon at a remote Bedouin encampment in the
hills of the northern
Ali Dais, speaking to The Associated Press on Thursday, said it took him
about 30 minutes to find a taxi. He said he, his wife and daughter-in-law got
into the taxi and drove toward the
En route, they came upon an Israeli army checkpoint which was closed to Palestinian traffic at the time. Dais, 50, said he did not alert soldiers at the checkpoint to the fact that his daughter-in-law was in labor, and, when pressed, had no explanation.
Dais also said he did not remember how many cars, if any, were waiting at
the checkpoint, adding that he was flustered by the situation. The taxi had
been waiting for about 15 minutes at the checkpoint when the woman gave birth,
said Dais, who was herding his flock of sheep Thursday close to the
After the birth, the taxi driver walked up to the soldiers and explained the situation to them. "They (the soldiers) asked whether it was a boy or a girl. They allowed us to pass, and we did," Dais said.
The shepherd said that by the time they reached the Tubas clinic, the boy was dead.
The director of the clinic, Dr. Abdel Hassan Daraghmeh, told the AP on Wednesday that the taxi had been held up at the roadblock for an hour.
Asked to explain the discrepancy, Dr. Daraghmeh said Thursday that it was the driver, not the woman's relatives, who informed him there had been a considerable delay at the checkpoint.
The family's physician, Dr. Ghassan Hamdan, said initially that he delivered the baby at the checkpoint after soldiers prevented the mother from traveling to a hospital. But he later said he was not present for the birth and only heard of the case second-hand.
[Note: This story is just the tip of the iceberg. That
"Palestinian" Arabs, even respected professionals -- such as doctors,
lawyers and "government" ministers -- continually lie and otherwise
distort reality as part of their propaganda war against
[Note: An additional installment of the Big Lie was disseminated worldwide by means of a movie -- "Jenin, Jenin" -- which was made by an "Israeli" Arab actor about the fictitious massacre of "defenseless" Arabs by the Israeli Defense Forces in Jenin in Spring 2002. Read on!]
(
The merciless slaughter of Jews in
This is the harvest of hatred and propaganda foisted on the current Arab generation by 50 years of corrupt, cynical, and tyrannical leadership. As long as Arab schoolchildren are taught to hate Jews, as long as all of the ills of the Arab world are always blamed on the Zionists, as long as they are still told that eventually there will be no State of Israel, chances for peace and accommodation are absolutely nil. No "Peace Now" slogans can change this reality. That is really the lesson of the last decade of Arab-Israeli relations. Delusional haters are not partners for any type of peace.
No Israeli filmmaker is going to make a movie about Kibbutz Metzer or about
The Palestinian doctor that was the head of a hospital in Jenin claims on camera that Israeli troops totally destroyed its newly built west wing. The truth is that there was never any west wing. The movie could not show the rubble of the destroyed west wing. It merely blithely accepted the lie, although the movie makers should have been aware, with a little investigation on their part, of the true situation.
The movie claims that electricity and water supplies to the hospital were cut off during the fight. Zangan states that the hospital was not damaged and that the IDF was careful to make certain that electricity, oxygen, and water were supplied to the hospital on a normal basis. When Zangan confronted the filmmaker on this, his only response was that a shard of broken glass, dramatically highlighted in the film, must have come from the imaginary west wing.
A 75-year-old Palestinian interviewed in the movie told how he was roused from bed in the middle of the night and was shot in the hand and leg by soldiers. He neglected to say that he had never been shot in the leg, that his hand wound was superficial, and that he was treated by army medics on the spot. Zangan and other Israeli doctors, upon examining him, saw that he had a chronic heart problem and he was then taken to Ha'emek Hospital in Afula and treated for three days for his heart problem and anemia.
The movie claims that a baby was shot dead and that medical attention was denied him by the Israelis. The body of such a baby was never found, nor was the child's name ever told to anyone. Where did he disappear to?
Stories about tanks crushing people, mass graves, air strikes, were all solemnly and mournfully detailed. The fact that no tanks crushed anyone, that there were no air strikes on Jenin, and that no mass graves exist in Jenin meant nothing to the filmmaker, who certainly had an agenda of his own, unrelated to the facts. The movie was shot in Jenin two weeks after the fact and the Palestinians "prepared" the sets in a most manipulative and distorted fashion.
The most disturbing thing to me is that when Zangan attempted to present these facts to the audience that saw the movie, he was hissed and booed off the stage. "Murderer" and "war criminal" were two of the milder epithets hurled at him. The Israelis present at the screening were so blinded by their disappointment at having been wrong about Yasser Arafat and the whole sorry "peace" mess that they turn their frustration inward at Jews who are trying to save their very lives.
Of course, they will say that the
--------------------------------------------------------
(c) 2002 The
[Note: Here is Dr. Zangan's eye-witness account of
the Jenin "massacre" and his recounting of
his futile attempt to present the true facts to a Jewish audience in
SEVEN LIES ABOUT JENIN
(Article by Dr. David Zangen, Ma'ariv, November 8, 2002, Weekend Supplement)
I watched Muhammad Bakri's film Jenin, Jenin in a limited forum, with Jerusalem Cinematheque Director Leah Van Leer and several journalists. After the private screening, I responded and indicated each lie and lack of credibility. One of those present at the screening was outraged: "If you don't accept the facts in the film, you apparently don't understand anything; how can you be a doctor?"
For a moment, I forgot that I had been in Jenin last April, serving as a regional brigade doctor, while this viewer had, at best, been fed on rumors. Bakri expertly weaves together lies and half-truths until it becomes very difficult not to be seduced by the distorted picture he creates.
I did not succeed in convincing the Cinematheque
management to cancel the screening. I was told that the pictures of destroyed
homes were authentic and that there was, therefore, truth in the film, and that
the film would be shown around the world in any case. Even so, I was invited to
its premiere screening in
1. Dr. Abu Riali, director of the hospital in Jenin, claims in the film that the western wing of the hospital was shelled and destroyed and that the IDF knowingly hit the hospital's water and power supplies. There never was any such wing and in any case, no part of the hospital was either shelled or blown up. IDF soldiers took care not to enter its grounds even though we knew that it was serving as a refuge for several wanted fugitives. We guarded the water, electricity and oxygen supplies to the hospital all throughout the fighting and assisted in setting up an emergency generator after the city's electrical system was damaged. Bakri himself is seen in the film wandering the hospital's clean and well-kept corridors, but not in the blown up wing. I met him outside the theater and asked him if he had visited the western wing. At first he said no, then he corrected himself and said, "You remember one moment in the film with shattered glass -- it was from there." It is important to point out that this Abu Riali is one of the "authorized sources" for the claim of a "massacre." At the beginning of the operation, he was interviewed on Al-Jazeera television and spoke of, "thousands of victims."
2. Another impressive part of the film is the interview with a male
75-year-old Jenin resident who mumbles and cries and
tells how he was taken out of his bed in the middle of the night, shot in the
hand, and after he failed to obey the soldiers' command to get up, was shot
again in the foot. I met this very same old man as he was brought to me after
an operation to clear one of the Hamas cells' houses in the refugee camp. He
had indeed been lightly injured in the hand and was suffering from a minor
scratch on the foot, but certainly not as the result of a bullet. IDF soldiers
transferred him to a secure station that had been set up to treat wounded and
there he was treated by me, among others. One of the military doctors identified
diagnosed a heart problem. We suggested that he be transferred immediately to
3. Another person who was interviewed spoke about a baby who suffered a chest wound from a bullet that entered through his chest and exited his body, creating a hole in his back. According to the film the baby died after IDF soldiers prevented his evacuation to hospital. A baby's body with this type of injury has never been found. Moreover, such an injury would have been fatal, and evacuation would not have saved his life. What is this baby's name? Where did his body disappear to?
4. The same person interviewed also told how, using his finger, he opened the baby's airway in his neck after he was injured. Again, a complete lie. Such an action cannot be carried out with a finger. This "witness" adds that tanks ran over living people many times until they were completely crushed -- this never happened and is imaginary.
5. The film mentions a mass gravesite that IDF soldiers dug for Palestinian dead. Every international organization that investigated the matter concur that there were 52 Palestinian dead in Jenin, and that all the bodies were returned to the Palestinians for burial. Bakri does not bother to show the supposed location of this mass gravesite.
6. Israeli planes that supposedly bombed the city are mentioned in the film. There were no such planes. In order to prevent civilian casualties, only focused helicopter fire was used.
7. It is interesting to note that Bakri was not present in Jenin at the time of the operation, and only arrived two weeks after it was completed. In pictures shot at the site in the center of Jenin, the damage appears much larger than it was in actual fact, and the martyrs' [suicide bombers'] pictures and jihad slogans -- which had been present at the time of the IDF military operation -- had disappeared from the walls of houses. The film systematically and repeatedly uses manipulative pictures of tanks taken in other locations, artificially placing them next to pictures of Palestinian children.
In general, this is a vulgar, but extremely well done, work of manipulation. At the conclusion of the film, hundreds of viewers gave Bakri and the film's editor a standing ovation. Bakri asked the audience if there were any questions. I presented myself, I went up to the stage and began to systematically list the lies and inaccuracies in the film.
At first there were whispers in the audience, and later scornful calls, and I was labeled a "murderer," "war criminal" etc. I had barely succeeded in finishing my second point when a man in the audience aggressively came up on stage and tried to take the microphone out of my hand. I decided not to be dragged into violence. I allowed him to take the microphone and left the stage. I was surprised that only a few people stood up for my right to free speech and free expression. I was shocked that the audience was unwilling to hear the facts from someone who had physically been there.
It was difficult for me as a person, as a father and a doctor to hear calls of "murderer" from my people. I said that I did not kill anyone. But the calls became more heated, immense hatred was directed towards me. It left me with a hard feeling that has not subsided. I am not sorry that I went to the Cinematheque that evening. I am certain that in any case there were people who heard my doubts, and that this changed a small amount of their feelings towards the "facts" they saw. I am sure there were other people who were shocked at the intolerance demonstrated by the audience, but even so, it is hard for me [to accept] that they were the silent minority.
Allow me to say what I was unable to say to those people that evening. I am proud that I was part of this excellent and ethical force that operated in Jenin, regular army soldiers and reservists with motivation and a fighting spirit, who went to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in its capital. Many suicide-bombers came from Jenin, and were responsible for the murder of the elderly, women and children on our streets. I am proud that we were there, that we fought, and I also am proud of the morality of the battle. The camp was not bombed from the air in order to prevent innocent civilian casualties, and artillery was not used even though we knew about specific areas in the [refugee] camp where terrorists were holing up. IDF soldiers fought against terrorists, and terrorists only. Before destroying a building where terrorist fire against our soldiers had originated from, as many warnings as could be allowed, were given, so that the people could leave without injury. The medical team administered medical aid to all casualties, even if they had Hamas tattoos on their hands. At no point was any person refused medical treatment.
This battle, heroic on one hand and ethical on the other, took a heavy toll from the best of our fighters! We who had to be there -- the soldiers that fell there, their families and the IDF -- do not deserve that Muhammad Bakri should incite the world to murder and hatred at our expense.
[Note: Here are the true facts about the Spring 2002 assault on Jenin, launched in response to the horrific suicide bombing which murdered and maimed scores of innocents at a Passover seder in Netanya. Read on!]
What happened in Jenin?
[State of
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0i9o0#jenin
When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered the refugee camp in the West
Bank city of
Jenin's terror industry -- with its command
centers, explosives laboratories and arms caches -- has produced over two dozen
suicide bombers and countless other armed terrorists. Prior to Operation
Defensive Shield, the IDF had avoided entering Jenin's
refugee camp, a small yet densely population section of the city. However, the
appalling increase in attacks in March 2002 left
Jenin's refugee camp was not only a staging area of Palestinian suicide terrorism, it was also the site chosen by the armed terrorists to serve as a battleground against Israeli forces. These terrorists had prepared the field well, extensively booby-trapping houses and streets, and setting up sniper positions within civilian homes and structures. They acted with no regard for the safety of the camp's inhabitants or their property, and encouraged residents, including children, to take an active role in the fighting.
Shortly after the battle began, PA spokespersons proclaimed worldwide that
Israeli forces had committed a "massacre" in Jenin.
The Palestinians originally said that 3,000 civilians had been killed, but
gradually reduced their claim to about 500. A few weeks later, after questions
began to be raised in the international media, a high-ranking Fatah official
was forced to admit that the death toll numbered only in the dozens. Kadoura Mousa Kadoura,
the Director of the northern
The "Jenin massacre" myth is
particularly galling since the IDF took great care to avoid harming innocent
non-combatants, even though this increased the exposure of its own soldiers to
risk. The IDF chose to employ infantry in house-to-house sweeps rather than
using heavier weapons which, while providing Israeli troops with greater
security, would also increase the risk to the civilian Palestinian population.
The Palestinian Authority's unfounded allegations of a massacre combined
with misrepresentative television pictures of heavy damage -- which in
actuality was confined to a limited section of the refugee camp -- persuaded
the international community to embark upon a UN investigation of events in Jenin. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan then initiated the
formation of a fact-finding team to develop accurate information regarding the
events in Jenin. Due to its high regard for the UN
Secretary General,
However,
As satisfactory terms of reference could not be agreed upon, Secretary
General Kofi Annan decided to disband the fact-finding team. By this time,
respectable news outlets the world over and human rights organization finally
confirmed what
Unfortunately, the Palestinians continue their attempts to perpetuate the Jenin massacre myth, often adding unfounded allegations regarding the denial of vital humanitarian aid. In clear contradiction to their own claims, the Palestinians often spread these lies in the same breath that they refer to the refugee camp as "Jeningrad", a modern Stalingrad-like last stand, and the site of a great and heroic battle.
[Note: The Big Lie continues to prosper. This time its subject is Arab olive trees, cruelly hacked by Jewish settlers. Or were they merely over-zealously pruned by their Arab owners? Read on!]
500 Palestinian olive trees destroyed; hack down olive groves
By Matthew Gutman
(
Some 500 olive trees on dozens of dunams of land had been hacked limbless over the weekend and last week, and on Sunday the Palestinian farmers unanimously pointed an accusatory finger at their neighbors on the hilltop: the settlers of Yitzhar.
This is the latest installment of an annual struggle between the fringes of
the settlement movement and Palestinian olive harvesters across the
But that was not enough for Fauzi Hussein. Settlers from the unauthorized outpost of Mitzpe Yitzhar -- dismantled in July but since repopulated -- swooped down from their hilltop perch and hacked apart 255 of his olive trees, he says. The villagers only dare approach the hilltops near the settlements when accompanied by human rights groups and an IDF escort.
"I staked everything I had in those trees," pleaded Hussein, who
had worked in Tel Aviv's tourist hot spot of Kikar Atarim for 23 years before the onset of the intifada.
Hopping down from one of the mountain's ragged terraces to talk to a reporter,
the 53-year-old Hussein said he had supported his entire family by his olive
harvest, the bulk of which he sold to
Standing nearby, former deputy defense minister MK Ephraim Sneh (Labor), who hiked up to see the damage, said: "This is the sort of crime that every Jew must condemn in the strongest terms. This is the only source of income for the destitute peasants of this village."
Sneh called for the immediate evacuation of Hill 725 and Mitzpe Yitzhar, both of which had been dismantled in the last five years, only to pop back up. The two outposts crown the hills surrounding the fertile valley where most of the villagers live.
The olive harvest lasts about a month and a half during the fall, and this year, said IDF Central Command spokesman Maj. Yoni Shenfeld, only a few incidents were registered. In the Hebron Hills, farmers accused settlers of stealing their crops and in the village of A-Sawiya settlers hacked down another 300 olive trees.
Shenfeld added that, despite the "shocking uprooting and chopping of trees here," the villagers have been able to farm their 20,000 dumans of groves that sweep into the valley below largely undisturbed. About 50 dunams of trees were destroyed.
For their part, the settlers were unmoved by the incident. "We don't know who did it. But what I do know is that when the Arabs creep close to the community for the harvest it becomes a security problem. We are very happy that from now on they will not be able to approach too close.
"Anyway, the trees grow back, and ultimately we hope to harvest them in
the place of the unwanted inhabitants of the area," said Yitzhar community spokesman Yosi Peli in a telephone interview. When asked if they heard the
chain saws on previous nights, the soldiers guarding Hill 725, just 100 meters
up the hill from the olive groves, shrugged. They said they had heard nothing.
The Judea and
As Hussein passionately highlighted the absurdity of the IDF declaring his
plot of land a closed military area, but allowing settlers to live there, Capt.
A, one of the soldiers guarding the harvesters burst out: "Why doesn't Fauzi [Hussein] tell you about the five men in the village
who planned to blow themselves up in Tel Aviv. Or that the last suicide bomber
[who detonated himself at a Tulkarm checkpoint on
October 9] was from the neighboring
Dumbstruck, Hussein had no ready answer.
Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the chairman of Rabbis for Human Rights, tried to explain to the three soldiers that Palestinian violence does not justify the settlers' vandalism, and in fact only breeds more hatred.
Picking up a lifeless branch from his grove, Nabil,
24, was sapped of hope. "No olives, no money," he said in English.
Later he explained that men of his generation "do anything to get some
work. When there is no work in the village, we walk across the border to
A few members of the controversial International Solidarity Movement milled around chatting with the olive pickers, but they refused to be interviewed by anyone affiliated with The Jerusalem Post, they said.
Nabil's claim effectively sums up Chief of General
Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon's misgivings about
More than 60% of Palestinians live on less than a $2 per day, according to most recent World Bank report. Human rights activists note that with the collapse of the Palestinian economy many villages have reverted to subsistence farming.
"Although many of these people in the [Jewish] settlements claim to be religious, apparently many verses found in my Torah are missing from theirs," said Ascherman.
(©) The
--------------------------------------------------------------
YESHA RESIDENTS DENY CUTTING TREES; ACCUSERS REFUSE LIE-DETECTOR TEST
(Arutz Sheva, November 10, 2003) It led to anti-settler headlines, international embarrassment for the State of Israel, condemnations, and apologetics -- and yet it all may have been one big bluff, or worse.
On Nov. 3, the branches of hundreds of Arab-owned olive trees were found to have been cut down near the small Jewish community of Mitzpeh Yitzhar in the Shomron. Suspicions were immediately focused on the Jewish residents living nearby, and media reports and public officials took it for granted that they were responsible. The Jerusalem Post internet site reported on Nov. 7, "Last week, settlers from settlements in northern Samaria hacked approximately 500 olive trees belonging to Palestinians," and on the same day, a Voice of America report by Iris Makler went even further by opening, "Israeli settlers in the West Bank have destroyed olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers in several areas in recent weeks..."
Israeli officials, too, were quick to respond. President Katzav issued a sharp condemnation, saying that the "struggle with the Palestinians ... must be conducted with good sense and integrity." Prime Minister Sharon said he views the matter with "great gravity," adding that he had ordered the security establishment to "take all possible measures" to catch those responsible for uprooting the trees. A headline in Ynet quoted Labor MK Ephraim Sneh as saying, "The Palestinians whose olive trees were cut down by settlers must be compensated." Even the Yesha Council of Rabbis fell into the trap, stating that that acts of vengeance carried out by individuals are forbidden and condemnable, and that the tree-cutting had "defamed the entire sector of Jews living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza."
The story has taken a dramatic turn, however, though the mass media have largely ignored it. Police now feel that left-wing Israelis and the Arab tree-owners may have manufactured the entire incident as a provocation and a way to besmirch the Jewish population. The police have requested that Rabbi Arik Asherman of the Reform Movement and an Arab who both filed charges against Jewish Yesha residents submit to lie-detector tests -- but the two have, thus far, refused to do so.
The investigation began its about-face when a Jewish National Fund expert brought in by the police concluded that no lasting damage was done to the trees, and that the tree-cutters did not "cut down" the trees, but rather "pruned" them. The severed branches, he said, will begin growing back within 2-3 months. The police thereupon requested that those who filed the accusations against the Jews take lie-detector tests.
"If it is determined that we are speaking about a provocation in which someone cut these branches and then filed a false accusation with the police, then we are dealing with false testimony, which is a serious infraction," police superintendent Doron Ben-Ami said.
Residents of the
It appears that one need not be a policeman to suspect that the entire story was nothing more than another form of anti-Jewish libel. Rabbi Elyakim Levanon of Elon Moreh said that he was told by "official sources" that the pruning involved "dozens of hours of electric sawing." How is it, he asks, "that no one heard? I heard that one of the Arabs said something like, 'we heard something, but we didn't pay attention.' This is a total put-on: how could it be that throughout hours and even days of work, an entire village heard nothing?! [It's possible] that the Arabs did it themselves, in the course of regular pruning, after which someone had the brilliant idea of blaming it on the Jews..."
At the same time, Rabbi Levanon said that there are instances in which Jews would be permitted to cut down Arab trees. Asked what he thinks about Arabs harvesting their olives in proximity to Jewish communities during times of terrorist dangers, he said, "It definitely should not be enabled, but the question is who must stop them. It's obvious that not every individual is permitted to make these decisions on his own. The general guidelines are that in a perimeter of 300 meters around each community, Arabs are simply not allowed to enter. If they do so, it becomes a matter of immediate self-defense, and in such a case, individuals are allowed to take action. They may even take action against the property -- i.e., olive trees -- of those who endanger them in this way... Not long ago, Arab olive harvesters reconnoitered a community in the Shomron and identified a break in the fence, through which terrorists infiltrated and murdered three precious Jews."
Aviad Vissuly, of the
Haifa-area Land of Israel Movement, stated, "It is incumbent upon Central
Command O.C. Maj.-Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky to issue clear
directives with regard to the [Arab] harvesting of olives on state-owned lands
in areas adjacent to Jewish towns. This will eliminate the friction,
misunderstandings, and vilification of
[Note: The false report of olive tree hacking received worldwide publicity.
Yet the results of the subsequent police investigation received hardly any
publicity, even within
[Note: The Big Lie never dies. P.A. officials and P.A.-controlled media
continue to accuse
PA claims
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH and HERB KEINON
(Jerusalem Post, June 16, 2005)
Such allegations, which were common under Yasser Arafat's rule, have resurfaced
in recent weeks in the Palestinian media.
PA officials have also accused
Last month, PA-controlled newspapers claimed that
A senior official in the Prime Minister's Office [of
According to this official, the allegations represented a pandering to the
radical elements on the Palestinian street and not much attention should be
paid to them.
At the same time, he said that if the PA was being dragged along by the radical
elements, then "the Palestinians are not on the way to a state, but rather
to another intifada."
Asked if he was not concerned about the frequency of these types of remarks
recently, he said it was not clear whether they represented "an ominous
trend" or were part of intra-Palestinian politics.
But, he said, as PA officials stray from reconciliation to comments of this
type, "there will be greater objection inside
Comments such as these, as well as PA Foreign Minister Nasser al-Kidwa's remarks last week that the PA had no intention of
dismantling the terror organizations, would not halt disengagement, the
official said, but would raise questions about moving forward with any type of
diplomatic process with the PA after the disengagement.
The latest charge was made by Dr. Youssef Abu Safiyeh, chairman of the PA's
Environment Authority, who told Palestinian legislators in Ramallah that the PA
security forces had recently seized a number of shipments from
"These drinks are specifically produced for Palestinian consumers in the
Gaza Strip," Abu Safiyeh said.
He also claimed that the Egyptian authorities last March intercepted two
Israeli trucks carrying children's toys that included carcinogenic and
radioactive substances. The trucks were seized at the Rafah
border crossing, he added.
Abu Safiyeh criticized the PA's
law enforcement authorities for failing to prevent the import of second-hand
Israeli commodities, including computers and other electrical appliances. He
claimed that more than 200 computers previously used by the Defense Ministry
had found their way to the markets of the Gaza Strip.
Over the past few years, PA officials have repeatedly claimed that
In 2001, the PA claimed that
Doctors at
Other doctors have blamed
(©) The
[Note: Apparently, it is not enough
that
Dahlan: Settlers poisoning land
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
(June 30, 2005) Palestinian Authority Minister of Civil Affairs Muhammad Dahlan, who is in charge of coordinating with Israel the
withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, on Wednesday accused Jewish settlers of
"poisoning" the lands in the settlements slated for evacuation.
Dahlan told reporters in
"We have information that the Israeli settlers are poisoning the lands in
order to damage them and to prevent Palestinians from using them in the
future," he said.
Dahlan, said that the Palestinians regard the
withdrawal from any piece of land as a "victory" for their will and
an "achievement accomplished through the sacrifices of thousands of
martyrs and wounded."
He warned, however, that
"If
Dahlan said that coordination with
He said the coordination talks were also focusing on the assets inside the
settlements and the "legal status" of the Gaza Strip and northern
According to Dahlan, the coordination with
Dahlan complained that Israel was continuing its
policy of foot-dragging with regards to the coordination process, pointing out
that the Israeli government was refusing to hand over to the PA full
information on the settlement assets.
"In principle,
He also claimed that
Asked about the smuggling operations across the Egyptian border, Dahlan suggested that a third party should be involved in
this issue to make sure that no weapons are smuggled into the Gaza Strip.
He described the recent meeting in
Dahlan urged all Palestinian factions to coordinate
with the PA their moves ahead of the withdrawal.
"These factions have not given responses yet as to whether they want to
work with us," Dahlan said, adding that the
"window of opportunity" was still open for all the groups.
Dahlan also called on Hamas and Islamic Jihad to
consider joining a PA "national unity" cabinet.
(©) The
[Note: Again with the poisoning? Read on!]
Palestinians:
By Khaled Abu Toameh
(Jerusalem Post, August 25, 2005) Representatives of various Palestinian groups
in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday accused
The allegations were made during a press conference in Khan Yunis
that was organized by the Popular Committee for Defending Palestinian Lands.
Committee coordinator Abdel Aziz Qadih claimed that
the IDF and the settlers had buried the toxic materials six meters under the
rubble of the settlements that were evacuated last week. He did not specify the
type of toxins, but claimed that they were placed in large barrels underground.
"They want to destroy the land to prevent the Palestinians from using it
after it's handed over to the Palestinian Authority," he said. "We
call on all those who support our people to expose this matter and to help us
deal with it."
Qadih also claimed that
"This won't deter us from abiding by our rights and lands," he
cautioned. He urged Palestinians to stay away from the settlement areas until
the PA cleared the area.
(©) The
[Note:
[Note: Again with the olive trees? Read on!]
Dec. 30, 2005 2:27 | Updated Dec. 30, 2005 5:02
Mofaz to investigate olive tree chopping
By JPOST.COM STAFF
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz on Thursday established a special team to investigate
claims by Palestinians that [Jewish] settlers intentionally uprooted their
olive trees in the northern
The decision came following complaints by
Palestinians reporting of dozens of incidents in the past five years in which
Israeli saboteurs allegedly damaged their olive crops.
On Monday, Judea and Samaria Police began
investigating claims that Palestinians in the Nablus-area
The investigation followed dozens of incidents
over the past five years in which Jewish saboteurs stole into Palestinians'
orchards in Nablus-area villages and uprooted or hacked down olive trees.
With the Palestinian economy still sluggish after
five years of fighting, many Palestinians increasingly rely on farming to earn
daily wages.
'Something is clearly suspicious in the way these
trees were cut,' said Supt. Shlomi Sagi, spokesman for the
Police have no evidence of foul play by either the settlers or the Palestinians in this incident. However, several factors stumped investigators, according to Sagi. Police wondered why the settlers would trek to the far side of the orchard, the side nearest the Palestinians, to chop down the trees. They also wondered why chainsaw-wielding settlers would give the trees 'a grave pruning' rather than cut through the tree trunks.
[Note: There have been several
opinion articles in
[Even
Column One: 'Cool' anti-Semitism
By Caroline Glick
(
On Wednesday, it was reported that
the Jordanian border police have adopted a new policy regarding the entry of
Israeli tourists into the
The Foreign Ministry is not
pleased with this newest Jordanian move. Israeli officials are reportedly
trying to reverse the new orders. The Israeli protest is ironic because the
government itself uses similar justifications for its policy of prohibiting
Jews from praying on the
It is hard to muster much
righteous wrath towards the Golden Globes gang for granting their prize to a
movie that extols the virtues of mass murderers of Jews. Today the official
policy of the Israeli government regarding the status and rights of Jews in
Judea and
Case in point is the government's
handling of the Jewish "squatters" in the former marketplace in
On the face of it, it all seems
rather cut and dried. The area is directly adjacent to the Jewish Avraham Avinu neighborhood. It is
owned by Jews who want its current Jewish residents to remain in place. Why
would the government have a problem with eight Jewish families living in the
former shops in full accord with the expressed wishes of the property's owner?
On Tuesday morning I asked
Lieutenant Assaf Azoulay, the
spokesman for the Judea and Samaria Division, this question during a visit to
The problem is that the Supreme
Court never held a hearing on the issue and certainly never made a decision on
the matter. Palestinians did petition the court some five years ago, asking that
the Jews who had "squatted" in the stores - that have been empty
since 1994 and since replaced by new shops built by the
In their ruling, the military
judges tended to accept the recommendation to allow the Jews to rent the
property in accordance with the wishes of the property's owners. But the
judges' common sense clashed with the state prosecution's world view. Last
October, for no apparent reason, Attorney-General Menachem
Mazuz decided that the Jewish families must be
removed from the shops no later than February 15.
And here we arrive at the main
issue. In 1949, after conquering Judea and
The question arises, why did the
government not simply allow the Jewish land owners to reassert their rights
over their lands?
ON THE face of it, this past
Monday those who believe that Jewish civil and property rights in Judea and
Ran, the owner of the
"Eternal Hills" organic ranch in
Ran asserted that, abetted by
[Jewish] extremist leftist activists, Abu Haniyeh and
his associate Amar Abu Shehadeh
trespassed on his field with a tractor with the purpose of destroying his crop
two months before the harvest. He maintained that he and three of his employees
had gone to the field on the morning of March 20 to prevent the two men from
harming his crop. Disturbingly, both the police and the state prosecutors refused
to investigate Ran's version of events. They adamantly insisted that Ran and
his men had brutally assaulted the two Arabs, and accepted the Arabs' statement
that Ran and his men had a history of abusing their Arab neighbors, who never
caused them any harm.
During Ran's three month trial,
the police and prosecution's claims against Ran and his three employees
completely unraveled. At a hearing on December 1, Ran's attorney presented a
film produced in November by a French television crew where the Abu Haniyeh and Abu Shehadeh gave a
candid version of the events of March 20. On film, to a sympathetic reporter,
they explained that extremist leftist activists from
anytime that Avri
was in the area, I had to exaggerate what happened and get Avri
in trouble."
In her ruling, Judge Bechor noted that in his testimony before the court, Bentzi Kessler, the Civil Administration's land supervisor
for the
Judge Bechor
issued stinging criticism of the police in the
Although, Bechor's
ruling shows that there are judges in
Yet the protocols of his trial and
Judge Bechor's judgment expose an opposite reality.
Extremist leftist activists, together with local Arabs, with the backing of the
police and the state prosecutors, staged a provocation with the intent of
criminalizing Ran and his men who had done nothing but exert their legal right
to defend their private property from trespass and destruction. The fact of the
matter is that Ran, who was innocent of any wrongdoing, was jailed for five
months and kept from his family and his land for 10 months.
THE REALITY that is exposed both
by the Ran trial and the current dispute over Jewish property rights in
And so it is that as terror groups
ratchet up their activities in Judea,
Is
(©) The
[The Big Lie never dies; it only
gets reinvented! Read on!]
ON LINE opinion --
By Gerald Steinberg
Friday, 23 June 2006
The debate over the cause of the
explosion on a
These condemnations have been
magnified by the efforts of human rights organisations,
particularly a group known as Human
Rights Watch (HRW).
Within a few hours of the
Palestinian reports, HRW announced its own investigation of the incident, and
within a week, had issued three press releases.
The first left no room for doubt
-- the Palestinians had been killed by an Israel Defence
Forces (IDF) 155 mm artillery shell fired in response to Palestinian missile
attacks. These “findings” were widely quoted by the international media and
have had significant impact in shaping the public perception of the incident.
However, the Israeli military
launched its own investigation, producing detailed evidence that the evidence
presented by the Palestinians and HRW was doctored.
The shrapnel wounds from two
gravely injured Palestinian victims taken to Israeli hospitals for treatment
(notably omitted in all of HRW's reports) were not
from 155mm shells. (Doctors reported that before they arrived in
Questions were also raised about the
“evidence” allegedly presented by the Palestinian police and “independent
journalists” which provided the basis for the condemnation of
Faced with this evidence and the
contradictions, HRW's self-proclaimed "military
expert" backtracked, now claiming "the most likely cause [of the
blast] was unexploded Israeli ordinance". The more likely explanation --
that the explosion was the result of a Palestinian mine -- was politically
unacceptable for HRW's officials.
While the details of the
After the Gaza beach incident on
June 9, 68 civilians on a bus were killed by a land mine reportedly planted by
the Tamil Tigers in northern Sri Lanka, 30 civilians were killed by the Taliban
in southern Afghanistan, and tribesman in the restive Pakistani province of Balochistan claimed that Pakistani forces had killed 17
civilians in an ongoing military operation in the region. These have not
received even a cursory report by groups such as Human Rights Watch or Amnesty
International. HRW also failed to call for independent investigations in these
cases -- such treatment is apparently reserved for
This incident has also exposed the
power of the human rights organizations to influence public opinion. As a
result of the "halo effect", journalists rarely question the
credibility of NGOs. Enjoying Special Consultative status at the UN, Human
Rights Watch and Amnesty International are able to parlay their huge budgets
directly into political influence. If these and other human rights
organizations are to retain their credibility, political campaigns on behalf of
Palestinians or any other groups must end.
Related links:
- BBC
website article, where
- BBC video clip where
the El Wattan material was shown;
- a technical analysis
of the original video from Palestinian Media Watch;
- here
are links to various other early reports, where Israel was blamed: Sky, Reuters,
Independent, Telegraph, Times, Times, Guardian; and
- other articles from around the world.
Gerald Steinberg is a Professor of
Political Studies at
© The
National Forum and contributors 1999-2006. All rights reserved.
[In an effort to malign
Reutersgate strikes other news outlets
By Sheera Claire Frenkel
(Jerusalem Post, August 11, 2006) At first everyone thought they were just
blowing smoke, but the debunking of a Reuters photograph by a group of Web
sites has launched a fiery online war in which bloggers have taken on the
mainstream media.
Bloggers, or writers on web logs, were the first to reveal that a Reuters
photograph depicting plumes of black smoke rising over
More than a dozen accusations of staged or doctored photographs have made their
way through various Web sites in the past several weeks. None has been treated
by the news outlets as seriously as the original Reuters incident, which saw
the photographer Adnin Hajj fired and over 900 of his
photos removed from the Reuters wire list. But numerous other outlets --
including the BBC, The New York Times and AP -- have been forced to recall
photos or change captions following inaccuracies pointed out in online forums.
The fact that the online community rather than fellow mainstream media has
become a watchdog of accuracy has surprised many who originally derided blogs
as being "devoid of accuracy."
"In a blog you don't have to be accurate to anyone but yourself and your
readers," said Laya Millman
from the Jewlicious.com blog. "There is a great deal of accountability
because, if you get anything wrong, the readers will quickly, very quickly,
point it out."
As was demonstrated in the case with the Reuters photograph, blogs come with
their own teams of investigators: the thousands of readers who stream through
the site. Within hours of Charles Johnson's posting on Little Green Footballs,
readers of the Web site had gone to work uncovering an array of damning
evidence against Hajj, the most serious of which -- a second doctored
photograph, an Israeli plane altered to make it look as though it was dropping
a series of bombs -- may have pushed Reuters to fire Hajj after initially
announcing that the freelance photographer would be suspended. That photograph,
which was discovered by blogger Rusty Shackleford of
The Jawa Report, included an illustrated account of
how the photos had been doctored.
Photographs whose veracity has been questioned by blogs in the past few weeks
since Reutersgate began include:
Two pictures used by The Associated Press and Reuters, in which the same woman
appeared to be crying over the destruction of her
Several photographs of a bombed bridge in
In The New York Times photo essay "Attack on
Some claim that the online controversy over the photos has gotten out of hand,
with many blogs now launching investigations and hurling accusations at a
variety of news sources.
"These accusations can be very damning, and need to be handled with care
and not thrown out by any angry blogger," said one anonymous poster on
Little Green Footballs.
In the meantime, however, Little Green Footballs -- along with many other
online forums -- has been flooded with investigations into mainstream media,
with the entire army of its hundreds of thousands of readers eagerly at hand.
(©) The
[More on fabricated claims of olive grove destructions. Read on!]
Tal Yamin-Walbowitz, Maariv website (Maariv NRG), 22 November 2006
www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/508/339.html
[Translation by IMRA]
Are the settlers hurting the Palestinians, or are the Palestinians hurting
themselves?
Frequently Palestinians farmers complain that settlers cut their trees and hurt
them and their livelihoods. At times even IDF soldiers and police had to
protect the Palestinians farmers in the territories during the olive harvest
season. But the police suspect now that in some cases the Palestinians
themselves are those cutting the trees and then blamed the settlers and
demanded compensation from the Civil Authority.
Foresters of the JNF patrolling the Shaar Efraim area today noticed to their surprise a number of
Palestinians cutting olive trees in violation of the law as they were damaging
scores of olive trees. The foresters hurried to call the police who arrived
and held four of them for questioning.
The four were transferred to the police station in Kedumim
and in their interrogation they said that the owner of the property invited
them to cut the trees for firewood. A police spokesman for the Judea-Samaria
District, Superintendent Pintzi Mor,
told Maariv NRG that the owner of the area would be
called in for questioning.
Sources in the police said that over the years the police have experienced a
phenomenon of the filing of complaints to the Civil Authority regarding the
destruction of olive trees, along with a claim for financial compensation. In
the last year alone the Palestinians in the area of Judea and
The police now intend to check the complaints in detail. A senior source
in the police told Maariv NRG that "most of the
complaints for damage to olive trees were filed in recent years at the
end of the harvest season or towards the end, something that increase the suspicion
that this is a cooked deal."
--------------------------------------------
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
[Note: The Big Lie
that demonized
Palestinian Propaganda Coup
By NATAN SHARANSKY
October 2, 2007
Last month, a French court heard an appeals case whose
forthcoming verdict will have far-reaching ramifications for all who value
truth and accuracy in
It has been seven years since France 2 Television broadcast the excruciating footage of Mohammed and his father Jamal crouching in terror behind a barrel in Gaza's Netzarim Junction while, according to the report, under relentless fire from IDF soldiers. The 59-second clip, which ends with the boy apparently shot dead, was presented around the world as an unambiguous case of Israeli savagery.
The tape fanned the flames of what became known as the
second intifada. The boy Mohammed was the iconic martyr, his name and face
gracing streets, parks and postage stamps across the Arab world. His memory was
invoked by Osama bin Laden in a jihadist screed against
Shortly following the al-Dura incident, however, a series of
inquiries cast grave doubt on the accuracy of the original
And yet
Subsequently, alleging gross malfeasance, Mr. Karsenty called for the firings of Mr. Enderlin and France
2 News Director Arlette Chabot. But
The defamation trial passed almost unnoticed in
It is important to note that the al-Dura news report
profoundly influenced Western public opinion. When I served in the Israeli
government as minister of Diaspora Affairs from 2003 to 2005, I traveled
frequently to North American college campuses. I heard first hand how Mohammed
al-Dura had shaped the perceptions of young people just beginning to follow
events in the
To its credit,
Tragically, there is no way to repair the damage inflicted
on
Mr. Sharansky is chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the
Copyright 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
[Note: In May 2008,
[Note: It seems that during the “Palestinian” olive harvest, it is not “Palestinian” olive trees which are endangered by Jewish settlers, but rather Jewish synagogues and vineyards which are endangered by “Palestinian” settlers. Read on!]
Synagogue burned at
By Rebecca Anna Stoil
(Jerusalem Post, October 28, 2007) Acts of vandalism committed against settlers
in the Binyamin area on Friday added to the annual tensions between local Jews
and Palestinians during the fall olive harvest.
On Friday morning, police received a report from the IDF that while
"opening" a route around the Yad Yair outpost, near Dolev, troops
saw that the road had been blocked with boulders.
Suspecting that the blockade indicated illegal activity, the soldiers searched
the area and discovered that a trailer used as a study room and storage area,
and as a synagogue on Mondays and Thursdays, had been burned to the ground.
Security forces, including IDF units, police and firefighters, were called to
the scene, but as of Saturday evening, the reason for the blaze was unknown.
Investigators discovered tracks of two people leading away from the scene of
the blaze toward Ramallah.
Police said that there were prayer books in the trailer, but that no Torah
scrolls had been inside at the time of the fire.
Later Friday afternoon, the security director of the settlement of Neriya reported that he saw a large group of people
descending from a nearby Palestinian village and entering a nearby vineyard
operated by Dolev resident Shlomi
Cohen.
"In light of past experience with such events in the vineyard, a small
group under the command of the security chief arrived at the scene," said
Three British women were detained at the scene by the security team, who called
police and IDF. The additional forces en route to the scene said that they
encountered barriers of stones which they believe were placed in the road to
delay security forces from reaching the vineyard.
Police said that there was damage to the irrigation system in the vineyard and
that some plants had been uprooted.
Representatives of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea,
"This is the third time in the last two months in which an incident such
as this one occurred in the same place," said Yesha
spokesman Yishai Hollander.
"This incident comes following the burning of the synagogue in Yad Yair this morning, which is
located in the same area."
Hollander emphasized the gravity of the situation in light of the shmita (sabbatical) year, which means the plants could not
be
replanted until next year.
"The local residents are upset that the security forces once again did not
succeed in preventing the vandalism, and demand the expanding of security and,
as a response, forbidding the residents of the neighboring Palestinian village,
Mizra'a a-Kabaliya, from
harvesting their olives," wrote Hollander.
(©) The
[Note: Perhaps the
biggest lie of all is the diplomatic truism that the Arabs have finally
accepted
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
**Editorial**
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Recognition Sham
(Jerusalem Post, November 15, 2007) [Former Palestine Liberation Organization
Chairman] Yasser Arafat recognized
So the Palestinians accept
On Monday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said, "The problem of the content of the
document [setting out joint principles for peacemaking post-Annapolis] has not
been resolved... One of the more pressing problems is the Zionist regime's
insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state.
"We will not agree to recognize
On Tuesday, another prominent Palestinian negotiator, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said, "It is only a Zionist party that deals
with
Yesterday, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad
joined in these statements. And Erekat chimed in
again on Al-Arabiya TV: "
All this is mind-boggling from an Israeli perspective. To Jews and Israelis, it
is obvious that if
The Palestinian refusal to accept
Ereka