Electronic Intifada's Falsehoods, Erekat's Jenin Fictions - by Gilead Ini

...It bears repeating that 52 Palestinians, not 500, were killed during intense urban warfare in Jenin. And it bears remembering who, in the days and months that followed, tried to deceive the public — not only Saeb Erekat with his lies about Jenin, but also Ali Abunimah with his lies about Saeb Erekat’s lies.

Gilead Ini..
CAMERA..
05 July '18..

In 2002, during the campaign of Palestinian suicide bombings known as the “Second Intifada,” and at the height of Israel’s counter-terrorist offensive to stop the attacks, Palestinian officials took to CNN to allege an Israeli “massacre” in the West Bank city of Jenin.

This charge, and the more specific allegation that Israel killed 500 people in the city, quickly spread through the media. Almost as quickly, it was walked back, after it became clear that just over 50 Palestinians, mostly combatants, and about two dozen Israelis, were killed during intense house-to-house fighting in the city.

“That’s not 500,” conceded one critic of Israel, in an article lamenting the “credulous response” by many of his fellow left-wing activists to false Palestinian claims about Jenin.

Reputations suffered. One of the Palestinian officials most responsible for the false rumors, Saeb Erekat, was ridiculed as “Mr. 500 dead in Jenin” by the director of the Center for Israeli Studies at University College in London. The New York Post was more direct, titling a column about Erekat and his accusations “Why TV News Loves a Liar.”

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Peace, trust and Abbas?

...How anyone can seriously urge Israel to place its trust in this man's good faith and ability to deliver on a peace that requires painful compromise on both sides is simply beyond our comprehension.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
23 March '14..

Demonstrating the utility of utterly flexible principles, the man at the top of the Palestinian Arab power structure, Mahmoud Abbas, is quoted in an Associated Press report tonight calling for the Obama administration "to intervene to save the peace talks".

Alert readers may recall yesterday's somewhat different message from Abbas, one in which he "rejected most of the proposals made by Obama during their meeting at the White House"... and presented himself to the Palestinian 'street' as the political figure with "the guts to say no to Obama..."

This Saturday variation on the Friday man is connected to what happened in Jenin today. The AP version comes from Mohammed Ballas:

"Israeli troops killed three Palestinians in an early morning raid that was followed by a clash with angry protesters in a West Bank town on Saturday, the military and Palestinian security officials said, in the deadliest incident in months... [It] started with an Israeli raid, which the military said aimed to arrest Hamza Abu el-Heija, a 22-year-old Hamas operative wanted for involvement in shooting and bombing attacks against Israelis. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner described el-Heija as a "ticking bomb" and said he was wanted for months and was allegedly in the final stages of planning a major shooting attack against Israelis. Palestinians officials said the military ringed the house in the Jenin refugee camp overnight and ordered el-Heija outside. When he refused to come out, the soldiers stormed the building and a shootout ensued. Lerner said everyone but el-Heija had left the building before the shootout. The military says el-Heija first shot an attack dog that was sent inside and then opened fire on the troops outside, wounding two soldiers. When he attempted to escape while still shooting at the Israelis, the troops returned fire and killed him, Lerner said. [AP]

So just where was Abbas and his PA forces in all this? Avi Issacharoff, writing in the Times of Israel today, explains that there's a "new reality in the refugee camps of the West Bank", and here's how it looks:

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out! 
.

Fresnozionism - Propagandist Phil Reeves changes name, becomes respectable

Fresnozionism.org..
12 June '12..

Remember the “Jenin massacre?”

In April 2002, IDF forces fought with Palestinian guerrillas from the Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad factions for 10 days. After the dust cleared, 23 Israelis were dead along with 52 Palestinians, of whom 5 were judged to be non-combatants.

Immediately thereafter, Palestinian sources claimed that hundreds had died in a monstrous war crime that James Petras, an American academic, compared to the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghettto.

Reports of the devastation multiplied, larded with atrocity stories. A ‘documentary film‘ made by a Palestinian director was full of such charges, including the supposed destruction of a hospital wing by tank shells. Later, it was pointed out that no such wing had ever existed.

Nothing was more gripping than on-the-scene reporting by Phil Reeves of the UK Independent, scant days after the battle ended:

Tobin - Palestinian Politics Jenin Style

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
10 May '12..



In today’s New York Times, new Israel correspondent Jodi Rudoren writes of how the recently deceased Palestinian governor of the city of Jenin is being viewed as a “martyr” in the fight against gangs and the symbol of the failing struggle to transform the Palestinian Authority into a viable state. Qadoura Moussa, who died of a heart attack following an assassination attempt that is interpreted as part of the battle in which control of the streets is at stake, helped create the idea that there was a “Jenin model” in which good government would replace the mafia-style corruption and violence that had heretofore characterized Palestinian life.

Moussa’s death is rightly seen as yet another blow to Fayyadism, the term that Times columnist Thomas Friedman attached to the efforts of PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to transform Palestinian society so as to allow for the rise of a rational modern state. But, as the insightful journalist Khaled Abu Toameh wrote just a day earlier on the website of the Gatestone Institute, the truth about the reality of life in Jenin has been apparent for years. The problem is, the foreign and Palestinian press was far too intimidated to report that the illusion of law and order in Jenin was always a lie.

Revisiting "Digging beneath the surface in the Middle East conflict"

LOTL..
16 April '12..





Ten years have now passed, from the time of the "Jenin Massacre" lie, untruth, libel, and media invention. An event that while not having even having the most minimal basis in truth, was watered, nurtured, grown, and after being disseminated, found to be without any merit, other than the febrile imaginations of its creators amongst the news media. Within a guest post today by AKUS, at CiF Watch, a fascinating piece can be found from that year, by Ha'aretz editor-in-chief, Hanoch Marmari:

Following is the text of a lecture delivered by the Ha'aretz editor-in-chief on May 27 as part of the 9th World Editors' Forum in Bruges, Belgium.

First, the good news: Abu Ali's nine children are alive and well - as well as children can be among the ruins of the Jenin refugee camp. Please deliver this news to all of your friends who may have read, a few weeks ago, Abu Ali's mournful declaration: "All my nine children are buried beneath the ruins." Abu Ali's photograph was spread across a double page in a very distinguished and influential European magazine, under the title: "The survivors tell their story."

Israeli tanks and bulldozers had entered the camp, Abu Ali recalled. He went out to fill his car, telling his nine children to meet him at a nearby intersection. But the Israeli forces blocked his way back, and it was a week, he told the reporter, before he could return to the ruins of what had been his home. "It smells of death here," he is quoted as saying. "I am sure all my children are buried beneath the rubble. Come back in a week and you will see their corpses."

The reporter and his editors did not wait a week and published the tentative story as is. They were not satisfied with the extent of the tragedy that they could see with their eyes and legitimately depict in their copy. The desire to hype the story blunted their healthy journalistic instincts to doubt and double-check any story before publishing it.

While preparing this address, I made some inquiries about Abu Ali's case. First, final numbers indicate that three children and four women were killed during the fighting in the Jenin refugee camp. Second, Abu Ali's children were not among them. And third, the magazine did not bother to tell its readers of this relatively happy end to its story. Perhaps because they are tired of writing editor's notes on Middle East stories.

Steinberg - Recalling the Jenin ‘massacre’ libel

Gerald M. Steinberg..
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost..
08 April '12..

Ten years ago, false allegations of a “massacre” and “war crimes” against Palestinian civilians in Jenin provided the first example of a new type of warfare that exploited the principles of human rights. This was the first application of the strategy developed a few months earlier at the NGO Forum of 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, (the infamous Durban Conference).

In 2009, the “Goldstone Report” on the Gaza War was based on the strategy used in Jenin.

On April 3, 2002, following the horrendous Palestinian attack in Netanya at the Passover seder, and other suicide bombings, the IDF finally launched Operation Defensive Shield – the first major counter-terrorist operation. Palestinian officials immediately accused the IDF of committing a “massacre” in the Jenin refugee camp – the center of the terror operation. In parallel, a number of officials from “human rights” NGOs echoed these allegations, devoid of any independent investigation.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW), which were deeply involved in the UN Durban fiasco, jumped in, immediately repeating the “war crimes” accusations and demanding the appointment of what they referred to as an “independent investigative committee.”

Roth - Terrorist outrage is blocked by quick thinking today at a security checkpoint

Border Policeman
[Image Source]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
08 January '11..

There's a report coming from Jenin in the past hour that illustrates one of two possible narratives depending on how flexible you are on the subject of terrorism.

Four Palestinian Arabs were required to stop and be checked by yet another of those hideous and humiliating IDF security barriers earlier today (Sunday) where they were told to remove some of their clothing. The insult to their autonomy and manhood must have been unbearable and will very likely turn them hostile and unco-operative in their future interactions with Israelis.

That's one version. Here's another.

Some hours ago, four Palestinian Arabs were stopped at the Salem Crossing near Jenin in the northern West Bank and required to undergo a security check. Here, according to Yaakov Katz from the Jerusalem Post is what happened next. The four were in line to walk into the Samaria Military Court. A member of the Israel Border Police (Mishmar Hagvul in Hebrew) watching them noticed there were wires protruding from under the jacket of one of the four. The soldiers promptly shut down the crossing, ordered the Palestinian to remove his clothing and found that he had three pipe bombs on his body. A further eight pipe bombs were found in his bag. So too was a pistol, several bullets and a commando knife. He and his three companions are now being interrogated. The suspicion is they were there to carry out an attack on the Samaria Military Court. Israel National News says the four are from Balata, a village near Shechem (Nablus) in central Samaria.

Fresnozionism - The rest of the story about Mohammad Bakri

Mohammad Bakri (left)

Fresnozionism.org
27 July '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/07/the-rest-of-the-story-about-mohammad-bakri/



This is a long post. But if you get bored, please make sure you read the last few paragraphs where the rest of the story is presented.

The Israeli Supreme Court has dismissed a libel suit against Israeli Arab filmmaker Mohammad Bakri. Here is some background, from a post I wrote in 2009 when the suit was filed:

***

You may recall that in 2002, after a horrendous wave of bombings and shootings in which hundreds of Israelis were murdered and thousands injured, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank to root out the terrorists responsible for it. One of their strongholds was the city of Jenin, in Northern Samaria. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the period of 2001-2002, 57 Israelis were killed and hundreds injured by terrorists based in or directed from Jenin alone. During April 3-11, 2002, IDF soldiers fought a fierce battle in Jenin with members of Fatah’s al-Aqsa brigades, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

After the first day, the fighting moved to the adjacent ‘refugee camp’, which had been heavily fortified and booby-trapped by the Palestinians. Nevertheless, in order to reduce civilian casualties as much as possible, IDF soldiers fought house-to-house instead of employing artillery and air strikes. As a result — as ultimately attested to by the UN — only 52 Palestinians were killed, almost all combatants; but 23 Israeli soldiers were lost, 13 of them in one ambush on April 9.

After the battle, Palestinian spokesmen such as Nabil Sha’ath, Hassan Abdel Rahman, Yasser Abed Rabbo and Saeb Erakat, claimed that Israel had massacred hundreds of Palestinians, burying them in mass graves or leaving their bodies to decompose under the rubble. But unlike the situation in Gaza, the Palestinians did not control access to the area, and the truth ultimately came out (although, as CAMERA notes in the link above, the fact that they had lied through their teeth didn’t seem to hurt the credibility of the Palestinian spokesmen with the international press).

The anti-Israel media, particularly in the UK, took up the story of the ‘Jenin Massacre’ with glee, embellishing it with ever-more bloody details and accusations of wanton Israeli cruelty. Alleged body counts rose to the thousands. And Mohammad Bakri’s crude propaganda film won a film-festival prize for “Mediterranean Documentary Film-making and Reporting”.

The film consists of after-the-fact interviews with Palestinians who tell ever more horrible stories, and ‘visualizations’ of events such as tanks crushing Palestinians which even Bakri admits didn’t happen:

Giulio Meotti: Israel’s pacifist tragedy

Giulio Meotti
Israel Opinion/Ynet
13 April '11

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4056123,00.html



Op-ed: Juliano Mer latest victim in long line of Israeli pacifists murdered by Palestinian terrorists

“Welcome to hell,” says a graffiti painted in the road to Jenin, the capital of "Palestinian martyrs." Thirty suicide bombers have come from this city in the West Bank. Here, the Israeli army fought one of its hardest battles, making its way through whole streets booby-trapped with explosives.

This is the same city where Israeli director and actor Juliano Mer-Khamis was killed by a terrorist last week. Mer had chosen Jenin to build his utopia of tolerance. His life and death is the biggest tragedy of modern pacifism. The Islamists made no secret of their hostility to the “deviant” art of Mer-Khamis, who liked to call himself “100% Jew and 100% Palestinian.”

Mer’s lineage comprises the entire history of Israel’s anti-Zionist Left. He was the son of an Arab Christian who was among the founders of the Communist Party, the Red Bolshevik utopia that rejected the Zionist plan, was loyal to Moscow and pushed for a bi-national state.

The director’s Jewish mother was a pacifist icon, Arna Mer, who during the Intifada went to Jenin to create the “Theater of the Stones”, an experimental group for Palestinian children where Mer-Khamis also worked.

Arna Mer won the “Alternative Nobel Prize” given annually by the Swedish Parliament to humanitarian activists. She preferred to be called “Palestinian,” not Jew or Israeli. She was arrested several times during riots protesting Israeli policy in the Territories. She said that “Zionism is a racist ideology.”

Yet all of Mer-Khamis' pacifism, idealism and radicalism did not protect him from the genocidal ideology that Israel had to confront since its foundation. Just like Massoud Mahlouf Allon, an observant Jewish immigrant from Morocco, wasn't spared by the terrorists because he was giving blankets to poor Palestinians. And how can we forget all the Israeli kibbutzniks and pacifists decimated in buses and cafés during the Second Intifada?

The above attacks were all the more chilling because the victims were people willing to give up land for the sake of coexistence; they believed in a moral, just, democratic, egalitarian, better Israel.

Indiscriminate anti-Jew hatred

On March 5, 2003, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus approaching University of Haifa, killing 17 people and seriously injuring dozens more. This university has a high proportion from the Muslim and Christian communities among its 13,000 students and on its faculty. Like the killing of Mer-Khamis, the bombing was intended to destroy the very idea of coexistence. Abigail Litle was returning home when she was killed. She was part of an Arab-Jewish project for peace.

Two brutal sets of murders took place in November 2002 within a few days of each other. Twelve Israelis were murdered in Hebron; and gunmen entered Kibbutz Metzer, killing five people. Terrorist bullets didn’t differentiate between religious settlers in Hebron and dovish liberals in Metzer. The victims in Hebron were all adults; in Metzer, a mother and her two young children were murdered in cold blood. In Hebron, many of the victims were soldiers; in Metzer, the victims were all civilians.

The irony is that the kibbutz had long promoted coexistence with the surrounding Arab villages. Arab children came to Metzer to play basketball and use the swimming pool. Like Mer-Khamis, the kibbutz opposed the building of a security fence between Israel proper and the West Bank. Kibbutz members said the fence would deprive the Arab farmers of access to some of their fields, which are in Israel proper.

However, this radical pacifism did not shelter the kibbutz from the crime inflicted that horrible night that resembles the butchering of the Fogels in Itamar. The little ones in Metzer were shot in the head, murdered in their beds, dressed in their pajamas and hugging their teddy bears. They died in the arms of their mother, who was trying to protect them.

When Arna Mer-Khamis started her experimental theater, it comprised six Palestinian boys. Five of them have died as suicide bombers and “martyrs.” Now the black hole of hatred has also swallowed up the beautiful Israeli son of this dark utopia.

Mer-Khamis' body was transferred through a checkpoint to Israeli authorities. It was his sad return to reality. The ancient Greek Thucydides said that it is normal for children to bury their parents, but parents burying children contravene the laws of nature and anger the gods. That's the most important and saddest difference between Israel and the rest of the "civilized world." Hatred doesn't differentiate among Jewish targets.

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism


If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Yahoo Wipes "Ariel, Israel" Off The Map, Replaces It With "Jenin, Palestinian Occupied Territories"

Omri
mererhetoric.com
29 January '10

Kudos to whatever seething, obsessive anti-Israel organization managed to sneak this in under the radar. Drip drip drip delegitimization of the Jewish State is after all the strategy du jour. But seriously? This is what we're doing now?

Apparently someone has convinced Yahoo to go into their News Weather data, erase "Ariel, Israel" as a valid location, and replace it "Jenin, Palestinian Occupied Territories." The 20,000 residents from Ariel, where the relevant weather station is built, apparently don't deserve their own weather. Yahoo has decreed that it belongs to the residents of Jenin, which is 25 miles north and 850 feet lower. It's absurd that this kind of petty crap even has to be addressed, but inasmuch as it's part and parcel of a broad-based replacement geography campaign it's unfortunately not trivial.

Someone should ask Yahoo if there's a list somewhere: which Israeli cities are Israelis allowed to keep, which do the Palestinians deign to let them share, which are entirely Palestinian, and which are simply unworthy of existing? Because given how they've gone out of their way to divide up Weather Channel data - more on that in a sec - apparently Israel's capital, the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, and the city of Ariel are all in play.

(Read full article)
.

Mohammad Bakri: ‘art’ is his shield

FresnoZionism
fresnozionism.org
31 December 09

Filmmaker and actor Mohammad Bakri, a ‘Palestinian resident of Israel’, may be prosecuted for criminal libel for his 2002 film “Jenin, Jenin”.

You may recall that in 2002, after a horrendous wave of bombings and shootings in which hundreds of Israelis were murdered and thousands injured, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank to root out the terrorists responsible for it. One of their strongholds was the city of Jenin, in Northern Samaria. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the period of 2001-2002, 57 Israelis were killed and hundreds injured by terrorists based in or directed from Jenin alone. During April 3-11, 2002, IDF soldiers fought a fierce battle in Jenin with members of Fatah’s al-Aqsa brigades, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

After the first day, the fighting moved to the adjacent ‘refugee camp’, which had been heavily fortified and booby-trapped by the Palestinians. Nevertheless, in order to reduce civilian casualties as much as possible, IDF soldiers fought house-to-house instead of employing artillery and air strikes. As a result — as ultimately attested to by the UN — only 52 Palestinians were killed, almost all combatants; but 23 Israeli soldiers were lost, 13 of them in one ambush on April 9.

After the battle, Palestinian spokesmen such as Nabil Sha’ath, Hassan Abdel Rahman, Yasser Abed Rabbo and Saeb Erakat, claimed that Israel had massacred hundreds of Palestinians, burying them in mass graves or leaving their bodies to decompose under the rubble. But unlike the situation in Gaza, the Palestinians did not control access to the area, and the truth ultimately came out (although, as CAMERA notes in the link above, the fact that they had lied through their teeth didn’t seem to hurt the credibility of the Palestinian spokesmen with the international press).

(Read full article)

Related: The Road to Jenin by French director Pierre Rehov

.

'Myself As Exhibit A'

Backspin/Honest Reporting
18 November 09

Jonathan Boyd says MSM coverage of Israel has a direct bearing on the levels of anti-Semitism. That's in spite of what The Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, told Channel 4's Dispatches program.


Boyd writes:

Perhaps most important, it failed to mention in any detail why some Jewish leaders may feel compelled to support Israel. Leaving aside the politics of the region, the notion that Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, or that Israel is the only nation state in the world in which Judaism is mainstream, Jewish culture is the norm and the Hebrew language is widely spoken and celebrated, were all ignored.


But it is, apparently, much easier to trot out the old antisemitic myth. After all, the public deserves to know what these nasty, rich Jews are up to. And what could possibly be wrong in uncovering the truth? There cannot conceivably be a connection between the way Israel and Jews are presented in the media and antisemitism on the streets of Britain.


Or so Alan Rusbridger would have us believe. In the documentary, he maintained that he found it "difficult to believe" that any journalistic coverage of events in Israel could result in acts of violence against Jews on the streets of Britain.

Boyd goes on to describe being attacked by a Briton in 2002, thanks to irresponsible media coverage of Jenin:

Well, allow me to present myself as exhibit A. In April 2002, at the height of the Palestinian intifada, media reports began circulating that a massacre had been committed by the Israel Defence Force in Jenin, in the West Bank. Rumours circulated that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed. The BBC suggested 150. Saeb Erekat, interviewed on CNN, claimed 500. Yasser Abed Rabbo intimated 900. The overarching impression was that the IDF had committed a horrific atrocity.


On the following Saturday, I was walking to synagogue, wearing my kippah (skull cap) in the north London suburb of Finchley. On the way, I was punched in the face by a young man. It was an entirely unprovoked assault. We were simply crossing paths when he delivered a sudden, forceful, right hook. Taken aback, my first response was to ask why he had done it. "That's what happens to Jews," he responded, "when they behave like that."

Mitch Bard reached a similar conclusion to about rising levels of anti-Semitism in 2002:

(Read full article)

.

Open Letter To Judge Goldstone: “A Judge Is Expected To Look At Least For Some Evidence And Verification”

Israpundit
posted by Daled Amos
27 October 09

In 2002, while the media and NGO’s such as Human Rights Watch accepted as fact the Palestinian claim that there was a massacre in Jenin–Dr. David Zangen couldn’t stand the lies and came forward with the facts. In the end, Palestinian claims of at least 500 killed were refuted and it was discovered that 54 Palestinians–mostly terrorists–were killed.

Dr. Zangen appears in the movie The Road To Jenin, which refutes the inaccuracies and falsifications in the Palestinian propaganda film Jenin, Jenin (read the CAMERA review).

Eventually, the truth of Jenin came out and Israel was vindicated.

Now Dr. David Zangen addresses the flaws in the Goldstone Report in an open letter to Judge Goldstone:

Dear Judge Goldstone,

My name is Dr. David Zangen, I am a consultant in Pediatric Endocrinology and diabetes at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem. Over 50% of my patient population is Palestinian from Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. I speak Arabic and initiated the first training program for Palestinian physicians in the field of Pediatric Endocrinology. The trained physicians were fully respected and were included as first authors on our studies that are published in world leading professional journals.

But, at the same time I happened to be the chief medical officer of my brigade during the Defensive Shield Operation in Jenin 2002. I was responsible for the medical treatment of our soldiers but also for enabling the hospital in Jenin to provide full medical services to the civilian population and I was personally involved in numerous medical treatments that Palestinians (including warriors) received from Israeli physicians.

During and after the operation the director of Jenin hospital was a source to what has been falsely called the “Massacre in Jenin where 5000 people were massacred” this same person Dr. Abu Rali has also claimed that one part of the Jenin hospital was destroyed by Israeli tank missiles “12 tank rockets were shot at the hospital …” etc

You should know, honored Judge that these statements have been proved and documented as straight lies not only by Israeli sources but also by the Human Rights Watch and the UN organizations counting only 52 dead people on the Palestinian side (23 on the Israeli side). These organizations and photographs of Jenin hospital following the operation showed no evidence for any destruction at the hospital buildings etc.

This Dr. Abu Rali a director of a hospital, a physician, lies and incites in the service of the Shahids. It is hard to believe that a director of a hospital can give such an obvious false testimony. I can’t understand it and you can’t understand it but unfortunately this is what has happened. Even persons who would usually be considered reliable sources become advocates of straight lies. Tragically, moral misbehavior of doctors in the Palestinian Authority is not new.

The Pediatrician George Habash sent his terrorists to kill children in Israeli schools and so did the Hamas leader the pediatrician Dr. Rantisi…and so continues to do the Pediatrician encouraging the sending of rockets from Gaza on innocent Israeli schools Dr Mahmud Zaher.

Please judge Goldstone, you should really be careful when such straight liars serve as the basis for your report. I am sure that you mean well but being an eye witness both to the events in Jenin and to the subsequent media and initial false UN reporting I do understand what happened to you. How a person of such stature and integrity could become associated with such a faulted report.

Look Judge Goldstone at your report on the Al Fakhura event on January 5-6th 2009 (paragraphs 651-688). You do report how Israel was accused for directly bombing the UNRWA school. It took 2 weeks to withdraw from this accusation but you, honored Judge, went back to get your testimony only from the same people who spread the blood libel of bombing the school.

Moreover when analyzing the scene you claim that you could not verify the numbers of 24 dead and 40 wounded but these numbers are not considered exaggerated. Finally in the Factual findings part you already determine that 24 people were killed and 40 injured!

Did you by any chance try to validate any of these invented and inciting details? Did you look at the Al Jazeera or BBC reports from the same very date of the event? Did you try to validate your “factual findings” conclusions by getting at least Emergency Room charts on the people admitted to their trauma department on this very day? Did you go over the I.D.’s of the “dead” people and the place or cemetery where they were supposedly buried?

Well you didn’t!

In all the scene of “40 dead and 40 wounded” filmed by Al Jazeera and other channels reporters and screened at the same day all over the world you could not see bodies or blood spots in the streets beside two or three casualties and one footage of a single wall damaged by a bomb. As a physician who was at terrible suicide events with smaller number of casualties I can testify how it looks like for hours following the event….The media documentation of the Al Fakhura event does not verify and definitely does not go along with the fantasy and lies of your witnesses.

As a judge I must be sure that you did not mean to hurt Israel, I try to believe that you came to Gaza without prejudice…but a judge is expected to look at least for some evidence and verification (media, ER registration, burial places etc….) of the testimonies and not accept impossible “facts”. You have let yourself to be misled by fabrications made by either terrorists or even doctors such as Dr. Abu Rali from Jenin.

I and my colleagues in Israel are proud of the medical service that is given equally to every human being regardless of his origin; we are also proud to belong to a nation that has the imprint of having higher moral standards than others.

The price that we pay for this status is very high. The Palestinians and other Muslims around the world, either common people or even respected doctors, use straight lies as part of the war against us. The Western world media criticizes us and tries to find where we were not behaving up to the extremely high moral standards that we made ourselves.

I call on you Judge Goldstone take this Al Fakhura event, look at the media coverage from the very same date…see the events in the context…try to live one day with the responsibility for the existence of this small nation of 6 million Jews threatened constantly by 300 million Muslims. I call on you to try and not draw conclusions from such lies and misleading witnesses even if they come from so-called professionals. In the modern world propaganda and lies are definitely a part of the war and as a judge you should not serve as a tool for augmenting hatred and conflicts.

We look for peace , we love peace and we do try our very best to fight for our right to exist in the highest possible moral standards even at the cost of our lives.

David Zangen M.D.

This letter is also available in a Hebrew translation.

.