Why Europeans Bought the Myth - Jenin

Most of the major press and broadcasting outlets in Western Europe uncritically gobbled up the Jenin Massacre Myth with self-indulgent abandon. Their record contrasted particularly unfavorably -- and even, it might be argued, contemptibly -- with the remarkable balance and restraint the U.S. broadcast and print media showed after Sept. 11.

The mega-terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center towers and mauled the Pentagon killed around 3,000 Americans in New York City and Washington. Yet U.S. media coverage and reaction was remarkable for its balance and restraint. There was no effort to scapegoat the Muslim population of the United States -- estimates of its size run from 1.7 million to 7 million but it appears to be between 2 million to 3 million.

Careful distinctions were drawn repeatedly between the small number of terrorists who had actually planned and executed the attacks and the vast majority of law-abiding Muslim Americans.

By contrast, the Israeli strikes into the West Bank did not threaten French, British or other Western Europeans directly. Yet much of the coverage was exaggerated, wildly inaccurate and reflected a sweeping rush to judgment against an entire nation and the ethic group that identified with it.

Alon Ben-David, veteran military correspondent of the Israel Broadcasting Authority and currently a media fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard told United Press International: "A large part of the European media regards itself as not just reporters but as ideological crusaders. They are in the business of journalism not just for the business. They want to do good in the world. They have agendas."

And in the case of the initial massacre accusations, many of these Western European reporters "had no way of verifying the allegations they heard yet they reported them as fact, or as factually credible. That bothers me," Ben-David said.

Why were reporters and news editors of so many of the biggest and most prestigious Western European newspapers and broadcasting networks ready to believe that the Israeli Army had committed a massacre in the Palestinian West Bank city of Jenin when no massacre had in fact occurred? The reasons were many.

First, everyone was prepared to believe the worst, because the worst had already happened. It was all too credible to believe that hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians had been massacred in Jenin because they had been massacred before. The 20-year-old shadow of Sabra and Shatila lay across the international media's initial perceptions of Jenin.

In 1982, Lebanese Christian Falangist forces allied to the invading Israeli army massacred at least hundreds, possibly thousands, of Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila outside Beirut. Large numbers of women and children were among the dead. The Israeli forces did not commit the massacre or even encourage it, but a later major national inquiry in Israel issued devastating criticism of Israel's then-minister of defense, Ariel Sharon. It concluded that Sharon had not taken the precautionary action required by the warning signs and circumstances to prevent the massacre. It recommended that he never again be allowed to serve as defense minister of Israel.

The effect of Sabra and Shatila on the journalists covering it was profound. Its impact through them on the Western world, especially in Europe, was even greater. From Israel's war of independence in 1947-48 for more than 30 years through the 1967 Six Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1976 Entebbe rescue operation, Israel enjoyed enormous sympathy and support among the Western European media elite. Reporters, editors and their readers alike all saw it as a Jewish David struggling to survive against an Arab Goliath.

But after Sabra and Shatila, all that changed. Then, the first Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, of 1987-92 reinforced the Sabra and Shatila image that the Palestinians had replaced the Jews as an "eternally suffering" people. That image and stereotype remained, though somewhat submerged, during the hopeful years from the start of the Oslo Peace Process in 1993 to its collapse at the Camp David II summit in July 2000.

Because Sabra and Shatila had actually happened, it appeared credible that it could happen again. Because Ariel Sharon had failed to prevent Sabra and Shatila, it was easy to imagine that he had approved a second version of it on a large scale. These preconceptions proved critical in the willingness of media elites to accept the Palestinian allegations that a massacre was taking place.

Second, the Israelis haplessly and inadvertently dug a public relations trap for themselves and then promptly fell into it. They prevented the international media from covering what was certainly extremely fierce fighting in the refugee camp and streets of Jenin.

As a result, international media reporters could not see with their own eyes that a massacre in fact was not taking place. But they were receiving claims from the Palestinians that it was. And since the Israeli military were preventing the international media from going into Jenin and seeing what was happening with their own eyes, it was only too easy and obvious to conclude that they were covering up the truth of the Palestinian allegations.

Third, even when the worst fighting was over and the Israelis finally allowed reporters into Jenin, a "rat pack" psychology, even hysteria, appears to have taken hold. People saw what they wanted to see and they mutually reinforced each other in their perceptions. Thus it was that an astonishing number of reports of alleged massacres and atrocities in the different "quality" newspapers of the British press alike cited the same single Palestinian eyewitness for their allegations.

Fourth, almost none of those present had covered serious urban conflicts in Lebanon and Northern Ireland during their worst phases in the 1970s and early 1980s. Almost none of them were old enough to have experienced full-scale battle reporting first-hand in Vietnam. This led them to vastly exaggerate the scale of destruction and death they were seeing. One British reporter wrote evocatively of the stench of hundreds of dead bodies buried beneath the rubble when the Palestinian Authority, which had earlier claimed thousands had died, had revised its own official figures of those killed to less than 60.

Janine di Giovanni writing in the London Times even claimed the devastation was on a worse scale than anything she had seen in Bosnia, Chechnya or Sierra Leone, where scores, even hundreds, of thousands of people had died. The reactions of veteran reporters of real wars like Ernie Pyle or Marguerite Higgins to that kind of hyperbole would likely have been derisive laughter.

The reaction of the Western European media differed profoundly in its nature from that of U.S. newspapers and broadcasting news outlets. The allegations were equally widely reported in the United States. However, the U.S. broadcast media proved far more resistant to anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic hysteria than that in Western European. This appears to have been the case precisely because no single state-funded or state-approved corporation dominated broadcast news in the United States, as is the case in Britain and France.

In those and other smaller countries, a well-entrenched left-wing media elite has been hostile to Israel and its policies for decades. And they have long enjoyed a cozy, unchallenged bureaucratic dominance in the state broadcasting news organizations that to a large degree set the braking news and analysis for the entire print press.

Therefore, entire echelons of editors and executives in these organizations were willing to accept uncritically the fierce unsubstantiated and hysterical reports coming out of their correspondents in Jenin. And even when individual newspapers like Le Monde in Paris or Il Foglio in Rome expressed caution or skepticism about the initial massacre claims, their warnings were drowned out in the broadcast media din. In the United States, by contrast, there is no single state-owned or subsidized national broadcasting service to set the tone.

There are four main national television networks, each one corporately or privately owned and three of them also run quasi-independent cable news networks. And there is also CNN. The cable Fox News Channel in particular seeks to position itself as relatively conservative in tone and counter-channel to the other, more liberal, "establishment" ones. With this diversity of broadcast voices, it is therefore not possible for a single network to dominate the coverage. Coverage perceived as being slavishly biased in favor of -- or against -- either Israel or the Palestinians tends to provoke strong outcries from public pressure groups and on other parts of the media.

In addition to all this, the raw material being reported from the field tended to be far more partisan and sympathetic to the Palestinian initial claims of massacre in Western Europe than in the United States. For the tradition of the practice of journalism in Europe remains far more partisan and unashamedly subjective than in the United States. The reasons for the European media's "rush to judgment" over Jenin were many, but one conclusion was inescapable: The "rush to judgment" was an "hour of shame."

For a dose of truth:
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part I http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668601/posts Non-evidence and Pali fabrication of evidence	Steyn: The UN is running out of blind eyes to turn http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/669411/posts Interesting link on UN backpedaling
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part II http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/669632/posts Palestinians drop their hyped-up "massacre" charges	The Massacre That Never Was http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668572/posts The testimony of pathological liars
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part III http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672189/posts Jimmy "International Fiasco" Carter, has an opinion	There was No Massacre in Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668650/posts The Elite, The Paid, The Gullible all accept Pali lies
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part IV http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672160/posts Yet more non-evidence and Pali fabrication of evidence	NY POST: THE MASSACRE THAT WASN'T http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/667529/posts Peres: There wasn't a house that wasn't booby-trapped
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part V http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/673145/posts The Pali's contradict themselves and blame it on Israel	Steyn: It's time to snap out of Arab fantasy land http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/669063/posts Some great Oriana Fallaci quotes/links as well
WSJ: The Massacre That Wasn't - Part VI http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/678521/posts Pali grave digging and UN jury rigging	Jenin's 'Massacre' Death Toll Reduced to 56 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675752/posts Say it slow: Israelis told the truth, Palis told lies
An interesting juxtaposition of tales:
Message From An Israeli On The Front Lines http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/673234/posts "Entire families exploded themselves! It was horrific."	Palestinian Fighter admits: No Massacre in Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/671903/posts 2,000 bombs and booby-traps placed in the camp
Pediatrician: terrorists used children in Jenin camp http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/670962/posts Doc: IDF did everything possible to avoid civilian harm	Palestinians Booby-Trap Wheelchair in Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/670810/posts NOTE: The wheelchair was occupied!!
Jenin War Diary of a Hasidic Soldier - Part I http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672951/posts Israeli citizen-soldier describes what went on in Jenin	Massacre Claims Unsupported by Pali Fighters http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675129/posts Pali eyewitnesses all support the Israeli version
Jenin War Diary of a Hasidic Soldier - Part II http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/678298/posts There is no army as humane as the IDF	Palestinian fighter's version of the Jenin battle http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672896/posts Pali Plan: Trap Israeli soldiers, then blow them up
Yellow Journalism: Sensationalism, Yes! Truth, No!
How the L.A. Times and CNN Distorted Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/681552/posts First, you start with an agenda...	Jenin: The Big Lie. Fighting the Media War http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/667296/posts World media falls for Goebbels's 'Big Lie' ... Again
The Media and 'The Massacre' http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668719/posts Quick to report fantasy, slow to correct errors	Atrocities of the British Press http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/669206/posts Huge amounts of ink devoted to unverified Pali tales
Reporters Back Down From 'Massacre' Reports http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668509/posts World press forced to face the truth: No Massacre	The Big Jenin Lie http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/679694/posts Putrid Pali Propaganda Promptly Panned - GO FR!
We're from the UN. We're Here to Help.
The Overseers of Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675737/posts Camps run by UN are centers for terror bombings	U.N.'s Point Man In Jenin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/673541/posts Arafat's militia gangs rely on Mr. Roed-Larsen
Guilty Until Proven Guilty http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675043/posts Surprise! The UN has a not-so-hidden agenda	The Jenin Probe Ends http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675737/posts UN unhappy about Israel's possible exhoneration
And so, in conclusion:
The 'Jenin Massacre' Hoax http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/677148/posts Living in a world of monstrous moral inversion	The Phantom Massacre http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/672761/posts War Crimes in Jenin were committed by the Palis
Terrorists admit they carried out atrocities http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/679306/posts Fanatics brutalize women, children, old men	Jenin's War Criminals http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675340/posts What the Palestinians did was the real war crime

"A large part of the European media regards itself as not just reporters but as ideological crusaders. They are in the business of journalism not just for the business. They want to do good in the world. They have agendas."

They have agendas all right and I don't doubt that they, themselves, think they are out to do good- but nothing could be further from the truth.

I don't know if you have ever heard a lefty say it- but they're always going on and on about how "if they want real news they have to go to European websites." This is exactly why.

Liberals don't want objective news- they want reality warped and twisted to fit their ideology. History is replete with this phenomenom. The Soviets removing Trotsky from photos is just one example. PC speech is another- if they don't like a word, hell just remove it from the language. Their constant revision of American and World history boggles the mind- one good instance of this are the claims of "up to 40 million blacks captured as slaves dying on the 'Middle Passage' across the Atlantic."

Liberals must rewrite the facts because their ideology is unworkable in the universe as we know it. For them, there is no such thing as an absolute objective reality- it's what people believe is true that matters. If they can spin it, stretch it or just downright lie about it and get the people to believe it long enough for them to impose totalitarianism, they can bring about their mythological utopia. Once they accomplish this then they can hold up five fingers and make you see six- a la George Orwell.

Amazingly, Orwell was a socialist. You'd think that his damning novel on socialist totalitarianism would've have caused him to realize that his own ideals were unworkable. But instead, true to liberal mindsets, he still believed that "when done correctly- socialism/communism is the perfect society".

I believe there is little or no hope for a person that becomes a radical leftist. Unless they are rudely shocked to wakefulness like David Horowitz was after the Black Panthers murdered one of his friends, they are doomed to killing the best part of themselves by their late 20s and afterwards there's no turning back.

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