From: peta (petalindsay_dc@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu May 30 2002 - 16:17:09 EDT
--- "International A.N.S.W.E.R." wrote:
> Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 13:11:57 -0700 (PDT)
> From: "International A.N.S.W.E.R."
> <nowardc@yahoo.com>
> Subject: EYEWITNESS JENIN: Evidence of a massacre
> To: ANSWER@afgj.org
>
> EYEWITNESS JENIN:
> Evidence of Massacre in Jenin
> -Report from Friday, May 23-
>
> A fact-finding delegation dispatched to the West
> Bank
> and Gaza that includes legal and public health
> experts
> and human rights activists is investigating the
> conditions of the Palestinian people living under
> harsh Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.
> The delegation was organized by the International
> A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition - - Act Now to Stop War & End
> Racism. The delegation will prepare a report
> describing its findings in the coming weeks. Below
> is
> their initial dispatch from Jenin.
>
> REPORT FROM JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, WEST BANK:
> Jenin, Like Qibya in 1953, Is Another Massacre by
> Ariel Sharon
>
> On May 23, the A.N.S.W.E.R. delegation entered
> Jenin,
> a densely populated civilian refugee camp, and found
> undisputed evidence of a massacre. The delegation
> interviewed and took testimony from witnesses and
> survivors of the devastation and slaughter
> perpetrated
> by the Israeli military in its recent invasion of
> the
> West Bank, including the Jenin refugee camp.
>
> In Jenin this testimony confirmed the indiscriminate
> and vicious nature of the recent Sharon directed
> military attack against the Jenin refugee camp.
>
> "The coordinator for health services in the camp
> reported that as of now they have found and
> identified
> 55 bodies, and held funerals for those people. Of
> these, 5 were members of the Palestinian security
> forces and 12 were from various factions who
> defended
> the residents of Jenin against the Israeli invasion.
> The other thirty-eight rest were non-combatants,
> including children, elderly and disabled persons.
> Rescue workers believe there may be 10 to 40 others
> who are still buried in the rubble or who will never
> be found, leading sources in Jenin to estimate that
> there have been about 90 deaths," reported Dr.
> Hillel
> Cohen, a public health doctor and epidemiologist and
> member of delegation. "Many of the houses that were
> destroyed by tank shells and missiles were then
> bulldozed flat by the Israelis. If any bodies were
> inside those, they may never be found. At the spot
> we
> were talking, a neighbor saw a shell explode the
> house
> of a disabled man. The building collapsed on top of
> him and his body has not yet been found."
>
> Approximately 5,000 persons have been rendered
> homeless, as the Israeli Defense Forces methodically
> destroyed residential areas by attacking first with
> tanks and missiles, and completing the destruction
> of
> homes and neighborhoods through the use of
> bulldozers.
> There are wide swaths of land that have been clear
> cut
> of houses and inhabitants that were previously
> occupied by scores of homes separated by narrow
> pathways only a few meters wide. Many Palestinians
> still struggle to live in the rubble of partially
> destroyed homes with walls and roofs torn away and
> living areas exposed to the elements, and the number
> of persons displaced or rendered homeless is
> expected
> to increase as additional property are declared to
> be
> uninhabitable or structurally unsound.
>
> “There can be no doubt, based on the undisputed
> number
> of civilians killed by Sharon’s military, the
> obvious
> use of indiscriminate forms of violence and
> weaponry,
> in addition to the testimony of eyewitnesses to war
> crimes and countless instances and human cruelty
> unjustified by any conceivable necessity, that there
> has been a massacre in Jenin,” stated Carl Messineo,
> human rights attorney and member of the delegation.
> “The evidence of a massacre here is apparent. The
> only
> basis on which one could state that there was no
> massacre here is a political one.”
>
> Yet, the mainstream media have declared Jenin to not
> be a massacre, most frequently citing a recent
> report
> by Human Rights Watch that while admitting the
> civilian slaughter, and the frequency of Israeli war
> crimes and crimes against humanity in Jenin,
> declared
> that the indiscriminate killings did not constitute
> a
> massacre. That report, which was announced at the
> same
> time that the U.N. bowed to Israeli wishes and
> withdrew its request to investigate Jenin, has been
> used to legitimize the Israeli and U.N. decision
> from
> growing worldwide criticism.
>
> Based on the intensity of the shelling, Jenin
> residents initially guessed that there might have
> been
> hundreds or thousands killed. The numbers were much
> lower since many fled their homes, despite the
> curfew,
> at the first sounds of gunfire. The media contrasted
> these early, unconfirmed rumors to the confirmed
> body
> count of 55 to discredit the Palestinians and to
> scoff
> at the use of the word massacre.
>
> Yet in the dictionary, massacre is defined as
> "savage
> and indiscriminate killing" clearly an apt
> description
> of what took place. Some of the most well-known,
> historic massacres had fewer or similar numbers
> killed. In the Boston Massacre (March 5, 1770) ,
> British troops shot into a crowd of protestors who
> were throwing rocks and ice-balls at the troops,
> killing 5 and wounding 6. Among the five killed was
> Crispus Attucks, an African-American, considered the
> first to die in the American Revolution. In the
> Paoli
> Massacre (Sept. 20-21, 1777), also during the
> American
> Revolutionary war British troops killed 53
> Americans,
> all soldiers. At the Ludlow Massacre (April 20,
> 1914),
> 20 coal miners and family members were killed by
> National Guard during a strike by the United Mine
> Workers of America. The Sharpesville Massacre (March
> 21, 1960) is one of the most famous political
> massacres of the recent era, Apartheid troops fired
> into a crowd of African demonstrators, killing 69
> and
> wounding 180. The demonstrators were protesting the
> pass laws that restricted the movement of Africans,
> not unlike the restrictions now imposed by Israel on
> Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The
> Sharpesville killings were followed by massive
> arrests
> of activists - a pattern followed by the Israelis in
> Jenin and throughout the West Bank.
>
> Messineo explained, “The decision to reject the
> apparent evidence of massacre is a political
> decision,
> a mischaracterization used to immunize Ariel Sharon,
> the Israeli government and its U.S. backer, from
> responsibility for this unconscionable and
> indiscriminate military attack against Palestinian
> civilians. Even the killings of so-called
> Palestinian
> fighters cannot be justified under any standard of
> international humanitarian law, which recognizes the
> inherent right of people to self defense. When an
> invading army invades your homeland, fighting in
> self
> defense is justified to protect your self, your
> family
> and your people.”
>
> As the world knows, this is not Ariel Sharon’s first
> massacre. In 1953, Ariel Sharon led his Unit 101
> into
> Qibya, a civilian village, to execute Israel’s
> official policy of collective retaliatory
> punishment,
> ostensibly because there had been a recent killing
> of
> three Israelis. When Sharon left Qibya, sixty seven
> civilians had been killed by Israel’s military
> operation, between one half and two thirds of whom
> were women and children. Fifty six houses, the
> village
> mosque, school and water tank were destroyed. There
> has never been any dispute among historians as to
> whether Qibya - which has parallels to the scope of
> indiscriminate killing in Jenin - was a massacre.
>
> Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who directed the Jenin
> massacre, has been found responsible even by the
> Israeli government for the 1982 massacre at the
> Sabra
> and Shatila refugee camps in southern Lebanon in
> which
> up to 2,000 civilians were killed.
>
> ---------------
>
> The delegation includes Richard Becker, West Coast
> Coordinator of the International Action Center and
> member of the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition steering
> committee; Carl Messineo, attorney and co-founder of
> the Partnership for Civil Justice and member of the
> A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition steering committee; Sara
> Flounders, Co-Director of the International Action
> Center; Dr. Hillel Cohen, doctor of public health
> and
> epidemiologist and delegate of 1199 National Health
> and Human Services Employees Union.
>
> Other field reports from the A.N.W.E.R. delegation
> are
> available online:
> - Gaza:
>
http://www.internationalanswer.org/news/update/052002gazarept.html
> - Ramallah:
>
http://www.internationalanswer.org/news/update/052202ramarept.html
>
> The A.N.S.W.E.R. fact-finding delegation will give
> direct testimony on the findings of its trip at the
> June 1 Emergency National Anti-War Conference. For
> more details about this conference, go to
> http://www.internationalanswer.org . This will
> include
> the presentation of photographs, video, written
> documents and a report.
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