PMWATCH - August 2, 2002 -- The US media has reached a new low in its coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with its grossly distorted coverage of the UN report on Jenin (http://www.un.org/peace/jenin/index.html), released on August 1, 2002. As the AP story below illustrates, the main spin that is taken by the US media is that the report has concluded that there was "no massacre in Jenin." The fact that a long list of abuses that clearly constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, is simply omitted from mention, or mentioned only in the vaguest terms.

Specifically, the AP story below, typical of how the media has covered the report, fails to mention that (and these are quotes from the UN report):

• The title of the report is: "Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory"
• "The report was written without a visit to Jenin or the other Palestinian cities"
• "In the absence of a response from Israel, the United Nations has relied on public statements of Israeli officials and publicly available documents of the Government of Israel relevant to the request in resolution ES-10/10."
• "Throughout this process, the United Nations has made every effort to accommodate the concerns of the Government of Israel within the mandate given to me by the Security Council"
• "Operation Defensive Shield was characterized by extensive curfews on civilian populations and restrictions, indeed occasional prohibitions, on the movement of international personnel, including at times humanitarian and medical personnel as well as human rights monitors and journalists"
• "Much of the fighting during Operation Defensive Shield occurred in areas heavily populated by civilians and in many cases heavy weaponry was used"
• "The Israeli Defence Forces announced the official end of the operation on 21 April but its consequences lasted until the end of the period under review and beyond."
• "Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territory are ;protected persons' under the Convention, which provides that they may not be wilfully killed, tortured, taken as hostages or suffer humiliating or degrading treatment."
• "The Government of the State of Israel has not, as at the submission of this report, accepted the de jure applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 to all Territory occupied since 1967."
• "Israeli military retaliation for terrorist attacks was often carried out against Palestinian Authority security forces and installations. This had the effect of severely weakening the Authority's capacity to take effective action against militant groups that launched attacks on Israelis."
• "There were also cases of Israeli forces not respecting the neutrality of medical and humanitarian workers and attacking ambulances."
• "Some journalists reported being fired at by members of IDF."
• "Round-the-clock curfews were imposed in cities, refugee camps, towns and villages affecting an estimated 1 million persons; over 600,000 of them remained under a one-week curfew, while 220,000 urban residents lived under curfew regimes for a longer duration and without vital supplies and access to first aid."

Please drop a note to the Associated Press about the sloppy journalism of reporter Edith M. Lederer. If you want to see how the AP story itself was further diluted and weakened by a large-circulation US paper, please visit the page on how the Philadelphia Inquirer further edited this story at: http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/cast/inkyeditig.asp

Palestine Media Watch
http://www.pmwatch.org
(610) 993 - 0608