Whoops somebody got the PR Spin all fucked up on this one

[plural]

Apparently it wasnt a massacre,
but a glorious victory of the palestinian resistance

Jenin 'massacre' reduced to death toll of 56

JENIN, West Bank
Palestinian officials yesterday put the death toll at 56 in the two-week Israeli assault on Jenin, dropping claims of a massacre of 500 that had sparked demands for a U.N. investigation.

The official Palestinian body count, which is not disproportionate to the 33 Israeli soldiers killed in the incursion, was disclosed by Kadoura Mousa Kadoura, the director of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement for the northern West Bank, after a team of four Palestinian-appointed investigators reported to him in his Jenin office.

[Two weeks ago, when European and particularly London newspapers were reporting estimates of "hundreds" massacred, Israeli sources in Washington said they expected the Palestinian toll to reach "45 to 55."]

Click here for the complete text

Paul Martin - Washington Times

thanks to ikilled007 for the link

Comments

Re: post got cut, continued here

[city-glitter.livejournal.com]

While Hitler certainly did attempt to exterminate the Jews, there was an early phase in which he spoke of resettling them on Madagascar. If only he had done that instead...

I think it's about time you sat down and accepted that Judaism is essentially a religion. It's time to stop perceiving yourselves as God's Chosen People, to live in the modern world and deal with the fact that you aren't better than anyone else.

"Your ancestral home." I believe we've gone over this before. If I returned to my ancestral home in Saxony and demanded the land back, I would be laughed out of court. And yes, my family was forced to leave: my paternal grandfather was pinned as a Nazi and was quite eager to get out of Germany towards the end of the war. Yet I can content myself with what my family has earned and collected since then, rather than running off to faraway deserts to snatch land away from largely unsuspecting civilians.

The Holocaust became the travesty it was because of the same sort of head-in-the-sand politics that exacerbate the situation in the Middle East today. A single life lost for such foolish eugenicist barbarianism was bad enough...but there was no need for it to be on such a scale. The Holocaust is nearly as much the fault of those who turned their heads as it is those who did the killing.

The Israeli government is quite fundamentalist. Although the appearances are that the government is run by reform and moderate Jews, the important fact to remember is that Israel was a nation formed on the basis of a religion. And as long as the Israeli government continues to justify their actions by claiming it's their right as Israelis, they qualify as fundamentalists. And that nation qualifies as a theocracy. There's not room for a sheet of paper between church and state.

How do you define democracy?

As a born citizen of the country strangely considered by most to be the foremost example of democracy in the world, I find it easy to look at the Constitution, our set of ideals, and the way things are...and find discrepancies. Obviously not every vote counts. Obviously not every individual is equal to his neighbor or his Congressman. Obviously not every American enjoys the rights to which they are entitled by their very existence as a human being. And the only difference between us and Israel is that we're committing our crimes on a much larger scale.

This reminds me very much of several hundred conversations I've had with my father, generally culminating in my being screamed at. While some of the details of the Islamic fundamentalist states are certainly repugnant, look at the essential nature of Israel. It is a nation formed on the basis of a religion. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it might very well be a duck.

The reasons behind our supporting Israel are as transparent as Saran Wrap, and I have stated them four or five times over the course of this and past debates on these manners.

Of course, there's what I've forgotten to mention up until now...which is that we're Israel's bitch. It's very sad, really. The "greatest nation on Earth" controlled by fear and said nation's inherent religious fundamentalism to kowtow to a sad little piece of land that would be absolutely nothing if we and our allies hadn't fed it weapons and protection over the past fifty years or so. It's embarrassing. It's definitely in our best interest, because we're AFRAID.

Of course you're not willing to sacrifice the state of Israel. That's where you're from. I wouldn't expect you to be. Nevertheless, you and your countrymen are out of line and I look forward to the day your tyranny and the desperate, foolish lashings-out of Palestinian and other Arab "martyrs" is peacefully ended. Whether you coexist with the Palestinians, or each of you have your own state, I don't care. The current situation is intolerable from a human rights perspective, and I believe in my heart that it's only a matter of time until everyone realizes it and comes to a consensus that it isn't worth the lives.