...Within hours of the battle, Jenin was described as a massacre, and newspapers, television shows, human-rights groups and even governments were condemning Israel as having committed a war crime.
The BBC claimed almost 200 Palestinians had died and the Palestinians themselves assured the world the number was many times that estimate. CNN conducted an interview where its audience was told 500 unarmed Palestinians were dead.Well, we know what's up with the diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks: Jews defending themselves against Muslims, and, in, fact, taking great pains to minimize civilian casualties elicits sturm und drang; Muslims slaughtering other Muslims in the most brutal manner possible elicits muffled cries or a big ho-hum.
The usual hysterical demonstrations took place, where Muslim radicals and leftist activists took to the streets in Europe and North America, and liberal media expressed incredulity at the sadism of Israeli soldiers. Then the detailed reports appeared, revealing most of the figures were untrue and no massacre occurred.
This was the verdict of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, hardly friends of the Jewish state.
I write this because in the past few weeks we have seen genuine massacres and gruesome brutality. Thousands of people have now been murdered by Arab and Iranian governments and Arab and Iranian soldiers. In Libya, ordinary mourners attending the funerals of people shot dead in the streets were themselves targeted by snipers...
Not that that's "antisemitic," or anything.
For any military engagement, two versions exist: 1. The events as they actually unfolded in real time, e.g., Jenin as a firefight between the IDF and a coalition of Palestinian militias of various stripes, in which the latter cynically used the unevacuated civilians as cover, and in which the former took much higher casualties than strictly necessary militarily, in order to minimize casualties among said civilians. 2. The events as they are filtered ideologically by those who recount them, e.g., Jenin as a massacre of defenseless Palestinian civilians by sadistic, racist, xenophobic, religiously bigoted Waffen SS troopers transmogrified into IDF soldiers.
ReplyDeleteI need not tell Scaramouche which of these two versions has become the politically correct one for our friends on the Left.