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Five Israeli Defense Force soldiers are suing a Palestinian filmmaker for allegedly falsifying information in a documentary claiming Israeli forces committed genocide in a refugee camp, while a French producer is screening a film using video footage to dispute the Palestinian claims.
The five IDF soldiers were seen in still footage in “Jenin, Jenin,” a documentary by Mohammed Bakri that alleges Israel committed genocide in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, killing a “large number” of civilians, mutilating Palestinian bodies, randomly executing and bombing women, children and the mentally and physically impaired, and leveling the entire refugee camp, including a wing of the local hospital.
The documentary doesn’t show footage of the alleged atrocities, but in some scenes, faces of the soldiers now suing Bakri were superimposed over “eyewitness testimony,” and it was indicated they had committed “war crimes.”
Similar claims of a massacre were made in 2002 by the Palestinian leadership, which spoke of upwards of 500 civilians killed and thousands wounded, but it was later determined 56 Palestinians, mostly gunmen, were killed, and 23 Israeli soldiers died in the battle.
Media accounts, documentary evidence and investigations by several international humanitarian organizations quickly proved there was no massacre.
Israel entered Jenin, which was considered a center for terrorist recruitment and operations, as part of its Operation Defensive Shield to crack down on increased suicide bombings by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Israel sent infantry units to fight house-to-house and lost nearly two dozen soldiers to ambushes, Palestinian snipers and booby-trapped houses.
Bakri’s film features several “witnesses” describing “brutality” by the IDF, claiming Israel attacked and killed “many, many” Palestinians with tanks, planes and snipers, although Bakri never lists the exact number of Palestinians killed.
But a film by Pierre Rehov, “The Road To Jenin,” seems to disprove many of Bakri’s claims, and has been cited in the lawsuit against the Palestinian filmmaker.
One charge by Bakri is that Israel fired 11 missiles at a Jenin hospital, leveling the facility while patients were inside, and later wouldn’t allow emergency personnel to access the area. Hospital manager Dr. Mustafa Abo Gali tells Bakri’s audience, “The whole of the west wing was destroyed. Fighter planes launched their missiles every three minutes.”
But in “The Road to Jenin,” Rehov also interviews Gali, who shows the filmmaker the extent of the damage – a small hole on the outside of a building, with the entire west wing intact. Rehov also provides aerial images of the hospital on the last day of the Jenin incursion showing all sections of the hospital standing normally.
With regard to Bakri’s claim that ambulances weren’t able to reach the area, Dr. David Zangen, the IDF chief medical officer in Jenin during the incursion, describes to Rehov how the soldiers treated many wounded Palestinian fighters, including members of Hamas. Rehov even cuts to a scene of an Israeli soldier authorizing Gali in person to receive any medical supplies he needs for the Jenin hospital.
Writes Tamar Sternthal of the Committee for Accuracy in Reporting in the Middle East, “Even casual observers will notice apparent inconsistencies in the ‘witness testimony’ on which Bakri relies. For example, an older interviewee charges that the Israelis made Palestinian prisoners fully undress: ‘Some people were completely undressed in front of their brothers, sisters and children, who were used as human shields.’ Yet, the accompanying image does not support this claim; it shows a group of Palestinians, some of them without shirts. All wore pants.”
Bakri also claims the IDF shot in the hands an unarmed Palestinian villager, Ali Youssef, and when he couldn’t stand up, they shot his feet. But Rehov found Youssef for his documentary and reveals Youssef was standing in a housing complex with Hamas gunmen when he was shot once in the hand. Israeli medics treated Youssef’s wound, found a congenital heart problem, no foot injury and brought him to Israel for treatment at a hospital in Afula. Hospital papers disclose Youssef was not shot in the leg at all.
Zangen says Bakri uses deceptive filmography techniques to create the myth of a massacre. He cites one scene of a tank heading toward a crowd. The scene then blacks out, falsely suggesting the people were all killed, says Zangen. Also, Bakri, who Zangen says was not on scene at any time during the battle to get footage, deceptively juxtaposes images of Israeli tanks and snipers taking aim with pictures of Palestinian children. …"
worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42257
The five IDF soldiers were seen in still footage in “Jenin, Jenin,” a documentary by Mohammed Bakri that alleges Israel committed genocide in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, killing a “large number” of civilians, mutilating Palestinian bodies, randomly executing and bombing women, children and the mentally and physically impaired, and leveling the entire refugee camp, including a wing of the local hospital.
The documentary doesn’t show footage of the alleged atrocities, but in some scenes, faces of the soldiers now suing Bakri were superimposed over “eyewitness testimony,” and it was indicated they had committed “war crimes.”
Similar claims of a massacre were made in 2002 by the Palestinian leadership, which spoke of upwards of 500 civilians killed and thousands wounded, but it was later determined 56 Palestinians, mostly gunmen, were killed, and 23 Israeli soldiers died in the battle.
Media accounts, documentary evidence and investigations by several international humanitarian organizations quickly proved there was no massacre.
Israel entered Jenin, which was considered a center for terrorist recruitment and operations, as part of its Operation Defensive Shield to crack down on increased suicide bombings by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Israel sent infantry units to fight house-to-house and lost nearly two dozen soldiers to ambushes, Palestinian snipers and booby-trapped houses.
Bakri’s film features several “witnesses” describing “brutality” by the IDF, claiming Israel attacked and killed “many, many” Palestinians with tanks, planes and snipers, although Bakri never lists the exact number of Palestinians killed.
But a film by Pierre Rehov, “The Road To Jenin,” seems to disprove many of Bakri’s claims, and has been cited in the lawsuit against the Palestinian filmmaker.
One charge by Bakri is that Israel fired 11 missiles at a Jenin hospital, leveling the facility while patients were inside, and later wouldn’t allow emergency personnel to access the area. Hospital manager Dr. Mustafa Abo Gali tells Bakri’s audience, “The whole of the west wing was destroyed. Fighter planes launched their missiles every three minutes.”
But in “The Road to Jenin,” Rehov also interviews Gali, who shows the filmmaker the extent of the damage – a small hole on the outside of a building, with the entire west wing intact. Rehov also provides aerial images of the hospital on the last day of the Jenin incursion showing all sections of the hospital standing normally.
With regard to Bakri’s claim that ambulances weren’t able to reach the area, Dr. David Zangen, the IDF chief medical officer in Jenin during the incursion, describes to Rehov how the soldiers treated many wounded Palestinian fighters, including members of Hamas. Rehov even cuts to a scene of an Israeli soldier authorizing Gali in person to receive any medical supplies he needs for the Jenin hospital.
Writes Tamar Sternthal of the Committee for Accuracy in Reporting in the Middle East, “Even casual observers will notice apparent inconsistencies in the ‘witness testimony’ on which Bakri relies. For example, an older interviewee charges that the Israelis made Palestinian prisoners fully undress: ‘Some people were completely undressed in front of their brothers, sisters and children, who were used as human shields.’ Yet, the accompanying image does not support this claim; it shows a group of Palestinians, some of them without shirts. All wore pants.”
Bakri also claims the IDF shot in the hands an unarmed Palestinian villager, Ali Youssef, and when he couldn’t stand up, they shot his feet. But Rehov found Youssef for his documentary and reveals Youssef was standing in a housing complex with Hamas gunmen when he was shot once in the hand. Israeli medics treated Youssef’s wound, found a congenital heart problem, no foot injury and brought him to Israel for treatment at a hospital in Afula. Hospital papers disclose Youssef was not shot in the leg at all.
Zangen says Bakri uses deceptive filmography techniques to create the myth of a massacre. He cites one scene of a tank heading toward a crowd. The scene then blacks out, falsely suggesting the people were all killed, says Zangen. Also, Bakri, who Zangen says was not on scene at any time during the battle to get footage, deceptively juxtaposes images of Israeli tanks and snipers taking aim with pictures of Palestinian children. …"
worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42257