THE MASSACRE THAT WASN'T
New York Post | 4/17/02

April 17, 2002 -- For days, Palestinian, U.N. and aid-group officials declared flatly that Israeli troops had perpetrated a horrendous massacre of innocent civilians at the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
Once outside observers were allowed into the camp, they charged, it would be clear that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's soldiers had committed a monstrous war crime that would eclipse the killing fields of Kosovo.

On Monday, journalists entered Jenin. And what they found put the lie to Yasser Arafat's outrageous propaganda.

To be sure, the physical destruction was enormous, reflecting the intense fighting that took 23 Israeli lives.

But, Newsday's Edward Gargan wrote, "There is little evidence to suggest that Israeli troops conducted a massacre of the dimensions alleged by Palestinian officials." Said The Washington Post's Molly Moore: "No evidence has yet surfaced to support allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions."

One U.N. official told Moore, "Everybody was thinking mass graves in the way we think of Kosovo." But, he added, "I don't think we have seen that."

So much for Arafat's Big Lie.

About 40 bodies were discovered, all but three of them men - ammunition belts strapped to their bodies - who quite clearly were engaged in armed combat with the Israelis.

Indeed, it was precisely because Israel refused to conduct indiscriminate bombing attacks - preferring the more dangerous course of house-to-house searches - that 13 of its troops were killed at a booby-trapped house.

As the Israeli corps commander noted, "I could have finished it all with a whistle. Full-corps fire on the center of the camp and the whole thing would have been over. But we behave differently."

In fact, Jenin was a hotbed of Palestinian terrorist activity. Even Israel's dovish foreign minister, Shimon Peres, acknowledges that "there wasn't a house that wasn't booby-trapped."

Arafat's henchmen, confronted by the evidence, now claim that the Israelis secretly spirited away hundreds of bodies under cover of night. Right.

Sadly, the damage to Israel's image already has been done. Far too many people already believe the legend of the Jenin massacre, and international media reports - especially in Europe - refuse to acknowledge the truth.

It's yet another burden that Israel must carry in its courageous battle to defeat the evil menace of terrorism.