The Electronic Intifada 15 September 2002
Following a baseless attack on EI by a former Israeli cabinet minister, published in Ha’aretz newspaper, EI’s attempts to get Ha’aretz to print a very reasonable correction ended in an unsatisfying exchange with Ha’aretz editor David Landau. Read the full story in our EI in the Press section.
Initial response to Ha’aretz:
September 12, 2002
To Ha’aretz:
Amnon Rubinstein completely distorts our August 24 letter in The Economist when he writes that we “claimed that no Palestinians had spread false rumors of a massacre in Jenin and that the “myth” of the Palestinians accusing the IDF of a massacre was part of an anti-Palestinian plot.” (‘The massacring of the truth,’ September 11, 2002)
We hope that Ha’aretz, in the spirit of objectiveness for which it is known, will allow us to set the record straight in full.
As anyone who refers to our original letter will learn, our precise and specific statement is that contrary to the assertion in UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s report about Jenin, there is no public record of any Palestinian official accusing the Israeli army of killing 500 Palestinians in Jenin.
While this charge is widely attributed to the Palestinians, even in Annan’s report, we have been wholly unable to locate any direct quote from any Palestinian official making it in any media. All of the claims are unattributed repetitions.
The confusion appears to have originated when Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat stated in a CNN Interview on April 10 that he was hearing unconfirmed reports that up to 500 people had been killed throughout the West Bank in Israel’s “Operation Defensive Shield,” not just in Jenin.
The following day, The Jerusalem Post reported “Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told CNN that Israel had “massacred” 500 people in the Jenin camp.” (“Hundreds of gunmen surrender in Jenin,” by Arieh O’Sullivan, April 11, 2002) In fact, looking at the CNN transcript from April 10, Erekat neither made this claim, nor used the word “massacre.”
Erekat’s fear that hundreds had died has been entirely vindicated even by the Secretary General’s report, which put the final Palestinian death toll from Israel’s reoccupation of the West Bank at 497.
We have never disputed that some Palestinians did use the term “massacre,” as we acknowledged in our original article about this subject at our website at electronicIntifada.net on August 1. (Please see electronicIntifada.net/v2/article499.shtml)
We did point out, however, that the first person to whom the word was publicly attributed is Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres. In an article in Ha’aretz on April 9 under the headline “Peres calls IDF operation in Jenin a ‘massacre’,” Peres is quoted saying “When the world sees the pictures of what we have done there, it will do us immense damage.”
Our view is that the false debate over the use of the word “massacre” is simply a diversion from serious accusations of war crimes made by several international and Israeli human rights organizations.
Finally, we never referred to any “anti-Palestinian plot,” and Mr. Rubinstein’s other wild charges such as calling our work “hysterical anti-semitism” are simply a reflection of his own hysterical mindset. The best response is to invite your readers to visit our website and judge for themselves whether it is us or Mr. Rubinstein who is “massacring the truth.”
Yours most sincerely,
Ali Abunimah, Amman
Nigel Parry, New York City
The Electronic Intifada
Follow-up correspondence to Ha’aretz:
13 September 2002
Dear Mr. Landau,
I am writing to confirm whether you have received the letter we sent to Haaretz responding to the false and hysterical attack on us in your pages, by Amnon Rubinstein. I hope to hear from you that Ha’aretz plans to print our letter.
With very best regards,
Ali Abunimah
For The Electronic Intifada
Response from Ha’aretz:
13 September 2002
Dear Mr Abunimah,
I did receive your letter but I decided not to run it. Let me tell you my thinking.
You wrote in your letter to The Economist: “We have been unable to locate any direct quote from any Palestinian official…” and you then go on to parse Saeb Erekat’s words to CNN and to assert that they were the source of the confusion. Professor Rubinstein, however, referred to stories IN HA’ARETZ at that time which cited Palestinians reporting and describing massacres. He was criticizing not to your parsing (and “vindication”) of Erekat, but rather your inability to locate any other sources for the massacre canard.
Sincerely,
David Landau
Editor, Ha’aretz English Edition
Response from EI:
13 September 2002
Dear Mr. Landau,
I fear you may have misunderstood our point. We were not making any claim about the use of the word “massacre.” The point of our letter to The Economist was about the use of the number 500. That is the sole point we challenged The Economist and Kofi Annan’s report on as is very clear from The Economist letter. In fact there is no public record of any Palestinian official stating that Israel killed 500 people in Jenin. What Mr. Rubinstein has done is to omit that point and to set us up as a straw man and knock us down for a claim we did not make about a “canard” we didn’t challenge. We made this very clear in our letter to The Economist and specifically acknowledged in the original (a copy of which I am happy to send you) that some Palestinians had used the word “massacre.”
Once again a false debate about the word “massacre” is being allowed to stand int he way of a real discussion. As we showed in our letter, it was Mr. Peres who first used the word. Of course Mr. Rubinstein in his hysterical piece made no mention of that.
Obviously it is very disappointing that you prefer to allow Mr. Rubinstein’s misrepresentation of our words and views to stand. I urge you in the spirit of fairness and accuracy to reconsider your position.
Yours,
Ali Abunimah
Response from Ha’aretz:
14 September 2002
Dear Mr Abunimah,
Surely you are artificially narrowing the plain tenor of your letter
to The Economist which I have before me. It refers, in my reading of the version as printed, not just to the 500 issue but to the massacre issue. I quote: “…Mr Erekat neither made this claim, nor used the word ‘massacre’.”
Sincerely,
David Landau
Response from EI:
15 September 2002
Dear Mr. Landau,
It is you that is articifially widening the focus of our letter, which dealt with a specific and precisely quoted claim. Our response was to a claim by The Economist that Palestinian officials accused Israel of “massacring up to 500 civilians in Jenin.” The ONLY time there is a public record of any Palestinian official mentioning the number 500 according to our research was Erekat on April 10, and it is plainly not in reference to Jenin alone. It is surely relevant as well that on the specific occasion when Mr. Erekat talked about 500 killed throughout the entire West Bank he did NOT use the word “massacre” in conjunction with that number, contrary to the claim in The Jerusalem Post that he had.
Surely you do not think we were wrong to point that out?
That was what our letter in original and as printed was about. As you yourself said, we said that “…Mr Erekat neither made this claim, nor used the word ‘massacre’.”
Obviously “this claim” refers to the number 500, since the term “massacre” is dealt with in the second part of that sentence and refers specifically to Mr. Erekat. When we say “we have been wholly unable to locate any direct quote from any Palestinian official making it in any media,” we are clearly referring to the WHOLE statement we quoted and certainly to the part (about 500) that our letter focuses on, not just the half that taken out of context suited Mr. Rubinstein’s purposes.
In short, Mr. Rubinstein chooses to take half of our point and twist it to accuse us of claiming that ‘no Palestinian anywhere ever talked about a massacre.’ This is pure distortion and it is something we never said.
In any case, we could of course disagree about the interpretation of our statements, and whether it is fair practice to pick things selectively, out of context, and use them as weapons to malign people and accuse them “hysterical anti-semitism.” If you think this is worthy practice that is certainly your right.
But Mr. Rubinstein has had his say, so why not let us have ours? Surely you trust your readers enough to make their own judgment in the light of all the information, including that crucial information from our letter that Mr. Rubinstein excluded from his article?
Otherwise it is a wonder that any letters get printed in Ha’aretz at all with such legalistic standards.
For reference only, I send you our original letter to The Economist, but there is nothing in it that has not been on our website since early August, nor anything that is not sufficiently reflected in the printed version to support our point. Yet, had The Economist printed our letter in full, there would obviously be no space at all for Mr. Rubinstein’s distortion or at least unjustifiably wide interpretation. If you wished to act in good faith towards both Mr. Rubinstein and to our ourselves, you would assume he had no intention to distort our letter as printed, but you would also allow space for our response as well.
Yours,
Ali Abunimah
