Electronic Intifada chimes in again

A few weeks ago I was pouting because the Electronic Intifada dropped a comment about their rather original Jenin "massacre" spin to Moira Breen but not to me. Well, this past weekend (when I was too busy with pleasant things to get too distracted by it), I got a little note from Nigel Perry. Here's a full, complete and utterly unedited copy of our exchange:

Nigel's note:

At http://incontext.blogspot.com/ you claim that our letter to the Economist asserts "that the palestinians [sic] never claimed there was a "massacre" at Jenin". No it doesn't. Read it again. Here's the letter: http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article568.shtml

The focus is the fact that there is no direct quote of the 500 number from a Palestinian official, not on whether Palestinians used the word 'massacre'. The point we made was that no Palestinian official said '500 were massacred at Jenin'.

In other words, it's a case of Chinese whispers, which happens in the media all the time. It was important to correct this instance not because we were trying to say that "Israel made it all up" but because this red herring point has been used by the Israel lobby -- as it has been by you -- to divert attention away from what *did* happen at Jenin, a point that is abundantly clear in all our writing about this topic.

The esoteric debate about whether there was a "massacre" or not is irrelevant in light of the fact that Israel's own media printed testimony from a bulldozer driver that says he knowingly drove bulldozers on top of occupied homes and that every human rights organization which looked into it concluded that there was evidence that "war crimes" had happened at Jenin.

If you're going to contest things we say, that's all good. However, it is generally considered impolite to put words in other people's mouths and then complain about their narrative.

Nigel Parry

My reply:

Nice try. I've read the letter. Both the version that was printed in the Economist and the version you claim you originally sent to the Economist. I believe the letter speaks for itself. That's why I republished it.

Lynn B.

His response:

Your use of the phrase "nice try" suggests we're trying to backtrack or change what we said since the Economist letter.

I suppose it's completely irrelevant to your ongoing mouth stuffing escapades that a whole month before the Economist letter we were arguing exactly what you claim we're backtracking from: http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article499.shtml

The beauty of it all is that -- yes -- our letter really does speak for itself.

Your hostile and dismissive attitude suggests you don't really care about the facts of the matter. Fine. Your website title suggested the opposite. My mistake.

Nigel Parry

"Mouth stuffing escapades?" Wow! Is this guy keeping track of my eating habits? Anyway, I've gone back over Mr. Parry's links, just in case I missed something the first several times around, and I must repeat what I said the last time I wrote about this. You'd think these guys would want to slink away and stop calling attention to this almost (but not quite) comical farce. Their buddies got caught in a lie, they tried to weasel their way out of it in the lamest and most disingenuous possible way, they got called on it and now they insist on advertising their ineptitude.

Well, okay, I'm happy to help, but there's only so much I can add to the evidence I've already posted here. Except to call Mr. Parry's attention to the fact that I didn't and wouldn't accuse him of backtracking. His consistent backstop has been and apparently remains that Saeb Erekat never claimed in so many words that 500 palestinians were killed at Jenin and that no palestinian official ever referred to the Israeli incursion into the Jenin refugee camp as a "massacre" until Shimon Peres said it first.

To which I say, so what? Even if (and I still don't buy this "if") the Israeli foreign minister (who incidentally had his own axe to grind) "said it first," the fact remains that palestinian officials, including Erekat, immediately picked up the "massacre" ball and ran with it ad nauseum. It was a lie. Moreover, the lie was deliberately used by the palestinians and their supporters in a huge media blitz, the express goal of which was to win world sympathy and demonize Israel by convincing as many people as possible that the lie was the truth. They failed. The fact that Mr. Abunimah and Mr. Parry were already trying to whitewash this fraud before the U.N. Report came out is irrelevant. They knew that there was no possibility of substantiating the false accusations that had been made. They were simply doing damage control.

Mr. Parry has taken me, Ha'aretz and the Economist to task for distorting his words. Somehow, it seems, all of us got the impression that he was asserting that the palestinians never claimed there was a "massacre." Not true, he insists. He was only claiming that the words "500 killed at Jenin" were never uttered. Is this the sole point of the endless letters, emails, blog comments and Electronic Intifada articles such as this one to which Mr. Parry directed me and which was published on no less than ten different pro-palestinian websites around the internet (ain't Google great)? In this article, Ali Abunimah appears to be arguing as follows: 1) In an interview with CNN anchor Jim Clancy on April 10, 2002, Mr. Erekat said that "numbers of killed could reach 500 since the Israeli offensive began," 2) Then CNN's Bill Hemmer, "apparently in reference to Erekat's earlier appearance," erroneously reported that Erekat had said "Palestinians have lost now 500 people between the battles in Jenin and Nablus," 3) this erroneous report was picked up by the Jerusalem Post, which reported that Erekat had claimed 500 dead at Jenin alone, 4) there is no evidence that Erekat or any other palestinian official ever made such a claim so 5) (and here's the quantum leap) this specific accusation, of 500 dead, was seized upon by the Israelis so as to divert the world's attention from the um, massacre war crimes at Jenin. Do I have it right now, Nigel? You fully acknowledge that the palestinians falsely accused Israel at every opportunity of perpetrating a "massacre" at Jenin, but you absolutely, positively refute that they included the number 500 in that false accusation?

You know, I think I might be willing to call that a meeting of the minds if it weren't for this transcript from an interview that Mr. Erekat gave to Bill Hemmer on April 15, 2002, in which he makes the following curious statement -- verbatim:

Look, Bill, I told you yesterday, if the number of Palestinians who were killed in that refugee camp is as small as they say, I'm willing to come to Jenin and say we made a mistake. But when Sharon tonight says it's not dozens, but it's not 500, what is it, 400, 300? What is it? And the point is about the civilians. Where are the civilians in this refugee camp? Is there a refugee camp left?

So my question is, when Erekat asks "[if] it's not 500, what is it?" what "500" is he referring to? And what exactly is the "mistake" he's willing to come to Jenin to admit "if the number of Palestinians who were killed in that refugee camp is as small as they say?"

Fact is, the U.N. report (and every other report) clearly established that the number was, in fact, "as small as they say." So I'm waiting for Mr. Erekat to make that appearance at Jenin and maybe to bring Mr. Parry and Mr. Abunimah with him. But I'm not holding my breath.