http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42257
IDF troops sue filmmaker over war-crimes charge
While new documentary exposes 'massacre' at Jenin as sham
Posted: January 6, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Aaron Klein
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
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.
Some of the juxtaposed soldiers include the five who filed suit
against Bakri in Tel Aviv court seeking more than $500,000 in damages.
The lawsuit, filed in Hebrew and obtained by WorldNetDaily, charges
Bakri falsely claims the soldiers committed war crimes.
The five plaintiffs are current reserve soldiers and say their
professional lives require constant contact with Arabs who may
recognize their faces from Bakri's documentary and seek to attack them.
"Bakri's blatant use of lies and deception to build his one-sided case
about Palestinians suffering at the hands of brutal Israel
disqualifies it from having contributed to any 'big truth.' Rather,
'Jenin, Jenin' amounts to incitement fueling vicious propaganda that
claims Jews 'are not even human.'" writes Sternthal. She credits Rehov
with exposing the "inflammatory – and defamatory – falsehoods spread
by works like 'Jenin, Jenin.'"
Rehov is screening his film, "The Road to Jenin," Jan. 9, 10 and 11 at
the Pierre Rehov Film Festival in New York.
Aaron Klein is WorldNetDaily's special Middle East correspondent,
whose past interview subjects have included Yasser Arafat, Ehud Barak,
Shlomo Ben Ami and leaders of the Taliban.
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