Major missing items
editAll this material comes from the regular Western media - and much of it from Israeli or pro-Israel sources. As best I can tell, there are only IDONTLIKEIT objections. Much of the material currently in the article is both less well-sourced and given undue weight. Some of the material in the existing article (like the death-toll) is simply false.
1) Sharon told the world's media on 5th March that "Palestinians must be hit ... must cause them losses, victims a month before the incursions (and before the surge of suicide bombings that is already mentioned in the article). This statement was criticised by Colin Powell, so it's hardly non-notable.
2) Sharon's statement was linked by Time Magazine directly to the military action that followed with "He went on to do just that, unleashing a broader military offensive than anything seen so far in the past 17 months of fighting."
3) Sharons advisor (Zalmon Shoval) told the BBC on 18th April that the UN special envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen that he "has no business whatsoever to tell us what is right or wrong".
4) Israel told us it would bury up to 200 bodies in a "special cemetery in the Jordan valley" (ie closed military zone). Refrigerated trailers (three were reported at the time eg Telegraph) were brought into the camp while all observers were excluded - pro-Israeli commentators confirm they were there, though they tell us that no bodies were placed inside. Such trailers were used to collect bodies a few days earlier in Nablus.
5) Evidence for many more deaths is explicitly contained in RS material from (almost) every international observer - eg the New York Times: The smell of decomposing bodies hung over at least six heaps of rubble today, and weeks of excavation may be needed before an accurate death toll can be made.
6) All Israeli sources (until the denial begun on the 16th April) speak of large numbers of dead. See this table for some of them.
7) Clips from an interview given by one of the bulldozer drivers to an Israeli newspaper boast of not caring for the civilian deaths he believe he caused, and confirm that even the precautions claimed to have been taken were inadequate.
8) Account of the third "international observer/human rights" group that made a visit and presented a "Jenin Investigation", still finding complete bodies 3 months later. (Needless to say, we should not practice OR on what effect this might have on the death toll - but it makes nonsense of claims already inserted in the article).
9) A single (small but) actual "up-against-the-wall-massacre" reported in careful detail, with the two perpetrators identified, Amnesty and the Independent newspaper. Official Israeli sources have confirmed there were people killed there but have not carried out any investigation.
10) Allegations included in the August UN report (though not widely picked up) that the Israelis mined the refugee camp before they left.
11) That this action was only part of a series of deadly incursions. Israel was still applying curfews and killing people in and and out of curfew for months afterwards. Ian Hook, chief of the reconstruction project, killed by the IDF on 22nd Nov 2002. Irish woman shot in the thigh by the IDF at almost exactly the same time.
Some of the most glaring of these omissions have sometimes been corrected, and their presence accepted even by those who've previously deleted them. However, at this time, each of the improvements I've spotted has been undone again. PRtalk 11:30, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
And some other points
edit1) Re-structure article so it's not around the "No Massacre Thesis" beloved of the defenders of Israel. This thesis is irrelevant (except to PR damage limitation) and untrue, the world's media overwhelmingly retracted nothing, no matter what the blogosphere desperately tries to tell us.
2) Accurately report the human-rights organisations reports instead of cherry-picking parts that might absolve the perpetrators.
3) Research and add the widely testified allegation of a trench filled with 30 bodies. (However, it is entirely possible that this was the action of the hospital, under lock-down for 9 days and siege for 14 days).
4) The "The Battle of Jenin: A Case Study in Israel's Communications Strategy" is now in a reserved folder and no longer available to us. It was supposedly important enough to be cited in the article - and still is. So much for "accuracy" of those guarding the WP article! PRtalk 12:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)