Letter to the Editor

Editor's note:

In last week's online edition of The Daily, we published a letter by Samatha Morris that contained a personal attack on Haithem El-Zabri. It is the policy of The Daily to not publish personal attacks on anyone, and the letter had no place in our online content.

Due to a breakdown of communication between the editorial and production staffs, the letter was assumed intended for publication. Thereafter, it was independently titled "Educate the racists," and legitimized with publication in the online edition.

The letter is hereby retracted, and we apologize to El-Zabri for this offense.

The massacre of truth

I would like to add some clarity to the curious obfuscations contained in Eric Hasson's "The true massacre" (Aug. 7).

Regarding Saeb Erekat's claim of 500 massacred in Jenin, let's look at the source in its full context:

"We want to help in order to ensure the success of the secretary's visit, because ensuring the success of implementing [U.N. resolution] 1402 means stopping the killing fields out there, and you know as the numbers I am receiving today is that the numbers of killed could reach 500 since the Israeli offensive began. Thousands of wounded. You know, the Jenin refuge camp is no longer in existence, and now we've heard of executions there." (Saeb Erekat on CNN April 10.)

Erekat's claim is clearly in reference to the beginning of the Israeli invasion in March, not just the operations in Jenin. Furthermore, the just-released U.N. report grounds Erekat's claim that almost 500 Palestinians were killed in that time frame -- 497, to be exact.

Hasson also seems to have left out that Human Rights Watch (HRW) called the U.N. report "fundamentally flawed" because it relied on secondhand knowledge.

HRW also said, "Instead of clarifying what's happened in Jenin, the Secretary General's report will only add to the confusion."

Indeed, HRW conducted its own investigation and concluded that there was strong evidence for war crimes -- but, yes, not a massacre -- against the Palestinians in Jenin.

A conclusion that I can verify; I was just outside of Jenin, and interviewing victims of Israel's war crimes, during the worst of the fighting there.

Lastly, Hasson makes it seem like the U.N. Jenin investigation team didn't reach Jenin because of its lack of expertise, but that's not quite right.

The Guardian reported, "Ariel Sharon went out of his way to embarrass the divided U.S. administration yesterday, openly thanking the Americans for scuttling the proposed U.N. investigation of Palestinian deaths in the West Bank town of Jenin" (May 8).

It can be no wonder that Hasson's take on this episode is so distorted, given his said sources -- MSNBC and Newsweek.

Jacob A. Mundy

graduate, Middle East Studies