The Lesson of Jenin

Remember Jenin? In April of 2002, this little West Bank town was the site of a battle between Israeli forces and Palestinian terrorists. In order to avoid civilian casualties in the town, Israel sent in its infantry at great cost instead of leveling the place from the air. The Palestinians created a media uproar over the battle, claiming that Israel had wantonly slaughtered hundreds of Palestinian civilians. International condemnations poured out upon Israel.

There was a teensy problem with this assessment: no massacre took place. I know -- it's really shocking that terrorists intent on exterminating their neighbors would lie. But the Palestinians' bogus narrative fell apart when there was a conspicuous absence of hundreds of Palestinian bodies.

Hezbollah has apparently learned this lesson: if you want your massacre narrative to hold up, produce bodies! Even if you have to do it yourself. It has done its best to keep Lebanese civilians as shields (h/t) against Israeli strikes in the correct understanding that the IDF will avoid hitting civilians, even unintentionally, if it can. Hezbollah is also using UN positions (h/t) as shields, likewise hoping that Israel will not attack an area if UN monitors (h/t) are there.

Most recently, Hezbollah applied the Lesson of Jenin to an airstrike against a building in the Lebanese town of Qana (h/t). Final numbers are not in yet, but it appears that about five dozen women and children died in this attack when the building collapsed on them. Strangely, it collapsed eight hours (h/t) after the Israeli missile hit. One wonders why they did not evacuate the building during that time. Perhaps they were kept inside by Hezbollah fighters.

Again, it's hard to be sure of how many people died in the Qana attack. That's because Hezbollah is moving children's bodies (h/t) around in ambulances for staged photo ops for a compliant news media in order to make the casualties appear more numerous than they are.

Nevertheless, Israel, being a civilized liberal democracy, did not like the idea of killing children. So it announced a unilateral 48-hour ceasefire while it investigated. Alas, fighting has resumed after a Hezbollah attack on Israeli ground forces. No doubt the 'international community' will be shocked to hear that Hezbollah is disinterested in a ceasefire.

UPDATE: The Qana narrative continues to unravel. The short version: some of the Qana bodies are too far decomposed to have come from the Israeli attack, nor do they show the signs of physical trauma and dirt that would result from being in a concrete building collapse.