A Palestinian throws a chair at burning tires during clashes with Israeli forces following a raid, in Jenin in the West Bank April 9, 2022. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman/File Photo

An analysis in The Times by their Diplomatic Editor, Roger Boyes (“Accident or assassination, Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing risks trouble in the West Bank”), provides supposed context concerning the killing of the Al Jazeera journalist in Jenin.

Here’s the first and relevant paragraph:

The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera journalist, has sent ripples of concern across the Middle East. In part that was down to the historic echo of trouble in Jenin, the West Bank Palestinian camp and neighbourhood that saw fierce fighting over two decades ago in the Second Intifada. At the time Palestinians put the death toll at 500 and talked of mass graves containing thousands more. Later those figures were revised down but Jenin and its fightback against Israel has established itself in the popular Arab imagination as a centre of hardy resistance. Trouble in Jenin rarely stays in Jenin. [emphasis added]

To describe Palestinian “claims” that “500” Palestinians were killed — with “thousands” more dead in “mass graves“ — as a result of an IDF military operation in Jenin in 2002 — as figures that were merely “revised down” is extraordinarily misleading.

They weren’t Palestinian “claims.” They were Palestinian propaganda – lies, full stop!

This lie was peddled for weeks by NGOs and media outlets like The Guardian — which, in one lead, compared it to the 9/11 attacks — until the evidence contradicting those “claims” was so clear that even the United Nations admitted there was no “massacre.”

The final death toll, as the result of house to house fighting, was 52 Palestinians killed, mostly terrorists, and 23 Israelis killed — with no mass graves.

The “500” killed and “thousands more” in “mass graves” figures weren’t, as Boyes writes, merely “revised down.” They were shown to be an intentional and malicious lie that had no relation to reality.

The Times itself noted, in a 2020 obituary about Saeb Erekat, that the “Jenin massacre” numbers were fiction:

[Erekat] did not always offer a calming voice: that year he came under fire for claiming Israel had massacred 500 Palestinians during their assault on Jenin; later the death toll was put at about 52, mostly militants. [emphasis added]

We contacted The Times to ask that they at least add a note to the article citing the actual death count, so that readers can see for themselves what “revised downwards” means in reality. Unfortunately, we received a reply stating that editors “are satisfied that the phrase ‘revised downwards’ is accurate” and “not misleading.”

What’s new? Just another biased lie to defame and destroy the Jewish state.

Adam Levick serves as co-editor of CAMERA UK – an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article was first published.