BY ROHAN PEARCE
Media-monitoring group Electronic Intifada has released a report by Nigel Parry into media coverage of the April 2-May 10 siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, during which seven Palestinians were killed, and approximately 40 were injured.
The Israeli government justified the siege with the claim that "Palestinian terrorists" taking refuge in the church. An article on the Israeli Defence Forces' web site claimed that on April 2 "upon the entry of IDF forces to Bethlehem, many wanted suspects from all the Palestinian terrorist organizations forced their way into the Church of the Nativity and have barricaded themselves inside the church ever since. The number of terrorists who took over the church is estimated to be around 250, a few of them injured." Much of the corporate media repeated this claim as fact.
Parry writes: "As we now know, just 13 of the Palestinians inside the church, now exiled to Europe as part of the deal, were on Israel's 'wanted list' (according to Israel). A second group of 26, who were ultimately exiled to Gaza, were presumably associated with factions that the Israeli invasion intended to target...
"Throughout the siege, Israel made much of the fact that the church had been invaded by 'terrorists', yet Israel's actions throughout the siege were characterised by indiscriminate violence and the violation of the human rights of those trapped inside and of the thousands of residents in the center of Bethlehem, who lived under a punitive curfew."
Parry's report, Israeli distortions during the siege on the Church of the Nativity, is available from <http://www.electronicintifada.net/coveragetrends/nativity.shtml>.
From Green Left Weekly, June 5, 2002.
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