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And then they broke into a musical number.....

Hieronymus

02:51 / 04.05.02

The IDF released a videotape Thursday showing the apparently staged funeral of a Palestinian in the Jenin refugee camp. The footage was filmed by an IDF unmanned reconnaissance plane on April 28.

I thought I had a BBC confirmation too of this story somewhere and CNN has the video stowed away at another link that I cannot find all of a sudden (at a friend's place at the moment) but I'm wondering what the opinions are of this? Is it possible that Palestinians are overexaggerating/staging the alleged massacre at Jenin (humanitarian violations not withstanding) and if this is true, does it undermine their cause for statehood/independence/recognition of the abuse by Israeli occupation?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

13:16 / 04.05.02

Have the Israeli's explained why the Palestinians might be staging these mock funerals? Were they doing it on the off-chance a spy-plane would be flying overhead which could pipe the pictures out to the obviously anti-Semitic world press?

I've seen the pictures and I must admit it makes no sense to me. But it's about a specific incident, namely whether the Israeli army massacred a fuck-load of people at Jenin or not, and if the Israeli Government are trying to blow this up to be about whether the Palestinians have a right to their own country then it suggests they don't have any good arguments as to why they have a right and the Palestinians don't.

m. anthony bro

01:53 / 05.05.02

Look, there's a lot of stuff on the line here, of course the Palestinians are going to try and tug at our heart strings too. They're just as clever as the Israelis, there's no particular reason why they couldn't dream this up, and no reason why they wouldn't do it, given the circumstances.
On BBC World they said they couldn't confirm the tape that the IDF had released was for real, but they played it anyway, because sometimes, they can be sensationalist for kicks.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

18:44 / 05.05.02

Yeah, I'm perfectly willing to accept the fact that the Palestinians may be lying as much as the Israeli's, my initial reaction to the footage was just 'If these are Palestinians, what are they doing and why?' If this comes from the Israeli's I'm wondering how they were in a position to film such a scene, and it's obliging that the Palestinian fell off the stretcher twice. But is the film current? What's the context? I think the report said it showed a well man being carried as though he were dead, but I refuse to believe that the Israeli's killed so few that there weren't any really dead bodies to be carted around to pretend that lots were killed.

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