Noah Pollak has flagged several statements by Barack Obama senior foreign policy advisor Samantha Power with regard to her policy prescriptions for the Middle East. Here’s another: Many readers back in 2002 will remember Palestinian allegations of a “Jenin Massacre” which both the U.N. and many journalists hyped. The ensuing investigation, however, showed that there had been no massacre, and that Palestinian claims of casualties were exponentially exaggerated. At a George Soros-funded conference since published in the volume Ethnic Violence and Justice (2003), Power seemed upset that The New York Times had chosen to correct the narrative about Jenin, instead of holding Israel’s feet to the fire over allegations of its human rights violation. Said Power:
I have a question for David [Rohde] about working for the New York Times. I was struck by a headline that accompanied a news story on the publication of the Human Rights Watch report. The headline was, I believe: “Human Rights Reports Finds Massacre Did Not Occur in Jenin.” The second paragraph said, “Oh, but lots of war crimes did.” Why wouldn’t they make the war crimes the headline and the non-massacre the second paragraph?”
It is questionable whether any war crimes occurred in Jenin, except of course the war crimes associated with Palestinian assembly of suicide bombs which Palestinian terrorists — not uniformed officials — used to target civilians on buses and elderly in hotels. But, that does not seem to be what Samantha Power means. Perhaps Samantha Power might explain what she did mean and, now that the dust has settled, whether she still subscribes to the same views about what led up to and transpired at Jenin. Indeed, her position with Obama suggests that she should do no less.
UPDATE: I see Noah beat me to it.