Reply #46: I can point one out right now (and I don't even own the book). [View All]

[durutti]

Dershowitz repeates the often-stated Israeli assertion that Palestinian officials said 500 died in Jenin. They didn't -- that's entirely media distortion.

Here's the original quotation, as told by Saed Erekat to CNN anchor John Clancy:

"What we're saying, we see an opportunity in the secretary's visit. We want to help in order to insure the success of the secretary's visit, because insuring the success of implementing 1402 means stopping the killing fields out there, and you know as the numbers I am receiving today is that the numbers of killed could reach 500 since the Israeli offensive began. Thousands of wounded. You know, the Jenin refuge camp is no longer in existence, and now we've heard of executions there."

He never claimed that 500 were killed in Jenin alone. He said that 500 had been killed throughout the West Bank as part of Operation Defensive Shield. Indeed, the actual death toll for that period, according to the Red Crescent, was 497.