Palestinians given a new lesson in hate

The bodies of men, women and children were dumped by a bulldozer on the site of a levelled home, then scooped up again and sent by lorry to Israel. Others were ground into the mud beneath the tracks of armoured vehicles.

Men of fighting age were led away in their thousands. Fighters who surrendered were put against a wall and shot. Pregnant women miscarried. The wounded were left to bleed. Water supplies were cut and babies fed on milk formula mixed with sewage or urine. And all the while, Israel worked to keep the truth from the world, it is claimed.

The allegations of a massacre of Palestinians in Jenin have so concerned the United Nations that a senior official said that "the only assumption we can make, regrettably, is that someone has something abominable to hide".

By denying the UN, the Red Cross and the media free access to the maze of streets of the 50-year-old Jenin refugee camp, Israel has created a new symbol of oppression for the Palestinians.

Detained Palestinians have been tortured and civilians buried alive when their homes were bulldozed. There is also powerful testimony - collected by Israeli human rights groups - of executions, and the use of Palestinians as human shields.

Teacher Ali Mustafa abu Serja, 42, lay in Jenin's Raji hospital. He'd been shot in both legs inside the camp in the first two days of the Israeli assault. He said: "I was made to go in front of the Israeli soldiers to call out to people in their homes to separate, women on one side of a room, men on the other. But I was shot by another Israeli patrol. The two patrols argued about shooting me, then they left me to bleed in the street. Neighbours rescued me."

His wife, Munther, 36, was four months pregnant. She said she'd been beaten by troops, and miscarried amid the ruins of her home.

Serja is among only a handful of wounded to have escaped the camp.

The real number of dead will probably never be known. But to the Palestinians, Jenin is already considered a worse atrocity than the massacre of 200 civilians by an Israeli terrorist group at Deir Yessin near Jerusalem in 1948 - an incident every Palestinian child learns about as a symbol of the brutality of Israel's Zionism.

But what happened in Jenin was done with American M16 rifles, Apache and Cobra helicopter gunships, and US funding of $3 billion a year. America now risks being added to a list of targets for Palestinian terrorist groups who see no difference between the Jewish State and its sponsors.