Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion 2002

A searing testament to Israeli brutality and Palestinian resilience, spirit, and grace under pressure. Why is it that the US, Israel, the UN, and every news organization on earth has expressed their views on the Jenin invasion yet the Palestinian victims have never been allowed to speak? Searching Jenin explains what happened and how it affected the residents. It includes forty-two testimonies of Jenin survivors gathered by Palestinian journalists. Preface by Noam Chomsky.

Introduction by Palestinian-American journalist Ramzy Baroud. Testimonies by international observers. Timeline of events. List of “known dead.” 38 photos by Palestinian photographer Mahfouz Abu Turk. Calligraphy by Mamoun Sakkal.

One testimony is that of 9-year-old Rund al-Shalabi who complains that the Israeli soldiers smashed her toys. Also, it develops, they shot and killed her father.

Another testimony is that of the Red Crescent ambulance driver Ihab Ayadi who tells how Israeli soldiers held him at gun point to prevent him from rescuing gunshot victims until they had a chance to bleed to death. Um Muhammad is a mother who was hiding in her basement with the rest of her family when the Israeli soldiers ordered them out, separated the men and took them away to an unknown location. The soldiers swept through the house, throwing all the belongings out the upper windows as sport. They found the family's life savings in a cloth bag hidden in the bedroom and stole the money. After eleven days they forced the women to walk to another section where they took shelter in a vacant house. When they returned, the top floor was completely burned out.

Searching Jenin includes testimony that has never before appeared in the international or even in the Palestinian media. One testimony is with Samah Tawalbe, the wife of martyred resistance leader Mahmud Tawalbe. Another testimony is that of Mahmud Tawalbe's mother. Another interview is with Amani Abu al-Raaab who witnessed the execution of captive resistance leader Abu Jandal.