Dr. David Tzengan, a senior pediatrician at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital, was called up for emergency reserve duty at the start of Operation Defensive Shield. Tzengan served as the brigade doctor for the IDF's operations in the Jenin refugee camp, never realizing that he would also play a crucial role in Israel's information war and be called to tell the truth about what happened in Jenin.

Tzengan, a father of four children, said it was difficult for him to leave his patients at the hospital and "go to an area full of terrorists." Prior to this he was treating both Jewish and Arab children at the hospital. At Hadassah, his patients come from Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron, and also from Jenin.

"We found albums [in the camp] filled with pictures of potential suicide bombers, children aged between 16 and 18 that were about to carry out a terror attack a week later," Tzengan said. "This was the hardest thing for me."

Normally a calm and collect individual, Tzengan was angered by the words of UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, who described the destruction in the Jenin refugee camp as "horrifying beyond belief." Tzengan called Army Radio to express his anger with the envoy's words and was enlisted by the IDF Spokesperson Unit to speak to the media. "We can't let him continue with these lies," Tzengan said.

Tzengan told the press that he was in Jenin during the battles and saw what was happening at close range. "I know that the IDF did everything possible to prevent harming civilians. It is clear to all that if we would have bombed [the camp] from the air or with heavy artillery, we would have finished with the camp easily, within half a day, and with no injuries on our side. We didn't do this, and we fought with great risks, in attempts to save the innocent civilians who were stuck within the battle zone. Whoever says that Israel committed a 'massacre,' is lying and inciting the Arabs. Instead of working towards reconciliation and peace, Larsen is causing the hatred."

During the army's operation, soldiers "called out three times to people to leave their houses so that they would not be harmed. I personally am familiar with an incident where three elderly women and an old man left their home and behind them stood a terrorist who shot at IDF soldiers," he said.

As a doctor, Tzengan was also called upon to treat the many injured and ill Palestinians in the camp. "My medics and I risked our lives to treat the wounded Palestinians. The Palestinian doctors didn't come to help us, and we couldn't leave these patients unattended." Tzengan said his medical team treated a Palestinian girl with appendicitis. In another case, they treated a patient who had been hit in the neck by shrapnel, saving his life despite the fact that he had a tattoo signifying his membership in the Islamic Jihad.

"There was no damage caused to the hospital in Jenin," Tzengan said, "and no soldier entered the hospital." Dismissing the accusations of the Palestinians and the United Nations, Tzengan said the Israeli soldiers "never stopped ambulances from passing through. Ambulances that passed us were checked in order to prevent the passage of suicide bombers, explosives and terrorists as we have seen in the past. All those who wanted, entered [the camp]."

Tzengan said that he was shocked by the terrorists' cynical use of children in the camp. "We found a boy aged 6 in the camp with a backpack. When IDF soldiers approached him, he dumped the bag on the ground and ran away. After checking the contents of the bag we found three explosives. The cynical abuse of children is just unbelievable."

Tzengan said the claims of a 'massacre' in the camp were absurd. "The reports of the stench of decaying bodies were also exaggerated out of proportion. One week after the fighting, I walked around the camp with journalists from all over the world, without masks, and there was no stench. The journalists knew this, and now they claim that the camp is reeking with the stench of bodies that were not evacuated. We found some 25 bodies, most of them terrorists. There was one place in the entire camp where a number of bodies were buried under the ruins, and that is why there was a smell there."

"Nearly every point in the camp was booby-trapped"
Major Rafi Lederman, a commander of reservists who fought in the Jenin refugee camp, spoke at an army briefing of the difficulties the soldiers faced in battling the terrorists. "During my tour with journalists [in the camp], I showed them bags of garbage with bombs, refrigerators that stood in the street and appeared innocent, but which were full of explosives. The Palestinians drilled holes in the street and buried mines there. All of the bombs were activated by electronic means or by cellular telephones. There were also snipers' posts in the camp."

"The Jenin refugee camp… is a relatively small refugee camp. Nearly every point in the camp was booby-trapped. Only in the center of the camp were we able to pass through with bulldozers, and relative to the camp as a whole, this was a very small area."

Asked by reporters whether the army had buried Palestinian bodies, Lederman replied, "There was no burial of terrorist bodies or of Palestinian civilians in Jenin. All of the bodies that were discovered were given to the hospital during the fighting. Afterwards we stopped this because of the High Court ruling. Some of the corpses were booby-trapped in order to hurt our soldiers. After we took care of the bombs, the bodies were brought to the hospital or the Red Cross. No bodies were brought into Israel. As for Terje Larsen's accusations regarding food, the IDF provided food and water to the Palestinian civilians."

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