MARK STEYN heaps scorn on the British press for its hysterical and credulous treatment of the non-existent Jenin “massacre”:

The Palestinians themselves put the death toll at — wait for it — 56.

That’s right. 56. There are no missing zeroes on the end. The only missing zeroes are those gullible British and European hacks who swallowed that line about hundreds of dead civilians but have fallen mysteriously silent as the figures have been revised downward. . . . So, 52-56. Hmm. Where have I heard those numbers before? Why, in another famous media illusion — “the brutal Afghan winter”, under whose grueling conditions Kabul this January had to cope with average daytime Fahrenheit temperatures of … 52-56! It would, however, be unfair to suggest that in every ludicrous Fleet Street fiction the correct figure will prove to be 52-56. For example, when the Yanks were torturing al-Qaeda suspects in “the searing heat of Guantanamo”, the overnight low was 66 and breezy, or about the same as a late January day in Kandahar in the brutal Afghan winter, when the warlords and their catamites stroll arm in arm down the sun-dappled streets.

Personally, I think the number should be 42.