How The Media Skewed The Gaza Flotilla Event (Shraga Simmons)

Live report from Ashdod examining how the media skewed the Gaza Flotilla event to portray Israel as the aggressors. Shraga Simmons is author of “David & Goliath,” the explosive inside story of media bias in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Flotilla Fauxtography

The Fauxtography involved in past Islamic ruminations and perpetrated or continued by AP and Reuters and other main new and media organizations is almost legion. But here we are again with another example of it with the Turkish flotilla of “peace” that again makes my head wag. This is with thanks to HotAir and The Lid. At the Lid you will find some history to this aspect neatly in one post. My “legion” example are a few posts on the subject at my old blog. Here are simple the photos with the cropped photo afterward:

 

Melanie Phillips vs. Israel Bashers

The odious hypocrisy of … Israel-bashers, by Melanie Phillips:

1) There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The markets are full. There are fancy restaurants. An Olympic-size swimming pool was recently opened there. What hardship there is has resulted from the actions taken by the tyrannical Hamas regime which rules Gaza, which recently burned down an UNRWA summer camp for children, for example, and blew up one of Gaza’s restaurants.

2) It is astonishing to call upon Israel to lift its ‘blockade’ of Gaza, since every week Israel allows into Gaza tens of thousands of tons of humanitarian aid. Cameron and Clegg should be asked specifically why they have not called upon Egypt to lift its blockade of Gaza, which had been imposed more rigidly than Israel’s restrictions — until yesterday, when Egypt temporarily opened its border to fend off attacks from the Arab world during the current hysteria.

3) The only reason for Israel’s ‘blockade’ is to prevent weapons and missiles from being transported into Gaza. Lifting the ‘blockade’ would therefore allow those weapons through. Cameron and Clegg are therefore recommending that Israel take action which would jeopardise its security and lead directly to the deaths of many more Israelis.

4) It is therefore beyond nauseating to hear Clegg intone piously that this would be in Israel’s interests, which he claimed to have at heart. Let us hear no more from Cameron or Clegg about how of course they support Israel’s right to defend itself. That is precisely what they are attempting to remove. In the last two days, the new British government has shown itself hostile to Israel – and thus giving encouragement and strength to the enemies not just of Israel but of Britain itself and the free world. Cameron and Clegg should now be held publicly to account for this most alarming and despicable betrayal of Britain’s moral duty and the national interest.

This is with thanks to HotAir:

Melanie Phillips Writes On Israels Boarding of a “Peace” Flotilla

Here is some cogent input by Dennis Prager that should help to make a distinction on the deeper issues:

  • On 31 May 2010, Israeli Shayetet 13 naval commandos boarded the ships from speedboats and helicopters in order to force the ships to the Israeli port of Ashdod for inspection. On the Turkish ship MV Mavi Marmara, according to the Israel’s own Turkel Commission, the Israeli Navy faced resistance from about 40 of the 590 passengers, including IHH activists – described in the commission’s report as a separate “hardcore group”  – who were said to be armed with iron bars and knives. According to flotilla organizer Greta Berlin, the Israeli soldiers did not start firing until an activist seized a gun from one of them. During the struggle, nine activists were killed, including eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish American, and many were wounded. On 23 May 2014, a tenth member of the flotilla died in hospital after being in a coma for four years. Ten of the commandos were also wounded, one of them seriously. (WIKI)

I love Melanie’s books, and now that I know she blogs, I have been reading veraciously. This is a great post on the terorrist connections to this “humanitarian flotilla.” (Her newest book — she has many — is pictured to the right). The gems in this article are all the links to video [now dead, but you can see one HERE]… make sure to follow them:

“PEACE CONVOY”? THIS WAS AN ISLAMIST TERROR AMBUSH

Gaza’s markets are full of produce, thousands of tons of supplies are travelling into Gaza every week through the Israeli-controlled border crossings, and there is no starvation or humanitarian crisis. It was always obvious that the flotilla was not the humanitarian exercise it was said to be. Here is footage of the IDF offering to dock the Marmara — the main flotilla ship — at Ashdod and transfer its supplies and being told ‘Negative, negative, our destination is Gaza’.

And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion — backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine — was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. As I write, reports are coming in of Arab rioting in Jerusalem.

The notion – uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media – that the flotilla organisers are ‘peace activists’ is simply ludicrous. This research by the Danish Institute for International Studies details the part played by the IHH in Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. According to the French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testifying at the Seattle trial of would-be al Qaeda Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressamin, the IHH had played ‘[a]n important role’ in the al Qaeda Millenium bomb plot targeting Los Angeles airport. It was also involved in weapons trafficking, and played in addition a key role in galvanizing anti-Western sentiment among Turkish Muslims in the lead-up to the 2003 war in Iraq. ‘Peace activists’ these people most certainly are not.

And this flotilla was but the latest jihadi attack, deploying the Islamists’ signature strategy of violence and media manipulation. Here from MEMRI (via Just Journalism) is a clip showing the hysteria against Israel being whipped up on board before the ships set sail, with the chanting of intifada songs about ‘Khaybar’ – the iconic slaughter of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century which is used as a rallying cry to kill the Jews today — and threats of ‘martyrdom’. This was not merely a propaganda stunt, but a terrorist attack.

This is what the Jerusalem Post reported earlier today about what happened last night:

According to the IDF, the international activists ‘prepared a lynch’ for the soldiers who boarded the ships at about 2 a.m. Monday morning after calling on them to stop, or follow them to the Ashdod Port several hours earlier.

Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.

Also in the Jerusalem Post, David Horowitz wrote:

Benayahu said soldiers, who had been dispatched to block the flotilla because of fears that it was carrying weaponry and other highly dangerous cargo into the Hamas-controlled Strip, were attacked with knives and bars and sharpened metal implements.

Benayahu said two pistols that had been fired were subsequently found aboard the one ship, the Marmara, on which the violence erupted. And, most dramatically, he said that one IDF soldier had his weapon snatched away by one of the ‘peace activists’ on board, that this weapon was then turned against the IDF soldiers, who came under fire, and that they had no choice but to shoot back in self-defense.

What seems urgent now is to make publicly available footage that shows exactly what did unfold. In early afternoon, video footage screened on Israel’s Channel 2 appeared to show one of those aboard the Marmara stabbing an IDF soldier. Any such footage should have been made available hours earlier. Critically, if footage showing a soldier’s weapon being snatched and turned on the IDF troops exists, it should be broadcast, and the sooner the better.

Some of this footage is now available on the web but much of it is hard to follow: as ever, the Israelis have been far too slow in making the most telling images and information available in comprehensible form (including in English rather than in Hebrew, for heaven’s sake!). This clip appears to show masked and armed flotilla activists beating Israeli soldiers (although here is the BBC report accompanying that footage, in which the voiceover appears to be claiming, perversely, that the people in masks were Israeli soldiers. That said, the report on Radio Four’s World at One was fair and balanced).

This clip shows an Israeli soldier being stabbed. This IDF clip and this one show attacks on the commandoes including throwing one off the deck, attacking others with a metal pole and a firebomb and an attempted kidnap of another.

Israel Navy Interception of the Gaza Flotilla

For more videos and discussion, see HOTAIR’S POST on this. (UPDATED VIDEO)

  • Clip produced by official Israeli sources, describing the Israeli Navy’s interception of the Mavi Marmara of the Gaza Flotilla, which met with violence on the part of the IHH-sponsored protesters on board. As a result of the operation, nine assailants were killed, while seven Israeli personnel as well as about thirty protesters were injured.

WHY WAS ISRAELI RAIDER FORCE UNPREPARED FOR VIOLENT RESISTANCE?

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis May 31, 2010

More questions than answers came from the IDF video shots of the violent reception for Israeli naval commandos when they raided the Turkish ship early Monday, May 31 to prevent the pro-Palestinian flotilla from reaching Gaza Port and breaking the Israeli blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory.

Prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who cancelled his trip to the United States and is flying straight home from Canada, will have to fill in the gaps left by his official spokesmen.

Released finally 12 hours after the event, the IDF shots failed to explain the big mystery of how soldiers armed with paint balls and pistols managed to kill 9 pro-Palestinian activists (Ankara claims 15 Turkish dead) and injure at least 34 aboard the Turkish Marmora.

Together with six injured soldiers – two in critical condition – the wounded activists are being treated in Israeli hospitals.

Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi, and Navy commander, Maj. Gen. Eliezer Marom, reported that a fierce clash developed aboard the ship as the soldiers dropped on deck from helicopters and were mobbed by passengers. The activists fired pistols, but it is not clear if the guns were in the peace activists’ luggage or snatched from the soldiers.

Neither is it clear how civilian protesters were able to disarm elite fighters of the Navy’s Shayetet 6 unit….

…(READ MORE)…