Controversial flotilla members ignored
2 June 2010
Since Israel has started releasing detained activists from the Gaza-bound flotilla, their testimonies have received prominent coverage. For example, the BBC News website has produced an article of eyewitness accounts from four different individuals, describing their experiences. Several of the same individuals were quoted in a similar article in The Guardian, ‘We heard gunfire – then our ship turned into lake of blood’.
While the media has been keen to provide the perspective of some activists upon the boats, and to contrast their views with the video footage of Israeli commandos being attacked en masse, as of yet there has been very little background on some of the more controversial figures who were part of the flotilla.
For example, several senior figures from the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood were present, as was a bishop who had already been convicted and imprisoned by Israel for weapons-smuggling. This continues the trend in the media to emphasise one element of the protesters, while ignoring the extremist links and dispositions of others, as documented by Just Journalism here.
As of yet, none of the figures profiled below have been mentioned in relation to the flotilla by any of the broadsheets or the BBC News website:
Bishop Hilarion Capucci
Aboard the Mavi Marmara
No known affiliations
Convicted and imprisoned in the 1970s for smuggling weapons from Lebanon to the PLO
An article in The Daily Telegraph from 2009 described him as a ‘veteran Palestinian rights campaigner’, without mentioning his conviction
Muhammad Al-Baltaji
Ship unknown
Deputy secretary-general, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary bloc
‘[We] will never recognize Israel and will never abandon the resistance’
Sheikh Jalal Al-Sharqi
Ship unknown
Head of the Association of Islamic Scholars in the GCC Countries
Signed a clerics' petition calling to acknowledge Hamas's legitimacy, and to not prevent it from obtaining weapons.
Salam Al-Falahat
Ship unknown
General guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan from 2006 to 2008
‘We see Hamas movement in Palestine as standing at the head of the project of the Arab and Islamic liberation for which the Muslim Brotherhood calls... The Muslim Brotherhood supports Hamas and every Arab resistance movement in the region that works for liberation.’
Hazza' Al-Maswari
Ship unknown
Yemeni MP for Muslim Brotherhood-linked Al-Islah party
Critisised plans to de-radicalise captured Al-Qaeda members:
‘We cannot tell militants 'don't terrorize Americans' or 'don't attack their interests.' Those who plant hatred will harvest hatred.’