Just Journalism on the Free Gaza Flotilla
31 May - 5 June 2010
In the week following the raid of a flotilla bound for Gaza, Just Journalism monitored media coverage, analysing emerging trends in the reporting of the story and its repercussions. Below is a chronological digest of all the analysis we produced.
Peace activists or violent agitators: How the media narrative on flotilla incident is shaping up - 31 May 2010
With the Israeli government standing firm on their claim that IDF soldiers were met with severe violence from Gaza aid convoy participants, Just Journalism will be following developments closely and publishing new information on a rolling basis.
Before the incident had occurred, MEMRI had published this footage, with Arabic to English translation, showing participants on board one of the ships chanting violent anti-Jewish slogans before setting sail.
The activists shout: ‘Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammed will return’ - a reference to a seventh century attack in Khayber, Arabia, by Muhammed and his followers against Jews.
A female activist on the boat is also translated as saying, ‘We are now waiting for one of two good things – either to achieve martyrdom or to reach Gaza.’
The same chants invoking Khayber were also played on loudspeaker to a huge crowd gathered on Saturday in Istanbul to see off the flotilla, as has been broadcast by Turkish television. This footage also includes the repetition of ‘Intifadah! Intifadah!’
Furthermore, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday revealed his view that an interception of the flotilla by Israel would be as much a victory as reaching Gaza. The Jerusalem Post reported:
"If the ships reach Gaza, it's a victory for Gaza," Haniyeh told some 400 supporters after touring Gaza City's small fishing harbor, where several smaller vessels breaking the blockade have docked in the past. "If they are intercepted and terrorized by the Zionists, it will be a victory for Gaza, too, and they will move again in new ships to break the siege of Gaza."
Given the current media narrative of peace activists versus a conventional army, it will be telling, whether this sort of information finds its way into any mainstream coverage of this story. So far, the BBC , The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and the FT have not included information about these prior demonstrations of militancy amongst the convoy participants.
So far, the convoy organisers, Turkish group, IHH, have an extremely low profile in the reporting of this incident, despite the fact that they are reported to have ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, although an AP report published in The Independent does describe IHH as ‘a Turkish aid group that Israel accuses of having terrorist links.’
UPDATED (17:29, 31 May 2010): More evidence of the onboard confrontation between IDF soliders and passengers of the Mavi Marmara convoy ship has been made available by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Embedded below is aerial footage purportedly showing passengers' use of a stun grenade, a firebomb and metal pipes against Israeli soliders. One soldier, according to the video, was thrown from an upper to lower deck of the ship.
Below is similar IDF footage of the fighting taken from a different angle:
The following is a screen capture from MEMRI footage of the convoy before it departed for Gaza from Cyprus. The translation of Arabic refers to a 7th-century battle between Mohammed's forces and Jews living in Khaybar, an oasis in the northwest region of the Arabian peninsula.
Gaza flotilla interception: The editorials - 1 June 2010
As the fallout continues from yesterday’s fatal confrontation between Israeli soldiers and convoy participants on board the Mavi Marmara, here are the official views of today’s broadsheets:
Both The Guardian and Financial Times issued scathing critiques of Israel’s conduct, the latter describing the boarding of the ship as a ‘brazen act of piracy’ and ‘[o]utrageous’. In ‘Gaza: From blockade to bloodshed’ The Guardian compared Israel to ‘Somali pirates’ and labelled the country a ‘pariah state’ on account of its military.
The leader also presented a contradictory position on the violence perpetrated against Israeli soldiers who boarded the ship. On the one hand, The Guardian portrayed such violence as inevitable, saying, ‘What did the commandos expect pro-Palestinian activists to do once they boarded the ships – invite them aboard for a cup of tea with the captain on the bridge?’ However, immediately after this, the piece cast doubt on whether Israeli commandos had, in fact, faced any real threat, saying of a Greek man, purportedly shot by Israel, ‘Presumably he, too, was threatening the lives of Israeli naval commandos.’
The Independent’s ‘A costly misjudgement by Israel’ reserved judgment regarding the facts of what took place on board the boat, opening, ‘Exactly what happened in the eastern Mediterranean in the pre-dawn hours of yesterday remains to be clarified’ and describing the picture as ‘[c]onfused’. However, the newspaper was decisive in condemning Israel’s resort to force, contending that it ‘conforms to a pattern that has become all too familiar’ – a reference to the apparent deployment of tactics ‘out of all proportion to the circumstances’.
The Daily Telegraph, too, opened with a statement of uncertainty about what precisely had taken place: ‘It is not yet clear exactly what happened yesterday as the Free Gaza flotilla approached the coast.’ However, the main focus of the piece was the deterioration in relations between Israel and Turkey and the wider strategic implications of the incident.
The Times was more sympathetic to Israel’s predicament but doubted the decision to board the ship, posing the questions:
‘[W]as it sensible to lower commandos from helicopters, exposing them to the danger of attack as they boarded the ships? Was it politically astute to target Turkish nationals... Was it good public relations to be seen trying to turn back ships carrying crayons for schools, medicines for hospitals and cement to rebuild bomb-damaged towns?’
Press ignores controversial IHH profile - 1 June 2010
While much of the coverage of the aftermath of the violent clash onboard the Mavi Marmara has attempted to piece together the sequence of events, or to explain why the flotilla of ships were attempting to reach Gaza in the first place, little background information has been provided on the alleged terrorist links or the provocative behaviour of the participants who were at the centre of this tragedy. This particularly applies to the Turkish charity ‘Insani Yardim Vakfi’(IHH) that was responsible for organising the convoy.
Israel banned the IHH, alongside 35 other Islamic charities, for belonging to an umbrella group called the Union of Good (Ittilaf al-Kheir), which in 2008 was officially designated in the US as a financial supporter of Hamas, the radical Islamist group that runs Gaza. Top members of the Union of the Good include the cleric Dr Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who controversially stated in 2004 that Islam both allows suicide bombing, and also allows the targeting of Israeli women because they are ‘militarized’, and Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, who was designated by the US as a terrorist in 2004 for providing support to al Qaeda.
In 2006 the Danish Institute for International Studies released a report entitled ‘The Role of Islamic Charities in International Terrorist Recruitment and Financing’, which included several references to the IHH, and in particular to the fact that the organisation is viewed with deep suspicion by Turkey itself. For example, ‘Turkish authorities began their own domestic criminal investigation of IHH as early as December 1997, when sources revealed that leaders of the organisation were purchasing automatic weapons from other regional Islamic militant groups. IHH’s bureau in Istanbul was thoroughly searched, and its local officers were arrested. Security forces uncovered an array of disturbing items, including firearms, explosives, bomb-making instructions, and a “jihad flag.”'
In conjunction with the controversial profile of the IHH, fresh evidence is available of the extremist disposition of some of those who took part in the convoy. As Just Journalism reported on yesterday, several of the crew were recorded chanting about historical battles between Muslims and Jews, underlying that many on the ship were actively seeking violence.
[Above: IHH founder Bülent Yildirim meeting with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh during a previous Gaza convoy to which IHH was a party.]
Sympathetic presentation of protesters – The Guardian
In spite of all the evidence surrounding the IHH and the protesters on the Mavi Marmara, sections of the British press have all but ignored this aspect, preferring to paint the convoy participants simply as ‘activists’ and ‘civilians’ who were totally unprepared for a confrontation.
This applies especially to The Guardian’s extensive coverage, which barely touches the militancy of those on board. The main article, does not even mention IHH and refers to those on board simply as ‘pro-Palestinian activists’ and ‘civilians’. When, in the latter part of the article journalist Harriet Sherwood does put Israel’s version of events across, no mention was made of the video footage –widely broadcast - of soldiers being lynched as they boarded the Mavi Marmara. Instead the assertion that the Israelis were attacked first is simply characterised as an Israeli claim.
The second lead piece of reporting by Robert Booth did offer an accurate rendering of the television footage (‘Turkish television footage showed how one by one as the commandos descended by ropes to the deck they were ambushed by waiting passengers armed with what appeared to be metal bars, sticks and in one case, a table.’). However, the journalist still characterised the convoy participants as having no hope against the Israeli army:
‘The activists from as many as 50 different countries stood little chance in the face of such a show of strength.’
Crucially, the piece went on to depict those on board as having been totally innocent of mal-intent in the run up to the final showdown with Israel on Monday:
‘During Sunday on the journey from Cyprus towards Gaza, the trip had been progressing well, with spirits high among the pro-Palestinian activists…
‘Little did they know that three hours earlier than that, at around 9pm, three Israeli naval craft had left the northern Israeli port of Haifa to intercept them…
‘Then around midnight the flotilla co-ordinators appeared to become worried and Lubna Masarwa, a Palestinian Israeli on board the Marmara issued a series of urgent messages via Twitter…
‘The Free Gaza campaign was worried enough to issue "a call to the world from the people on the boats". "This flotilla is bringing supplies the people of Gaza and are being met by military force," it said.’
Furthermore, the large graphic on page two also depicts ‘A small group of activists’ as arming themselves ‘with sticks and bars to fight back’.
This picture seems somewhat skewed, given the fact that footage is widely available from Saturday showing convoy participants on board the Mavi Mamara chanting slogans against the Jews, as well as one woman who boasts to the camera: We are now waiting for one of two good things – either to achieve martyrdom or to reach Gaza.’
The only examination of the organisers and participants which touched on extremist tendencies was on the final page of coverage in a Q&A. Even then, IHH was simply described as having been ‘singled out’ by Israel as ‘a radical Islamic organisation.’ Danny Ayalon is quoted alleging links by the organisers with ‘global Jihad, al-Qaida and Hamas’ but no third party evidence for this is cited.
Acknowledgement of protester extremism and violence – The Times
By contrast, The Times gave a much higher profile to the militancy of the convoy participants. James Hider’s piece on page 4, ‘How Flotilla bound for Gaza sailed into martyrdom at sea’ gave prominence to the footage of a convoy participant setting out her aim for reaching Gaza or achieving martyrdom. Hider also makes room for the idea that at least an element among the activists were set on violence:
‘However, some of the hundreds of passengers on the Mavi Marmara had other ideas. As the Israeli Navy Seals rappelled, one by one, on to the upper deck of the ship, it was no longer clear exactly who was ambushing whom.’
Crucially, he went on to incorporate into his narrative what can be seen in the Israeli footage showing soldiers being lynched. The journalist described one soldier as having ‘hit the deck only to find a mob of furious demonstrators, rather than political protesters, armed with iron bars, baseball bats, knives, petrol bombs and stun grenades.’ This approach to the footage was also taken in The Times’ lead news story, ‘Death on the High Seas’ which described how it:
‘showed masked Navy Seals rappelling from helicopters on to the deck and into a sea of angry activists, some armed with knives and batons. A pistol was snatched from at least one commando and an Israeli commander gave an order to fire.
This contrasts greatly with The Guardian’s approach of not giving the evidence due prominence in its own narrative.
At 3.27pm today, Haaretz published a photo and account of the Israeli soldier who can be seen in footage being thrown by protesters from the top deck of the Mavi Marmara ship. Captain R spoke of a ‘lynch’ situation during which he was attacked with ‘knives and batons.’ He admitted that he fired his weapon once when approached by a knife-wielding activist:
‘At that point, another twenty people starting coming at me from every direction…They jumped at me and hurled me to the deck below the bridge. Then I felt a stabbing in my stomach – it was a knife. I pulled it our and somehow managed to get to the lower level. There, was another mob of people.’
Just Journalism sent this information to the BBC at 4pm and one article was subsequently updated to include some of the new information.
However, the top BBC story headline has since been updated to read: ‘Witnesses cast doubt on Israel's convoy raid account’ and a new story is being presented, featuring testimony from protesters on board who dispute that any knives were present on board the ship:
The first pro-Palestinian activist to be quoted said:
‘This was not an act of self-defence," said Mr Paech, a politician, as he arrived back in Berlin wrapped in a blue blanket.
‘Personally I saw two and a half wooden batons that were used... There was really nothing else. We never saw any knives.’
The second activist quoted by the BBC said:
‘We wanted to transport aid to Gaza," she said. "No-one had a weapon.”’
Just Journalism will be following up on why the BBC is ignoring evidence which corroborates Israel’s version of events and granting dominance to testimony which challenges it.
UPDATED (09.50, 2 June 2010): The BBC News website is still failing to award due prominance to the key testimony of IDF soldier Captain R, who describes vividly, being lynched – and stabbed – upon boarding the Mava Marmara boat on Monday morning.
As Just Journalism reported yesterday, the testimony was brought to the attention of the BBC and Middle East correspondent Paul Reynolds has subsequently added an update to his coverage. However, the top story on the website still excludes it, despite the fact that the BBC piece includes the claim of a German protester that:
‘he had only seen wooden sticks being brandished as troops abseiled on to the deck of the ship.’
The article offers up German politician Norman Paech’s view following its claim that:
‘Eyewitness accounts of the raid from some of those activists released earlier cast doubt on Israel's version of events.
‘Israel said its soldiers were attacked with "knives, clubs and other weapons" when they landed on the Turkish passenger ship Mavi Marmara and had opened fire in self-defence.’
As Just Journalism reported yesterday, the following Israeli eyewitness testimony is readily available:
‘At that point, another twenty people starting coming at me from every direction…They jumped at me and hurled me to the deck below the bridge. Then I felt a stabbing in my stomach – it was a knife. I pulled it our and somehow managed to get to the lower level. There, was another mob of people.’
In its refusal to include this as a counterpoint to the views of the protester, the lead story on the BBC website gives unfair prominence to testimony that challenges the Israeli view and fails to provide readers with the available evidence upon which Israel bases its claims.
Controversial flotilla members ignored
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.’
VIEWPOINT: Israeli evidence fails to penetrate BBC narrative - 2 June 2010
Carmel Gould
Imagine the following scenario: Palestinians shoot dead 10 Israelis. The circumstances of the shootings are unclear but the following day, video footage emerges showing clearly a sequence of lone Palestinians approaching a large group of Israelis one at a time and being met with brutal violence. The footage shows a mob of Israelis battering each Palestinian with sticks and poles as soon they are within reach. At one point, the Israeli mob throws one of the Palestinians from height.
How would the release of such film impact the media narrative of the event? I would imagine that the film would be positioned as crucial evidence that it was the Israelis, and not the Palestinians, who were the aggressors and that the latter must have fatally wounded some of their attackers in self-defence.
BBC coverage of the Gaza flotilla raid indicates that footage released by Israel showing its troops being set upon by and repeatedly struck by baton-weilding ‘peace activists’ has not had the expected impact on its overarching narrative of events. Yes, the footage has been broadcast on its news channel and can be easily found on its website – but the implications of what can been seen on the video are simply not penetrating the prevailing account of ‘disproportionate’ Israeli force against ‘innocent civilians’.
The day following the release of Israel’s footage, the BBC News website had simply moved on. Its top story headline yesterday read, ‘Witnesses cast doubt on Israel's convoy raid account’ and delivered a series of testimonies from convoy participants claiming that there were no knives or weapons.
Stating near the start that ‘Israel says its soldiers were attacked with "knives, clubs and other weapons" and opened fire in self-defence’ is insufficient because it implies that all the readers have is the Israelis’ word on this. The only mention of the video footage which ‘apparently’ showed soldiers being attacked was buried towards the end of the piece, along with a quote from an Israeli soldier. Below this was the BBC website’s single reference to extremist statements made on Friday by Mavi Marmara passengers, about heading for martyrdom and Mohammed’s army returning for the Jews.
In today’s lead story, ‘Gaza flotilla: Israel starts to free foreign activists’ the claims of the activists remain but all reference to the Israeli footage is erased, along with the voice of the Israeli soldier and reference to the extremist passenger statements.
Furthermore, a special page sprang up called, ‘Gaza flotilla - Eyewitness accounts of Israeli raid’, created by the BBC News website team especially to catalogue the testimony of passengers like Norman Paech saying that he ‘only saw three activists resisting’ and that the passengers ‘had no knives, no axes, only sticks that they used to defend themselves’. However, late today, it has been updated to include Israeli soldiers’ testimony.
Such a page could have been created 24 hours ago following the release of testimony from the Israeli soldier who was thrown off the deck of the Mavi Marmara and is in hospital with a stab wound in his stomach, but it was not. This was a top story yesterday at 3.30pm on Haaretz – a key source for news stories critical of Israel’s military – and contains vivid testimony. The soldier says: 'At that point, another twenty people starting coming at me from every direction... They jumped at me and hurled me to the deck below the bridge. Then I felt a stabbing in my stomach – it was a knife. I pulled it our and somehow managed to get to the lower level. There, was another mob of people.'
The only reference to Captain R’s experience to be found on the BBC website is in a very balanced article by correspondent Paul Reynolds, but this has not been absorbed into the wider BBC narrative.
There are clearly many important questions remaining about the circumstances in which 10 people died – was every instance of the deployment of lethal force justified? Was it wise/legal for Israel to board the ship in the first place? Is the continued blockade of Gaza wrong? However, none of this excuses the refusal of the BBC to give due prominence to clear evidence which goes to the militancy and violence of passengers on the flotilla.
Independent cites testimony of convicted PLO gun-runner - 3 June 2010
Yesterday, Just Journalism reported how, as part of a wider trend by the media of de-emphasising the radical nature of some of the members of the flotilla, several key individuals had not been mentioned in the press.
One of the most prominent is the Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, who, as this BBC News article from 2009 reported, ‘served time in an Israeli jail in the 1970s for smuggling arms for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)’, which at the time was still openly conducting militant attacks against Israel.
This morning, The Independent mentioned the Archbishop in two different articles – both of which portrayed him uncritically, without mentioning his history of supporting violence against Israel.
In print, Adrian Hamilton’s ‘Israel had few enough friends to start with’ comment piece included a photo of Cappuci, with the following caption:
‘The testimonies of released Gaza flotilla activists, such as Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, with further harm Israel’s reputation’
The Archbishop was also quoted in an article of testimonies from activists:
‘Our trip to Gaza was a trip of love, and God was with us, Israel by its actions had rightly drawn world outrage over its brutality against unarmed people carrying a message of love to an innocent occupied people under siege’
Given how Archbishop Hilarion Capucci was convicted for supplying weapons to an organisation that at the time was openly committed to violence, it is noteworthy that The Independent has uncritically cited him simply as a religious leader whose criticisms will harm Israel’s reputation.
Flotilla news agenda shifts after Jihad links accusations - 3 June 2010
Much of today’s leading news coverage of Israel’s raid on the Gaza flotilla has focused on the profile of the organisers of the convoy as well as its passengers.
In a marked shift away from yesterday’s reports which led with activists’ eye witness testimonies, details about the alleged militant nature of at least a contingent of the activists are currently being brought to light by the broadsheets.
All five broadsheet newspapers (The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Financial Times and The Times) have given greater attention to the background of Turkish charity, IHH, and the possibility of its links to violent extremist groups such as like Hamas and al Qaida.
The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph’s main news articles cite Turkish newspaper reports that three of the four Turks killed by commandos were 'ready for martyrdom'. In ‘Turkish Jihadis bent on violence attacked troops, Israel claims’ The Guardian quotes the brother-in-law of dead activist Ibrahim Bilgen, saying: 'Martyrdom suited him very much. Allah gave him a death he desired.' ‘Activists killed on ship wanted to be martyrs’ by The Daily Telegraph tells how the wife of Ali Haydar Bengi 'constantly prayed to become a martyr.'
However, neither the Financial Times’ ‘Israel points finger at Turkish activists’ nor The Independent’s ‘Passengers on flotilla had al-Qa’ida links, claims Israel,’ include these quotes or any information about the alleged martyrdom aspirations on the part of some of the Mavi Marmara passengers. The Times, which offered the most comprehensive assessment of the IHH, also didn’t include the martyrdom angle.
While The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph swiftly highlight that Israel is the primary source of claims connecting the IHH to Islamic Jihad, ‘Gaza aid charity ‘has terrorist links’, published in The Times, emphasises that these claims are not only made by Israel itself.
Alexander Christie-Miller and James Hider uses clear examples of findings from other sources, including a French investigating magistrate and authority on counter-terrorism who said that: 'The IHH had played an important role in a failed plot to bomb Los Angeles airport.'
It is further established in The Times that the Danish Institute for International studies described the group as a front for funding terrorist organisations and sending Mujahidin to fight in countries such as Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.
Conflicting impressions of eye-witness account - 4 June 2010
As more eye-witness accounts from flotilla participants emerge in the mainstream media, a contrast emerges in the reporting of media outlets which simply quote activists uncritically and those which challenge their accounts.
The most widely quoted British activist, who was on board the Mavi Marmara, is Sarah Colborne, director of campaigns at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. She has been quoted in four of today’s broadsheets, the BBC News website and also featured on last night’s Channel 4 News.
She was generally presented as horrified and dismayed over the Israeli army’s deployment of lethal force. The Times reported her as saying, ‘Everyone’s just in shock. It was a massacre that took place there.’ The BBC’s Peter Jackson’s website article, ‘UK Gaza activist Sarah Colborne - ship raid 'surreal'’ described Colborne’s account as one of ‘stunned surprise’ and quoted her at her press conference, insisting: ‘It felt surreal, I couldn't quite believe they were doing what they were doing - none of us anticipated it’.
The Guardian printed a full account from Colborne in which she, again, described the experience as ‘a bit surreal’ and claimed she ‘couldn’t quite believe they were doing what they were doing.’ She lambasted Israel for using live ammunition against ‘unarmed civilians’ and said that Israel ‘violate[s] international law every day’. The Independent’s Jerome Taylor positioned Colborne as having ‘accused troops of… deliberately firing live rounds at unarmed civilians.’
The Daily Telegraph failed to identify Sarah Colborne’s association with PSC, describing her simply as ‘Sarah Colborne, from Hackney, east London’. Justin Vela and Chris Irvine cite her as having ‘seen one man being shot dead’ although according to her own account in The Guardian, she only claims to have seen the man after he had been shot, when he was brought down to the lower deck, where she was during the confrontation between convoy participants and the IDF.
Channel 4 News’ Kylie Morris introduced a short segment of the press conference given by Colborne at Heathrow airport, saying:
‘With their release, new versions of what happened aboard the Mavi Mamara. Was this, as Israel claims, a justified response to armed extremists loyal to Hamas? Sarah Colburne, now back in London, says nothing of the sort.’
Colborne is then shown responding to a question about what can be seen in footage released by Israel, depicting passengers attacking Israeli soldiers:
‘I was on the top deck, but I , I didn’t see clubs being used at all… I just saw people standing there shouting…Allahu Akbar, and things like that, that’s what I saw.’
The only journalist to challenge the PSC director’s claims that she was surprised that the Israelis boarded the boat and to press her on who initiated the violence was BBC Today programme anchor Sarah Montague. The journalist repeatedly tried to glean from Colborne, who had started the violence and what she had actually seen.
In the following exchange, Colborne revealingly avoids the BBC journalist’s question about whether or not the passengers attacked the soldiers and implies that she did not actually see Israeli commandos open fire:
Sarah Montague: Are you saying that Israeli soldiers who boarded that ship opened fire and there was no provocation for it?
Sarah Colborne: That’s what I am saying, yes.
SM: You saw that. You saw them fire when there was no attack on them.
SC: I saw them, well, I saw them, what I saw was them coming down from a helicopter onto the roof, I saw them trying to board the boat via dinghies.
SM: Were they attacked by those on board?
SC: They – the people on board, as you can see, were trying to stop…
SM: Hitting them with metal bars.
SC: Well, we need to see the entire footage. I believe to give a perspective on what was happening. They were shooting, they were shooting civilians, they were using gas bombs on the ship. The truth is we were in international waters, Israel committed a piracy offence.
Sarah Montague also challenged Colborne’s contention she had ‘heard no warnings whatsoever’ that the Israelis were going to raid the ship, saying, ‘How can you not have known or how can those on board the ship… because we know from what the Israeli side is saying that there were plenty of warnings?
The BBC journalist finally broached the subject of the professed desire for martyrdom on the part of some of the participants who had died:
‘Let me, let me put something to you. The Turkish newspapers yesterday quoted family members of two of the dead men as saying that they had wanted to be martyrs.’
Sarah Colborne, once again, flatly denied being aware of any such aspirations of her co-travellers:
‘Well, I – I have no idea. I didn’t speak to anyone who wanted to be a martyr.’
Media report on Hamas rejection of convoy aid - 4 June 2010
One of the minor themes emerging from the British media’s reporting on Monday’s flotilla raid off Gaza is what’s being done with the confiscated aid parcels.
According to broadsheets reporting on the estimated 8,000 tons of materials the Turkish-sponsored convoy had intended to deliver to Gaza, the Hamas regime there has refused to accept Israeli trucks carrying them. Hamas say they will deal only with the convoy passengers themselves and not admit a single parcel of aid until all of those detained by Israel have been released.
Damien McElroy, Justin Vela, Dina Kraft and Richard Spencer write in ‘We have nothing to be sorry for, Israel tells Turkey,’ in today’s The Daily Telegraph, ‘According to officials in Gaza, Hamas has refused to allow the aid offloaded from the flotilla to enter the territory until all detained activists are released.’ Harriet Sherwood, in a short sidebar article in The Guardian today, ‘Where did the aid go?’, likewise reports: ‘Israel agreed to deliver the aid after the flotilla attack ended in the deaths of nine pro-Palestinian activists.’
And Donald Macintyre, in an Independent interview with Middle East envoy Tony Blair, ‘Blair urges Israel to ease Gaza blockade’, states: ‘Hamas has turned away from Gaza a consignment of aid – including wheelchairs – transferred from the commandeered flotilla, partly on the grounds that it was incomplete, with Israel excluding construction materials like cement and piping from the original cargo.’
Most references to Hamas’s refusal to accept the aid are asides mentioned in the context of other stories. However, Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 reported from Gaza last night, specifically on the issue of what has happened to the aid. Citing the same background - Israel’s offer to import goods, Hamas’s rejection of it - Hilsum goes on to say that the situation is actually more complicated than a mere offer and refusal and cites at length ’a UN aid worker’ who says it is Israel who makes the movement of aid into Gaza an especially arduous process. Though that aid worker didn’t address the flotilla case in particular, Channel 4’s report raised the interesting question of the protocol of inspection and delivery that the ‘Free Gaza’ packages have been subjected to.
Just Journalism spoke via telephone this morning with Aliza Landes, a spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces, who said: ‘The bottom line is: We had our trucks there, they were ready to go into Gaza. We'd unloaded thirty trucks at this point and Hamas refused to let us enter.’
Much of today’s Israel-related media coverage focused on the newly planned Israeli inquiry of the flotilla raid. As the BBC News website described it, the investigation ‘will consider how nine Turkish activists died after their ship was boarded by Israeli commandos’ and ‘will also adjudge whether Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is allowed under international law’.However, the controversy lies in the composition of the inquiry’s panel. Indeed, as the BBC, The Times and The Daily Telegraph reported, Turkey totally rejects an Israeli-led investigation and wants an international probe instead. The BBC also mentioned that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s was not satisfied with the panel as ‘the inquiry would not meet demands made by UN Security Council’.
Instead, Israel has appointed two foreign observers, Lord David Trimble, from Britain and retired Canadian military prosecutor Ken Watkin to follow the proceedings, which according to Netanyahu will ‘make it clear to the world that Israel is acting legally responsibly, and with complete transparency.’
Doubts were expressed about the sufficiency of the two observers, particularly Lord Trimble, who recently joined a “Friends of Israel” association. In all three BBC articles pertaining to the inquiry this association was mentioned as it was in The Times, The Daily Telegraph and Financial Times.
The Daily Telegraph’s main article about the inquiry, ‘Gaza blockade may be eased within days after inquiry deals’ by Bruno Waterfield and Adrian Blomfield, suggested that as part of ‘an unofficial bargain with the Jewish state’, Israel would agree to ease the blockade of Gaza in exchange for leading the flotilla investigation.
The Guardian (print edition) and The Independent were more focused on the blockade itself, only mentioning the composition of the inquiry subsequently.
The fact that today’s media outlets were doubtful about the objectivity and suitability of the composition of the inquiry indicates the likelihood of a rejection of any future decision that the panel might take on the raid.