The Flotilla Story U.S. Media Won’t Report: Ignoring evidence that counters Israeli claims

Originally published in Extra!, the monthly magazine for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).

Michael Corcoran and Stephen Maher

At a June 10 press conference (Cultures of Resistance, 6/10/10), passengers from the Mavi Marmara released new footage of the Israel Defense Forces’ deadly May 31 raid on the ship, which killed nine activists attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza in defiance of the Israeli blockade. Days earlier, another video was released allegedly showing the IDF beating and then executing a U.S. citizen, although the identity of the passenger in the video has not been confirmed (Informed Comment, 6/10/10; Tikun, 6/10/10).

Obviously, two videos alone could not possibly tell the whole story of what happened that night, but they did offer some of the only images of the tragic event that had not been hand-picked for release by Israel, which confiscated virtually all of the photo and video footage taken on the ship and released only heavily edited snippets (Lede, 6/2/10). This new footage offered revealing glimpses into the bloody raid on the ship that countered the narrative Israel had been successfully spinning in the U.S. (FAIR Media Advisory, 6/1/10).

In addition to possibly showing the execution of a U.S. citizen by the IDF, the footage included images of the IDF shooting either rubber-coated steel bullets or live ammunition from a helicopter, seemingly before commandos boarded (Democracy Now, 6/10/10), and firing indiscriminately at crowds (Ali Abunimah, 6/13/10). Separate photos from Turkish papers and survivors’ testimony also revealed that flotilla passengers were treating injured IDF soldiers (Democracy Now!, 6/10/10; Ali Abunimah, 6/6/10), contradicting Israeli claims that soldiers had been taken hostage, as well as its insistence that the passengers of this "hate boat," as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it (Reuters, 6/2/10), were not humanitarian activists but violent extremists.

While independent media (Democracy Now, 6/10/10) and the foreign press (Guardian, 6/11/2010) covered the new evidence, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today all failed to even mention it in their newspapers--although Times blogger Robert Mackey did post the footage (Lede, 6/11/10), arguing that it gave "a better sense of the timeline of the raid," and making the video's absence in the Paper of the Record's print edition all the more troublesome.

The U.S. corporate press similarly ignored other important evidence that contradicted Israeli claims. This included detailed testimonies of the activists and journalists onboard the vessel, as well as GPS coordinates showing the flotilla accelerating and turning away from Gaza and deeper into international waters at the time of the attack (Ali Abunimah, 6/7/10). This blackout of evidence continues the long-held practice in the U.S. media of ignoring stories that reflect poorly on Israel and other U.S. allies (Extra!, 1/10).

After the attack, U.S. media wasted no time enabling Israel's aggressive public relations campaign (Extra!, 7/10). TV outlets uncritically replayed dubious video clips that were heavily edited, out of context and lacking timestamps (e.g., Hardball, 6/1/10). These clips showed passengers fighting off commandos with kitchen knives and whatever else they could find, but did not show the moments preceding the raid, leaving crucial questions unanswered. Despite there being no way to know the whole story, publications such as the Washington Post (6/6/10) offered no caution in reporting that "Israeli commandos were violently beaten by passengers as they boarded the Mavi Marmara," and then "opened fire in self-defense, killing nine activists."

Many Israeli claims reported unflinchingly by the U.S. media quickly turned out to be egregious lies or distortions. For instance, as journalist Max Blumenthal noted (Max Blumenthal, 6/22/10), a press release Israel issued claiming that associates of Al-Qaeda were on the boat would later be "corrected" by the IDF when it was unable to provide any evidence. The Washington Post editorial page, (6/1/10) which suggested that the activists--"a motley collection that included European sympathizers with the Palestinian cause, Israeli Arab leaders and Turkish Islamic activists"--had "ties to Hamas and Al-Qaeda," failed to issue its own correction.

Israel also released an audio tape it claimed to be of passengers on the Mavi Marmara making antisemitic slurs ("go back to Auschwitz") and warning the IDF to "remember 9/11." The tapes contradicted others the IDF itself released earlier depicting the same exchange between the Israeli navy and the activists on the flotilla that did not contain the bizarre comments (Max Blumenthal, 6/4/10).

Israel soon admitted that these tapes were doctored, though it said they were merely condensed for length, and released a longer version that still contained the slurs (Max Blumenthal, 6/22/10). However, this subsequent release was also problematic. On the new version, the IDF is again heard calling a different boat in the flotilla, the Defne Y, not the Mavi Marmara. Similarly, Huwaida Arraf, the activist who is heard responding to the IDF, saying, "we have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter," was not on the Mavi Marmara, but the Challenger One, another flotilla boat (Ma'an, 6/5/10). But the U.S. media again failed to report on this manipulation, and some outlets (e.g., Washington Post, 6/5/10) reported on the audio clips without hinting that there were doubts about their authenticity.

The op-ed pages were also predictably one-sided. The New York Times, for example, published an op-ed by Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren (6/03/10), who alleged the activists were "religious extremists" committing an "assault, cloaked in peace," and claimed, without a shred of evidence, that the activists had made propaganda videos before the assault showing "passengers 'injured' by Israeli forces" (Max Blumenthal, 6/26/10). The Times, it seems, did not bother to ask for copy of this alleged video before publishing such an extraordinary claim.

Given the large amount of time and space devoted to excusing and justifying Israeli actions, the lack of attention provided to the activists’ stories and evidence has given the public an incomplete and one-sided portrayal of events.

"Sadly, the U.S. press just decided to pretend we really don't exist,” said Iara Lee, the activist that smuggled out the hour-long video of the scene, in an interview with Extra!. “The media there is very controlled and almost all of the coverage [about the videos] came from the foreign press and the independent media."

Michael Corcoran (MichaelCorcoran.blogspot.com) is a freelance journalist based in Boston. He has written for such outlets as the Nation and the Boston Globe.

Quick Reactions on Obama and the Peace Process

By Stephen Maher

I woke up this morning, got into my office, and was confronted by an email from Haaretz (the Israeli news daily) urging me to "stand with President Obama" after his "historic address" where he "made clear" that he is committed to a "leadership" role in reaching a two-state solution. While the "usual suspects" will likely rush to characterize the President's bold "insistence" that Israel meet its international obligations as the latest example of his unjust criticism of Israel, the email warns, Obama's "vigorous efforts," bravely and heroically forcing Israel to comply with its responsibilities, is actually "the single most pro-Israel thing an American President can do." Given that this characterization of the debate, based entirely on faulty assumptions about both Obama's and Bush's actions, has been echoed by a large portion of the world's major media outlets, I feel it is important to comment.

The important thing is the issues that are at stake here, and Obama's positions on them, not rhetoric and public relations bluster. We must remember that all that Obama has asked for is a settlement freeze. Right now, the dispute between Obama and Netanyahu is essentially over whether Israel has a right to build within the existing settlement blocks - Netanyahu has already put a freeze in place on building outside the blocks, much to the dismay of the Shas party.

Importantly, Obama says nothing about the settlements that already exist, and has thus implicitly recognized the legitimacy of the existence of blocks in the first place in accordance with US policy. As opposed to viewing the settlements as individual entities, each to be linked individually to Israel if they are to remain Israeli under a final settlement, they are combined into impermeable "blocks," or strips of land which are de facto annexed to Israel. These settlement blocks, including the dense network of bypass roads and system of electric fence, ALREADY divide the Palestinian West Bank into four totally isolated and non-contiguous cantons. Thus, simply freezing building within the blocks that are already acknowleged to exist will do little, if anything, to help the chances of a Palestinian state being created, or of Palestinian rights being recognized and respected.

Building outside the blocks was once an idea harbored and espoused only by the hard Israeli right, with the Labor Party's Allon Plan (formulated after the 1967 war and occupation of Palestinian territory) essentially resembling the current "settlement block" approach, carving the West Bank into isolated cantons; all that Netanyahu has frozen are settlements being constructed within these Palestinian cantons. These "non-block" settlements further divide the four large West Bank cantons into 23 separated islands of Palestinian territory, each fully controlled from the outside by Israel. Obama has not said a word about uprooting any portion of this infrastructure.

It's wonderful that Obama supports the two-state solution, but given the above it should be no surprise that he has declined to say where, when, or how. On what part of the West Bank and Gaza will this state be proclaimed? This question is especially pressing given that during the campaign Obama expressed his support for an "undivided" and Israeli-annexed Jerusalem, despite the fact that the World Court has ruled that Israel does not have one inch of sovereignty in Jerusalem (July 2004 ruling). This, of course, leaving aside the fact that the Israeli occupation has not relented in even the slightest way, with arrests and detentions as well as Israeli incursions and violence in Palestinian villages spiking in the West Bank and the usual routine of checkpoints and roadblocks continuing to make daily life unbearable for the 5 million people imprisoned in the West Bank and Gaza. This also without mentioning the increasingly-violent attacks by Israel's "subcontractor"(former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace), the Palestinian Authority (lead by the US stooge Mahmoud Abbas) against elected representatives, spiritual leaders, and any other Palestinians who might dare to resist the occupation, or speak too loudly about the daily outrages against human dignity committed by the Israelis in the occupied territories.

To top it all off, even on this minor little point (freezing settlements), the tiniest and most insignificant of changes, Obama has refused to exert US pressure on Israel to comply. It's important to compare Obama to his predecessor here. While the George W. Bush administration went a bit beyond words in objecting to illegal Israeli settlement projects, namely, by withholding U.S. economic support for them, Obama administration officials have stated that such measures are "not under discussion," and that any pressures on Israel will be "largely symbolic," the New York Times reported (Helene Cooper, June 1). In fact, on each major element of policy towards Israel, from Hamas' inclusion in a democratically-representative unity government to the settlements, Obama has reiterated the Bush positionessentially verbatim (see here if you don't believe me). The only detectable "change" is one of tone and rhetoric - in other words, marketing. Obama is indeed proving to be a better spokesman for the Bush policies than his predecessor.

In short, those of us who want peace had better stop passively and mindlessly "standing with Obama" as the euphoric, almost hysterical liberal American and Israeli press have and demand that the longstanding international consensus - endorsed by the entire world, including the UN General Assembly, the Arab League, the World Court, the Palestinian leadership (both Hamas and Fatah), but rejected unilaterally by the US and Israel.
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UPDATE:

I found this map (.pdf), from the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which reveals plainly how the West Bank is divided in isolated cantons, separated from one another by the settlements, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences, the wall, the Jewish-only bypass roads, and Israeli "security zones." This is probably the best map out there of the circumstances on the ground today, as it reveals the cumulative effects of Israeli policy on the West Bank, including the impact of the "non-block" settlements and the so-called "illegal outposts," essentially settlements built without the official approval of the Israeli government (but which are mostly protected by the Israeli Army, and often if not usually given approval to become official settlements eventually). Definitely worth a look - I'll try to figure out how to make it into an image which I can post here.

Also worth looking at, below, is an approximation of what the Israelis were offering for a Palestinian "state" at Camp David in 2000. As you can plainly see, the lands on which this "state" would exist (the pink areas) are separated from one another by the large settlement blocks, which, like Obama, Clinton and Barak did not propose removing, but rather sought a Palestinian signature to legitimize their permanent annexation to Israel. As I mentioned, accepting the idea of settlement blocs means the complete dismemberment of the Palestinian West Bank, with or without Obama's "courageous" freeze on further building within the blocks. Believe it or not, this map actually paints an excessively rosy picture, since the outlying settlements (outside the blocs) and the roads which join them are depicted as being in Palestinian-controlled territory; today (as the above UN map shows) these areas are under full Israeli control, and subdivide the four main cantons (the four large pink areas) into much smaller fragments (click to enlarge).

Levy on the Israeli Flag

Gideon Levy writes an essay for Haaretz, that shows, once again, how much more open the debate on Israeli policy is in Israel as opposed to the US.

How can I hang at my home the same flag that flies over the homes of the Jewish settlement in the heart of Hebron, which has expelled nearly 20,000 residents from their homes? How can I hang the flag that flies on the homes of Yitzhar and Itamar, and at dozens of checkpoints designed to choke the lives of our neighbors? How can I hang the flag that flies on the jeeps that burst forth in the dead of night and spread terror in the hearts of little children? The flag became increasingly distant from me; the national flag became the flag of extreme nationalism.

It is not easy to become alienated from a flag that once was yours. It is much easier to love it, to curl up in it, to be proud of it. The U.S. is drowning in a sea of flags; every far-flung car lot is adorned with flags of stars and stripes. Canadian, Swiss and Japanese backpackers tend to attach their national flags to their backpacks - these flags look so innocent. This is not the case with my flag, which has long ceased to denote innocence. Since it has become the flag of the occupation, I have remained without a flag.

The extreme nationalistic right stole the flag from me and with it the pride in being Israeli. This act of theft is unforgivable.

Could you even imagine an op-ed of this ilk running in the Washington Post?