Looks like the Flotilla won’t be floating any closer to Gaza. Did you catch the OUTRAGE expressed by Humphyrs at Israeli spokesman Mark Regev just after 8am? Humphrys repeated the allegation from the Hamas enablers on the Flotilla that they were attacked in the first instance, whereas Regev pointed out that it was the “activists” who had done the attacking. This has been a carefully engineered publicity stunt by the cabal of Jew-haters, extreme Islamists and hard leftists on this Flotilla and we can now be sure that the BBC will do everything possible to further demonise Israel and present the Flotilla “activists” as victims. The truth is that through their support for Hamas, they collude with the victim-makers. The BBC despises Israel and this will become apparent as the day progresses. Like Regev, I regret the loss of life that has taken place but more to the point I am revolted by the BBC coverage.
UPDATE; As this story grow, I note that the BBC chooses not to examine the role of the Turkish based IHH. I cover it here. The meme is clear – the Jews are always in the wrong. Killing peace activists, whatever next?
I agree. Those poor, misunderstood and totally innocent Hamas supporters, who set themselves up as Aunt Sallies, then allow themselves to be stopped and boarded, and who attacked the Israeli boarders, then wonder why there is retaliation and cry “foul”. Obviously a carefully orchestrated “come-on” to the Israelis, who, caught between a rock and a hard place, had little alternative but to carry it through.
The BBC are having a field day, aren’t they, what with this and the gayness of the fiddling David Laws? (or is it the fiddlingness of the gay David Laws). The combination of glee and outrage is almost tangible.
I have to say that Sky news were taking the same line this morning.
ChrisM
Agreed – but at least we are not forced to fund Sky.
If these pro-terrorist activists were using lethal force to resist an Israeli boarding I dont regret the loss of life. Israel is not dealing with misguided peaceniks here, they’re dealing with the scum of humanity who want to see a second Holocaust.
If Israeli forces boarded in International waters than that might not be very politic, but these genocidaires had declared their intention and Israel has to do what it needs to to them supply Hamas with terrorist material.
The BBC of course will always play their propaganda support role for anti-semite activists and their useful idiots. One hopes that one day the TODAY programme will join one of thes terrorist flotillas.
Of significance is the continuing use of the “disproportionate” buzzword
Hippiepooter
Exactly right.
One interesting – and unexpected – thing so far, when I checked the BBC News online they were showing a video which clearly showed an Israeli soldier being attacked and driven back by a “peaceful” protester. I went to the AlJazeera site and the same video seemed to be there though the attack on the Israeli was missing. I wonder how long before the BBC realise their mistake?
Billy the Baker you’re spot-on.
The Israeli version of events – that it was the “human rights” activists who attacked the boarding party – is borne out by video footage shot by BOTH sides.
The footage broadcast by the BBC at 12.01pm, shot by the Turkish activists themselves, showed a marine being viciously attacked by several people the very moment he landed on the deck from the helicopter above. Yet the BBC reporter voiced the footage thus: “They descended from helicopters. These pictures from Turkish television show the Israeli soldiers fighting the activists” – thus implying that the Israelis were the aggressors.
Footage shot by the Israelis from a helicopter has just been uploaded to You Tube by the Jerusalem Post. It shows the soldiers being attacked with poles, stun granades and firebombs.
Peaceful lot these “human rights” people!
David, yes Humphrys was tripping over himself in his eagerness to spin it as the Israelis attacking first. From your link to the Wyre Davies report:
But there’s no question that the Israelis attacked first, as it were; there’s no suggestion that they came under fire from the convoy or something.
This is journalism? It’s actually fishing for propaganda. Somebody should explain to Humphrys the difference between boarding and attacking. To his credit, Davies refused to have his arm twisted, pointed out that details still had to emerge and qoted what the Israelis had said.
Humphrys is already well aware of the difference between boarding and attacking. The truth is not of the slightest importance to this Jew hating bigot, whipping up mass hysteria against the Jewish State is.
good old Al-beeb in full hate Israel invective mode
did anyone se the disgraceful “interview” with unfunny mong Alexei Sayle?
the drone asked him about the rockets being fired into Israel from Gaza,and they were dismissed without so much as a word of challenge as some kind of irrelevance
what do you expect from the UK arm of al jazeera
complete joke
What is really disproportionate is the amount of attention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict attracts compared with other conflicts in the world that cause far more human suffering.
For example, since 2003 the UN estimates 300,000 (Muslim) civilians have been killed in Darfur and almost three million made refugees by the (islamic) Sudanese regime. In comparison the highest credible figure for the number of Palestinian civilian deaths from a Palestinian source in the Gaza War was 926. That’s over 320 deaths in Darfur for every one in Gaza, yet one does not hear of demonstrations, propaganda stunts, rioting etc against the Sudanese regime.
I think this is sufficient to show that all the hoo-ha over Gaza is motivated by hatred of Israel or the Jews and not by sympathy for the Palestinians or Muslim civilians.
How can they be called “peace activists” if they resort to violence? I saw the pictures of the burly hard men on board, they were not ordinary peace activists, they were hard men looking for a fight and they got one alright.
In fact this was a set up job and the boats were manned with islamist heavies just itching to stab a Jew or two and that is what they did. They obviously reckoned the media would present their planned violence in a sympathetic manner and the BBC came through in spades for them.
The next flotilla will have Turkish naval escorts and there will be trouble ahead, the west had better get used to the new reality of an islamist Turkey with its eyes on the Agean and a controlling power in the med, the islamist beast is stirring just as we knew it would and yet our political leaders are simply blind to the awful reality. If Turkey can break the blockade then hamas will rearm with missiles capable of hitting every part of Israel, Turkey and Syria and Iran will rush in tonnes of military stores from bullets to sam 7s to real SS/SA missiles. Israel will have a potent enemy waiting in its rear when the trio attack from the north.
The lynch pin on a future assault on Israel is having Gaza as a readymade knife to be inserted into Israels back during a frontal assault via the north, the Golan and hezbollah controlled Lebanon.
The real aim of the ‘aid’ ships is to allow the wholesale rearming of hamas with top class weaponry for the coming assault. The westen media sees none of this, they present a false reality where suffering Gazans starve under the heel of the nasty Joooos, the set up is complete and the polluted UN will assist and help the islamist cause and these enablers will stand by happily as Israel is first beaten and its population massacred by the million. A tiny nation being sold out and betrayed and killed, a nation that gave so much and suffered so much, just another outpost of civilisation killed off by the barbarians always waiting for their chance.
5pm Radio 4 news and Tim Franks is in full flow. But there is video footage readily available now that shows the Israeli soldiers being attacked as they tried to board the ship.
Franks is hiding behind UN reports of course – attacking the whole concept of the blockade, talking about protests around the world etc. But right now what people want to know is – what actually happened on the ship. The BBC knows what happened, and the video looks to confirm what the Israelis are claiming- we can all see with our own eyes – but Franks utterly fails to report the FACTS.
here are written accounts from Israel :
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3896796,00.html
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israeli-commandos-gaza-flotilla-crew-tried-to-lynch-us-1.293089
and here are a couple of video clips – scroll down :
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/05/31/bloody-clash-off-gaza-coast-leaves-10-dead/
These were not “peace protestors”. The soldiers were attacked by Islamist thugs
‘The next flotilla will have Turkish naval escorts’
Good job there are unlikely to be any North Korean subs around.
I seem to recall their most recent actions – torpedoing and killing scores – were seen as ‘threatening’ by an MSM and chatterati now much keener to rush to judgement.
I thought the interview was very measured.
Repeating ‘The BBC despises Israel’ a lot, doesn’t make it so.
Here are a selection of quotes:
‘Looks like the Flotilla won’t be floating any closer to Gaza….I regret the loss of life that has taken place’ – Sue
‘One hopes that one day the TODAY programme will join one of thes terrorist flotillas.’
– hippiepooter
Hippiepooter
Exactly right.
-David Vance.
But then according to Sue. anyone who finds Israel’s actions ‘disproportionate, unreasonable or excessive’ falls into either the category ‘casual viewer’ or ‘downright antisemite’.
You see, to show anything but unequivocal support for every Israeli action means you are either a racist or just don’t know anything about the subject. Any if you know about the subject, logically you must be supportive of Israel. A lot of people and a lot of governments might well view Israel’s actions in this case as ”disproportionate, unreasonable or excessive’ , so I guess that means a lot of anti-semites and a lot of brainwashed.
What was excessive, what actually caused the deaths, was the crazy actions of the “peace activists” on the boat. Video footage clearly shows they were out to kill Israeli soldiers and tried to crash the commando helicopter.
Who should we believe – the BBC or our lying eyes ?
Erik,
That quote you reproduced wasn’t mine, it was David Vance’s by the way. If you want to take issue with mine, see the thread below. Rich pickings for you I expect.
In the 80’s I wrote to the BBC, of the real ongoing genocide of Christians and Animists in south Sudan. They wrote back and said that both sides were violating human rights.
As it turned out, some 2 million Christians ans Animists were massacred or died as a result of an engineered famine.
The BBC never ever covered the genocide.
“if you know about the subject, logically you must be supportive of Israel.”
Quite so.
Cassandra If Turkey attempts to involve its armed forces in invading Israeli territorial waters, then any Turkish warships will be warned to leave the area. If they refuse they will be sunk.
Turkey has been asking for a dry slap for some considerable time.
The logic of keeping Turkey in NATO has virtually disappeared. And the more the Turks get involved in fomenting trouble in the Middle East, hopefully the more people in this country will realise that it would be a disaster to let them join the EU.
I happened to have been in Turkey last year, visiting Istanbul and then going to the Gallipoli battlefield where my father had landed as an ANZAC. Folks in Istanbul seemed fine – but out in Eceabat near Gallipoli, while the older people seemed fine I found a lot of hostility from some young people. One student in particular was insulting in manner and hated everything to do with the West. The message of Kemal Ataturk is being buried, I fear.
I hope and pray you are right my wise friend. But islamist Turkey has a powerful fleet and modern weaponry, first rate subs and long range SS/SA missiles, true the range of its fighters would be limited but its surface fleet is far more powerful than the IDF.
But then again the IDF have fought the odds and won before, they have the skills and the will and they cannot afford to lose and I am praying for them as I have never prayed before!
The BBC has allowed people to call for UN-sanctioned military attacks on Israel, unremarked and passed over by the presenters.
I’ve noticed that the bBC video clips don’t show that Israeli soldier getting stabbed, Instead the video clip is edited in which to hide the actual attack.
I wonder why the bBC doesn’t wish the viewers to see that???
Israel had no choice but to intercept these ships, missiles are being shipped ever closer to the borders of Israel, Syria is supplying missiles from Iran to Hezbollah in the Lebanon, the Americans know this, that is why they are funding “Iron Dome” Israel s missile defense system. There could be weapons on those ships, but probably not, in a high stakes game where Israel is forced to kill so called peace activists Hamas have won. Trouble is some people know what is going on in the Middle East, the problem is not enough in the right places, or so it seems. Listening to the BBCs reports on this action is sickening.
“A ray of light in the darkness of the world’s media,” I thought on reading this on the Spiegel Online site:
‘The pro-Palestinian organizers had described the fleet with which they had hoped to break through the Israeli sea blockade of the Gaza Strip on Monday morning as a “humanitarian aid convoy.” But as the Israeli army stormed the largest ship, the Mavi Marmara, the activists they encountered were in no way exclusively docile peaceniks. Some of the “peace activists” received the Israelis with crow bars and sling shots. Some of the self-professed “human rights activists” reportedly even tore the weapons from soldiers and began to shoot.
That’s not what a peaceful protest looks like.’
But then the editor must have been prodded by someone and was soon back in line as the article went on:
‘But the reaction from Israel, a state which proclaims to adhere to the rule of law, was far from appropriate. Regardless how prepared to engage in violence the organizers of the ship convoy might have been: With at least 15 dead, all on the side of the activists, and more than 30 injured, some seriously, one thing is certain: Israel carelessly threw one of the most important principles of the application of military violence overboard: the proportionality of military force.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,697834,00.html#ref=nlint
The “proportionality”! Oh yes! Let us keep *everything* in proportion!
From what I have read, and the pictures seem to bear it out, the Israeli commandoes were armed with paintball guns as they descended. Apparently these are at times used for crowd control. They only drew their real handguns when the siutation became serious. I wonder how many paintball guns Hamas carries in their armoury?
Just watching Sheikh Jeremy Bowen live from Jerusalem talking about a serious rift with Turkey. There has been a serious breakdown in Turkish/Israeli relations for some months now and this latest episode has not made it worse.
The bbc HYS comments are producing about 30 -40% pro Israeli responses. These are being systematically culled at the moment.
All my complaints about the large number of lying, racist and/or hateful and inciteful posts are being systematically ignored, ie rejected, for no good reason.
Ive sent an email or complaint and am keeping the original drafts.
I counterposted to an individual who quite clearly said that lethal violence against ANY israeli boarding was quite all right. My posting was removed. The offending post (294) is still up.
Im getting really pissed off with this blatant attempt to censor Pro israeli sentiment, thus creating a false image of some artificial “popular” outrage which is wholly inaccurate
I’ve just noticed that HYS has done away with showing how many posts are left in limbo. This used to be one of the BBC’s best methods of not allowing comments or changing the overall balance of comments. Last time I tried I got about 1 out of 20 posted and so gave up. The BBC has also done away with best rated as quite often they probably didn’t like the results.
The new BBC HYS medium was manipulated because it showed what public feeling truly was and it didnt fit with the BBC world view, they just cannot help themselves following the methods of the despots they so love and adore.
Now they have taken to deleting posts that conflict with the desired public reaction, a clear manipulation and a clear breech of their remit. The BBC require their world view to be the publics world view and they have the will and the means to make it appear that way BUT the fact is that they betray themselves for the morally bankrupt cheats they are.
Alternatives to BBC’s pro-Hamas political stance re-Gaza flotilla:
Nine reports, with comments, at ‘Jihadwatch’-
http://www.jihadwatch.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/br0nc0s/managed-mt/mt-search.cgi?search=gaza+flotilla&IncludeBlogs=1&limit=20
I have some extremely clear new video over at the blog.
Meanwhile, Al-Beeb is ignoring the gathering wave of evidence against the evil Joooz theory and is having a field day.
Thank you Philip for posting that video. It will never see the light of day on Al-Beeb (or other MSM outlets) but it is there for the record.
A very clear series of accounts at the Jerusalem Post website now.
Looks like the hate convey and its “piss activists” dont have a leg to stand on.
IDF forces only carried handguns and paint ball guns (!) initially. Hardly who dares wins. The terrorists (all seem to be turks) attempted to bring down the IDF blackhawk helicopter by attempting to attach the rappelling rope to parts of the ships superstructure.
its obvious the IDF force shown was initially minimal, and the forces themselves had to request to use their handguns, after coming under fire and other sustained deadly force by the terrorists.
Philip – the video is very clear, but it makes no difference at all with the western media (not just the BBC). No matter what the Isrealis do it is evil. When they defend themselves against suicide murderers they are evil. When they try and stop missiles raining down on schools they are evil. When they dismantle all their settlements in Gaza they are evil.
There is nothing that can be said in Isreals defence – it just will not wash with the media. Don’t you know that self defence is not tolereated in western countries, appeasment is the mindset of the liberal elite who run our country.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/10199862.stm
“The BBC’s Wyre Davies describes how the Israeli army has released a video which it claims shows the violence on board as it boarded the flotilla.”
Claims? It shows clearly shows IDF soldiers being beaten mercilessly. The BBC cannot quite bring themselves to represent what is undeniable.
At 12:00 GMT yesterday, when I first tuned in, the World Service introduced the news with this headline:
Israeli commandos have stormed the flotilla of ships trying to break the blockade of the Gaa strip, killing at least ten people and provoking widespread outrage.
This was followed by Jon Donnison, that useful idiot, informing us that:
Video shows the commandos storming the ships and those on board fighting the commandos off with sticks.
Amazing how clubs turn into sticks and one stormed ship turns into many when you look at evidence with with BBC tunnel vision.
He then added:
The Israeli navy said they had guns and knives as well.
Yes, the old “Israel says.” We know that one very well. Don’t know if the video showing the Israel being stabbed was available at 12:00, but if it was and Donnison didn’t watch it, he’s not doing his job. If he did watch it he’s a liar and a propagandist. And if it wasn’t available then, he didn’t come back later to amend his original report.
However, by 13:00 GMT, on , Newshour, the World Service had started to introduce more balanced coverage, broadcasting the warning from the Israelis that access to Gaza was denied and the invitation to proceed to Ashdod to offload the cargo. There was also a clip from Danny Ayalon, Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister, mentioning the activist’s connection to Al Qaeda and Hamas. Mark Regev was even allowed to explain that the commandos were met by brutal violence.
But Donnnison was allowed to continue with the following twisted rubbish, though I think by then he may have changed to ship singular:
TV footage from on board shows Israeli commandos storming the ship and activists trying to fight back with sticks.
The delightful Audrey whatshername from “Free Gaza” was then allowed some propaganda space. Coould have been the same interview as the one linked to by hippiepooter on a previous thread (which was refreshing to listen to and amazing to hear from the BBC).
That Newshour, from James Menendez, was a fair attempt at balance but of course it wont undo the intitial damage done as the BBC pumped out pro-Hamas propaganda.
During the 14:00 news, Donnison’s rubbish was repeated in a slightly different form:
TV cameras on board show Israeli commandos boarding from helicopters and activists trying to fight back with sticks.
No video from the Israeli side available by then?
Like Newshour, the World Briefing that followed was also fairly balanced.
By 15:00 GMT, the news was still pushing Donnison’s version, and the activists were still trying to fight back with sticks. But the Israel says bit then included two pistols, as well as the knives. No mention of iron bars since that would interfere with the wonderful image of peace activists fighting the might of the entire IDF with flimsy sticks.
Still no Israeli video available by then?
A short while later an Al jazeera “reporter” who had been on board was allowed to give us his expert eyewitness account of events:
Hundreds of soldiers attacked all the ships at once.
Right, with activist grandmothers resisting the attack by throwing food parcels at the Israelis from their wheelchairs before being gunned down by machine gun fire.
I missed Winston Smith’s comment on page 1. Since the evidenc was clearly available, Donnison had no excuse to keep pumping out his propaganda and the News “editors” even less of an excuse to broadcast it.
At 17:00 GMT, World Have Your Say posed the following question:
Has Israel gone too far?
An international lawyer based in Israel pointed out on the programme that the question is inappropriate since it implies that Israel intended to go along the route of a certain amount of force when this was the very last thing the Israelis wanted.
Great to hear sense spoken on the BBC. But the vindictive anti-Isreal comments WHYS habitually publishes, whether on or off topic, are depressingly familiar:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/worldhaveyoursay/2010/05/more_than_10_dead_after_israel.html