Early this morning Jon Donnison said something which I’ll paraphrase: “Israel has investigated its own conduct over the Mavi Marmara and it’s about to publish its findings. If, as reports suggest, it exonerates itself, it will be regarded as a whitewash.”
All day, BBC News 24 has featured the news about this investigation, taking care to emphasise the Turkish reaction.
Luckily for me, Elder of Ziyon has already tackled the BBC’s treatment of this topic, so I don’t have to.
Although the investigating committee did include outsiders, I would point out that any ‘self-generated’ investigation automatically faces the issue of impartiality, and I’d love anyone to suggest any other body that would investigate this more thoroughly and more self-critically than the Israelis. As Elder says, one glance at the report itself shows that it is “far from a whitewash, and it takes its mandate seriously.”
If the BBC is going to dismiss any investigation unless it’s done by pro Palestinian sympathisers, I despair.
Update.The BBC has altered the original report, changing the sub headings and much of the content. The new version includes several quotations from the Turkish perspective, and an additional article with some overlapping content has appeared, entitled : Turkey criticises Israel report.
From bad to worse.
(I can’t find any reference to this story on NewsSniffer.)
For what my opinion is worth, sympathy for Arabs known as palestinians = nil; sympathy for Israelis = 100.
Try not to despair too much. The boring predictability personally just leaves me yawning.
I see they’ve replaced the subheadings “Whitewash” with “Banditry and piracy” and “Four shots in head” with “Blockade eased”. There are other changes, too. Worth keeping an eye on News Sniffer to follow the development of this article.The original effort, as quoted by Elder of Zion, is a disgrace.
Not that the latest version is a great deal better.
There are two separate BBC reports.
The first was this, as quoted by EofZ:
Israel inquiry finds Gaza aid flotilla raid ‘was legal’
The later one is this:
Gaza aid flotilla raid: Turkey criticises Israel report
That’ll be why newssniffer doesn’t actually show changes to the original.
Good catch. Hopefully sue will update her post with that info.
I heard Donnison’s report and thought – “Here we go again” – another chance for the BBC to play the Palestinians-are-victims/Israelis are monsters narrative, knowing that the BBC will push this story far beyond any relevance to its audience base. The BBC obsession against Israel is nothing short of anti-semitic.
I bet the BBC NEVER mentions the video footage we all saw, never links to it.
Odd isn’t it, there was not a breath of criticism from the BBC concerning either the members or the conclusions of the “independent” inquiries into Climategate. I wonder why.
Yes, I heard this it was so predictable. After the biased introduction was the usual incest interview to reinforce the point that the Israelis are bad.
Do the hordes of Eastenders fans care one way or the other about this report?
Why does the BBC have a news department? Who is it meant to appeal to?
Elder of Ziyon has read the Turkel Report. I doubt very much the Turkish government or the BBC have done so.
Turkel on whether Gaza is “occupied”
What the BBC won’t tell us, from the Turkel report:
Commandoes: Armed mob lynched us
Troops who raided Marmara testify activists beat them with rods, tried to ‘gouge their eyes out’
Read it all.
Great report.
“The problem Israel is going to face is that many of its critics will see it as a whitewash. This was an Israeli government-commissioned inquiry and people will say it simply wasn’t balanced.”
‘Many critics’ … ‘people will say’…..The BBC putting words into the mouths of the anti-Israel brigade, and reporting (?) on future events before they happen.
“This was an Israeli government-commissioned inquiry ”
Yes. it was. Blamed if they do (it’s biased and one sided) and blamed if they don’t..(not having an investigation would prove the Israelis’ arrogance and thuggery)
And who would have commissioned an unbiased report? The UN???
The EU??? The Turks?????
No credit given for the independent non-Israeli members of the investigation committee who signed the report.
It just gets worse and worse.
Sue
The BBC hates Israel like we love life. The greatest hostility I have ever encountered on-air is when I speak up for Israel. It’s what they DO.
David Vance
I think you should post a link to the account that Biodegradeable posted – the testimony of the Israeli soldiers who were attacked as they landed on Marmara holding PAINT GUNS, expecting little resistance.
It gives the soldiers’ reports of what THE WHOLE WORLD COULD SEE on video.
It is despicable that Helen Boaden, Jeremy Bowen and all of the BBC fail to report this, fail to link to the video clips so that the licence-payers can see with their own eyes what was happening as those soldiers rappeled on to the deck of the Marmara – which had failed to comply with repeated LEGAL orders from the Israeli Navy.
Despicable. There is not other word for the false narrative that the BBC has sustained for many months. Bloody liars, the lot of them. I am ashamed of them.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4017899,00.html
Note also the choice of photo, it’s one of Israeli soldiers holding unidentifiable weapons looking menacing.
I have yet to see the BBC mention the international members of the investigation, the BBC usually have a great deal of respect for Nobel peace prize winners and whenver one is involved in inquiries and negotiations the BBC touts this as proof of infalibility. Strange then that the BBC has yet to mention clearly that a Nobel peace prize winner and one that according to the BBC helped to complete the uber successful NI peace agreement.
It seems that some Nobel prize winners are good and some are invisible, but why? Well its clear that this particualar Nobel peace prize winner sits on the ‘wrong panel’ and Israel is wrong wrong wrong, the debate is over there is no debate Israel is to blame geddit?
So there is positive proof of BBC bias, no ifs and no buts! Concrete evidence of BBC bias, no experts on international law are needed and no investigations into the findings and the Turkish part in the tragedy are needed. Israel is condemned, everyone condemns Israel, the panel members qualifications are ignored because Israel is to lame and she stands condemned, did I mention that Israel is to blame and stands condemned? A whole fleet of ships and only ONE ship that contained islamist jihadists sees violence, islamists stabbing the soldiers armed with paintball guns? No no no! That not imprtant, al that matters is that israel is to balme and she stands condemned geddit?
Only the intervention of the incomparable Mark Regev blasted the BBC narrative to pieces, a concocted half arsed propaganda narrative smashed by common sense and intelligence. Now the story has fallen apart the narrative moves on with a story of leaked documents purporting to prove that the ‘Palestinians’ are prepared to give away too much to the Jews who are we are told ‘swaggering Jews’ while Fatah is desperate for peace this via Abu Al Bowen who as we know is a cheerleader for the hamarse gangsters.
Narrative? Israel = “swaggering Jews”(if that aint a blood libel I dont what is) confident and relying on US support. Fatah = poor desperate supplicants desperate for peace at any cost.
Well done Mark Regev 😎 .
So its just another day of BBC bias and one sided reporting and indeed snuggled away in therea is a gross insult and hate taunt included.
“SWAGGERING JEWS”? Impartiality in our genes is it Helen? Inciting race hatred in a couple of words more like! The history of the actual negotiations between Isarel and Fatah has been one of breathtaking intransigence displays of bad faith from the ‘Palestinian’ side but the BBC sees none of this and is simply not interested in at all. The BBC is simply a tool of jew haters who use the BBC a worldwide platform from which to spread their poisonous hatred.
BTW the intersting thing is that the BBC itself claims that this will only strengthen hamarse, no wonder the BBC is so keen to pomote these STOLEN/HACKED/ILLEGALLY OBTAINED documents.
It’s terrible that an incident of which the BBC were so critical had such poor analysis.
As Cassandra pointed out, the ommission of the Nobel Peace Prize status of one of the external report observers was telling. This was especially so as it seems the BBC in a report in 2010 pointed to his appointment being sanctioned by the Obamessiah himself:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10306331
You could almost choke on the irony of Donnison saying that critics will see it as a one sided whitewash. A view that he does nothing to counter which would have been obvious had he taken the time to read the report or to compare and contrast it with the existing UN report.
I also noted the suggestion that this report was somehow lightweight but does not question the validity of the Turksih investigation or the UN report. The UN resolution that led to the investigating commission had by the reports own admission, already decided that an abuse had been committed. Plus we should also remind ourselves of the huge irony of the make up of that council on human rights abuses.
There are however more significant differences between the two reports. At over 200 pages, the Israeli report is significantly more robust than the 66 page UN report both in content and in the calibre of expert. Simply google the two experts named in the report and you will see their expertise in the law of warfare at sea. The legalities of the blockade are examined against multiple sources of interpreting this law and the legality of the blockade. Added to which the argument of being one sided simply doesn’t wash. The report clearly states the efforts made by the Israelis to secure testimony of witnesses who simply didn’t respond.
The UN report in contrast all hinges on this being a total blockade of Gaza and willfully ignoring the Israeli offer to berth the ships elsewhere and transport the aid in by land. It is from this one point that the whole UN report argues that the boarding and all subsequent actions were illegal.
The galling thing is that I found all this out in two hours. My question is therefore, how much time did the Beeb reporter spend on this report and what the heck are we paying him to do with all the spare time he appears to have?
All the BBC has to do is invite TWO indpendent experts on international law, its so easy to organize and yet the BBC chooses not to.
We see what the BBC chooses to hide and we see what they choose to pimp instead. Israel had every legal right to do what it did and the BBC f*cking knows this. The BBC knows full well that the violence ALL the violence was caused by islamists and but for the islamists there would have been no violence AND the aid would have been delivered.
This anti -Semitic hatred the BBC embraces with such passion is one of the reasons they will never rerun the HBO commissioned
Auschwitz: The Blueprints of Genocide.
Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’
Conspiracy
Although these were done a while ago so the BBC just ignore them as historical and dumped them off on digital channels ! but Old Lawrence of Arabia gets on a bit I note !.
Now they hide the reasons why Israel is fearful of it future given it’s past or why the country may not trust any of it’s neighbours promises
so they can push the agenda they want which is to downgrade Jewish history to the ‘god are they still on about that !’ end of journalism and Hamas up to plucky underdog !
I’ve just played the section from the Today programme interviewing Mark Regev and what was described as the UN’s Richard Falk. It was fascinating listening to Regev establish the credentials of the Comission only to have Webb begin to introduce the idea that we have an impasse based on the idea that each party will just favour their own offering which gets us nowhere. Webb must have missed the point that of Regev’s about international observers.
Once he had established this idea of the idea of an impasse he then went to ask Richard Falk to comment on this idea that it might be difficult to get to truth because of. I mean, going to the UN might be a fair way to get a objective comment on this problem wouldn’t it? That would establish in the mind of the listener that balance was part of this report wouldn’t it?
Well only if you leave the idea that Richard Falk works for the UN at that. Richard works for the much criticised Human Rights council that UN watch points to having passed more resolutions on Israel than all the other countries put togther. This is the same Richard Falk whose nomination to the post of Special Rapporteur to this group on the Israeli – Palestinian situation was widely criticised as highly political because of many of his published comments on the situation in Gaza, including creating an equivalence of their actions with those of the Nazi’s during WW2 and has equated their actions to those of genocide against the Palestinians.
Is this the only guy they could find? Somehow I doubt it. I suspect they went looking for this guy quite deliberately and fogged his credentials for an unsuspecting audience.
Webb must have missed the point that of Regev’s about international observers.
Well I heard it, He ignored it.
Honest Reporting:
Flotilla Report: BBC plumbs the Depths.
* The maritime blockade of Gaza complies with international law.
* Israel’s policies towards the Gaza Strip comply with international and humanitarian law.
* The takeover of the Mavi Marmara was carried out in compliance with international law.
* Israeli soldiers only took action in self-defense after being violently attacked by the ship’s passengers and their actions complied with international law.
The BBC’s coverage of the Turkel Report, however, graphically illustrates all that is wrong with its reporting of Israel.
Rather than address the actual findings of the report, which vindicated Israeli actions, the BBC immediately begins by attempting to discredit the report by focusing on Turkish criticisms. The screenshot above is indicative of the BBC’s anti-Israel bias:
* The headline, which sets the tone for the story, is about Turkish criticism and not the findings of the report itself.
* This focus continues in the opening paragraphs of the story, which also highlights a negative quote against Israel from the UN.
* The choice of photo and the accompanying caption – the photo fails to demonstrate any direct link to the story contents while the caption highlights that “one activist was shot four times in the head”.
* The article continues by extensively quoting Turkish PM Erdogan who states: “To my judgment there is no value, nor credibility to this report.”
* As if to drive the point home, the BBC article continues with a well-placed and visible sub-heading ‘Banditry and piracy’
The BBC is notorious not only for what it includes in its reports, but also for the vital context that it omits……………
BBC Responds to Flotilla Inquiry Complaints