Whack-A-Mole

With nearly 3,000 staffers worldwide, there are always those at Reuters who appear not to get the memo that the company has been caught out publishing false and fabricated information, employing overt propaganda, and spinning the news, maliciously, to harm national, religious and ethnic groups the agency's journalists hold in contempt.

These writers and editors continue to prepare stories incorporating false and malicious material long ago exposed as such on this website and elsewhere.

In a story appearing yesterday on the Reuters website and syndicated to perhaps hundreds of newspapers worldwide, Reuters correspondents Sebastian Moffett and Daren Butler report on the Turkish government blocking Israel from participating in an upcoming NATO summit:

(Reuters) - Turkey has refused to allow Israel to take part in a NATO summit next month because the Jewish state has not apologized for the 2010 killing of Turkish activists in a raid on a ship taking aid to Palestinians, a Turkish official said on Monday.
Relations between the regional powers deteriorated sharply after Israeli commandos raided the Mavi Marmara aid vessel in May 2010 to enforce a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip and killed nine Turks in clashes with activists.
Last September, Turkey expelled Israel's envoy and froze military cooperation after a U.N. report on the raid failed to prompt an apology from Israel.

Independent reports, including that of the United Nations cited by Reuters, concluded that the Mavi Marmara carried no humanitarian aid whatsoever and that passengers on board the ship, many of whom were members of the terror-linked Islamist group İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH), planned and actively sought violent confrontation with Israeli forces:

There were humanitarian supplies and construction materials on board three of the vessels in the flotilla (the Defne Y, Sofia and the Gazze I). No humanitarian supplies were found on the remaining vessels. Weapons and combat equipment were found on board the Mavi Marmara, including flares, rods, axes, knives, tear gas, gas masks, protective vests and night-vision goggles.

It is thus false and willfully misleading for Moffett and Butler to characterize the Mavi Marmara as an "aid vessel", to assert that the ship was "taking aid to Palestinians" and to describe the passengers who attempted to kill Israeli marines boarding the ship with the anodyne term "activists".

To date, Reuters has published some variation of the Mavi Marmara aid ship canard in some three hundred stories. 

UPDATE APRIL 25TH, 2012: Reuters correspondents Edmund Blair and Tom Perry repeat the lie in this story, about Egypt's increasing hostility toward Israel.

He suggested Egypt could follow Turkey's example where once-close ties with Israel had worsened sharply after Israeli naval commandos killed nine Turks in May 2010 in a raid on a ship carrying aid to the Gaza Strip.

Is Perry still employed at Reuters?

Maayan Lubell perpetuates lie about Mavi Marmara

In a story on the latest attempt to run the Israeli maritime embargo of Hamas-run Gaza, Reuters correspondent Maayan Lubell once again lies about the nature and objective of the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, where Islamist passengers attempted to lynch Israeli marines boarding the boat:

In May 2010, Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish aid vessel to enforce the naval blockade of the Palestinian enclave, and killed nine Turks in clashes with activists, some of them armed with clubs and knives.

There was no "aid" on board the Mavi Marmara; this is a willful misrepresentation appearing in scores of Reuters stories on the incident, employed in a transparent bid to exculpate the Islamists of attempted murder and to demonize Israel.

Reuters guilty

Hmm, let's see... In the fifteen months since operatives of the Islamist group İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH) attempted to lynch Israeli naval commandos boarding the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, Reuters correspondents have gone from describing the vessel as "an aid ship", to a ship which "led an aid flotilla", to the more equivocal but still biased, a ship "which the crew said was delivering aid to Gaza".

In hundreds of stories on the incident, Reuters has, to our knowledge, never reported that there was no humanitarian aid on board the Mavi Marmara.  Nor has the media behemoth ever issued a formal correction associated with its many false references to the vessel as "an aid ship".

These reporting failures represent clear violations of the company's Trust Principles, Handbook, and almost anyone's standards of professional journalism.  Yet Reuters refuses to set the record straight.  Why?

Because to acknowledge that they had deliberately misrepresented the facts in an effort to peddle a heavily biased editorial agenda and then disguised those misrepresentations in subsequent stories, would almost certainly result in immediate termination for many correspondents and editors at Reuters.

Similarly, it would expose Reuters as a propagandistic partisan in the Arab-Israeli conflict and subject the company to stakeholder claims of misconduct.

It would be akin for example, to executives at British Petroleum publicly acknowledging that they had behaved irresponsibly and in violation of company policy leading up to the Gulf oil spill and then sought to cover-up their misconduct.

Regrettably, when faced with a loss of income, livelihood or worse, defense mechanisms kick in and corporations and their employees frequently abandon their ethical commitments to stakeholders and the greater public.

We'll continue to remind Reuters of those commitments.

Slippery Dan Williams, caught lying repeatedly, tries new tack

Reuters correspondent Dan Williams, who has repeatedly prevaricated on the nature of the Mavi Marmara, the Islamist-sponsored and manned ship where İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH) operatives attempted to lynch Israeli marines, employs some cheap sophistry to deceive his audience while adapting his previous story lines:

(Reuters) - Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday he would not quit the coalition government if it decides to apologize to Turkey for killing 9 Turks aboard a pro-Palestinian activist ship last year.
Lieberman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's most powerful and hawkish political partner, has publicly scorned meeting Ankara's demand that Israel atone for storming the Mavi Marmara as it led an aid flotilla toward the blockaded Gaza Strip.

So the claim is no longer that the Mavi Marmara was itself an aid ship; Williams now tells us that it was merely leading an aid flotilla.  A small step back, although Williams refuses to atone for his previous false reporting with a formal retraction of his claims that the Mavi Marmara was ferrying aid to Palestinians in Gaza.  This failure to correct his "error" openly is, at a minimum, a serious violation of the Reuters Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism.

And of course, that carefully contrived phrase, "as it led an aid flotilla" (was the Mavi Marmara first in the queue of six vessels?), is clearly designed to give readers the false impression that the Mavi Marmara had as its raison d'etre, the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza -- a notion proven false by its empty cargo bays, heavily armed passengers, and a standing Israeli invitation to deliver aid through other channels.

Reuters fictionalizes nature of 2010 Gaza flotilla, attributes fantasy to "anonymous" Israeli official

One year and over 100 story iterations later, Reuters is still peddling the fantasy that the Mavi Marmara, the ship where dozens of Turks allied with the Islamist group İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH) attempted to lynch Israeli marines, was merely trying to ferry "aid" to Palestinians in Gaza.  And this time, correspondent Dan Williams attributes his fictionalized account to an anonymous Israeli official:

(Reuters) - A U.N. report on Israel's bloody seizure of a Turkish ship trying to carry aid to Gaza will be published on July 27 after delays to enable talks between Israel and Turkey, an Israeli official said on Thursday.

As we've noted too many times to recount, inspection of the Mavi Marmara cargo bays following the incident revealed no humanitarian aid on board.

The notion that the ship was carrying aid is a myth, a misrepresentation, a canard, a fabrication, a crude piece of wartime propaganda, a bald-faced lie.  And the attempt to subtly shift responsibility for that bald-faced lie to an anonymous source, an Israeli source, is also highly unethical and a violation of both the Reuters Trust Principles and Handbook of Journalism.

Reuters never certain of provocations against Israel; always certain of Israel's culpability

In a story about the Quartet issuing a statement formally discouraging other flotillas from attempting to breach the Israeli naval embargo of Gaza, Reuters correspondent Megan Davies demonstrates, with two paragraphs, everything amiss with the agency's coverage of the Middle East conflict:

In May of last year, Israeli marines intercepted a six-ship flotilla in international waters and killed eight Turks and a Turkish-American aboard one vessel, the Mavi Marmara, owned by a Turkish Islamic charity.

Israel said its marines were attacked by activists wielding metal bars, clubs and knives, but organizers of the convoy denied that. The incident led to a breakdown in already strained ties between Turkey and Israel.

Note that Davies is absolutely certain Israeli marines killed nine passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara but offers only Israel's allegation, rebutted by flotilla organizers, that the marines were attacked by passengers wielding weapons.

This raises essential questions for any journalist, but particularly for a Reuters journalist:

As Reuters journalists, we never identify with any side in an issue, a conflict or a dispute. Our text and visual stories need to reflect all sides, not just one. This leads to better journalism because it requires us to stop at each stage of newsgathering and ask ourselves “What do I know?” and “What do I need to know?”

Despite the presence of overwhelming photographic, video, physical, and eyewitness evidence available to Davies attesting to the assault by passengers on the Israeli marines, the Reuters correspondent apparently cannot say the assault even took place.  Rather, she ignores all of the evidence and twists the incident into a disputed he said, she said, citing anonymous convoy "organizers" to cast doubt on the historical record.

At the same time, the truth is that Davies doesn't know with any certainty whether passengers were killed by the Israeli marines.  In its report for example, the Turkel Commission found that passengers used firearms against soldiers boarding the ship.  Given nighttime conditions, the ensuing melee, and in the absence of any other evidentiary report, it's entirely within the bounds of possibility that one or more of the fatalities were the result of "friendly fire" by the passengers.

As Reuters has consistently done over the past year, Davies also refers innocuously to the Mavi Marmara as being owned by a "Turkish Islamic charity".  This, to suggest a mission with humanitarian intent.  Employing the propaganda technique of card stacking, Davies fails to inform readers that there was no humanitarian aid on board the Mavi Marmara and that the "charity"sponsoring the ship, İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH), has a long history of documented ties to Islamist terror groups around the world.  Afforded that information, readers might come away with a somewhat different view -- one contrary to that being peddled by Davies -- of the nature and objectives of the flotilla last year.

One year on, Reuters still lying about Mavi Marmara

In May of last year, İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH), a Turkish Islamist NGO with ties to various terror groups, sponsored and manned a flotilla to Gaza with the intention of defeating the Israeli weapons embargo of the Hamas-run territory.  The ship where the majority of IHH operatives were based, the Mavi Marmara, became the scene of a violent confrontation between Israeli naval commandos attempting to board the ship and passengers armed with knives, iron rods, and by some reports, pistols.  Following the incident and seizure of the Mavi Marmara, an inspection of the cargo hold revealed no humanitarian aid on board the ship.

In story after story on the incident last year, Reuters falsely characterized the Mavi Marmara as an "aid ship".  One year on, the agency is still doing so:

(Reuters) - Democratic governments cannot stop their citizens launching another pro-Palestinian flotilla to Gaza, Turkey's foreign minister said on Monday, a year after the storming of an aid ship by Israeli marines.

This, of course, is not accidental.  Reuters is attempting here, via deployment of the propaganda techniques of historical reconstruction, i.e., fabrication, and repetition, to implant in the minds of its readers the false notion that the Mavi Marmara was carrying humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Arabs.  In fact, as we noted above, it was chartered with the specific task of breaking a legal sea blockade so as to facilitate the flow of arms to the genocidal Islamists running Gaza.

Might as well face it: you're addicted to lies

The Turkel Commission has released a 296-page report on the Gaza flotilla incident last May and found that Israel's actions were in accordance with international law.  Amongst other interesting findings, the panel, which included David Trimble, notes (page 180) the following about the Turkish ship where the violence occurred:

It should be noted that during the searches conducted on the Mavi Marmara, no humanitarian supplies were found.

Of course, this is still not sufficient to deter Reuters from repeating a mendacious propaganda mantra the agency has become fond of employing in (at current count) 278 280 retellings of the incident published on its website:

(Reuters) - An Israeli inquiry cleared the government and military on Sunday of wrongdoing in the bloody seizure of a Turkish aid ship that tried to breach the Gaza blockade, saying passengers were to blame for the violence.

In a caption under a photo of the Mavi Marmara, Reuters repeats the lie:

Turkish cruise ship Mavi Marmara, carrying pro-Palestinian activists and humanitarian aid to Gaza, leaves from Sarayburnu port in Istanbul May 22, 2010.

In his story, correspondent Dan Williams also employs the propaganda technique of card stacking, deliberately withholding from readers the group identity, history, and associations of the jihadists "activists" participating in the violence on-board the ship.

Can't have the audience knowing too many of the facts, can we Dan?

"The knives that we didn't carry were this big"

That's the caption we'd choose for this photo of Israeli legislator Hanin Zoabi appearing on Reuters AlertNet website:

Zoabi, as you may recall, insisted in testimony following the Turkish flotilla incident that passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara carried no weapons.  This, despite the fact that video evidence captured her in the same location on deck as IHH jihadis holding clubs and metal rods.

Reuters however, chooses this interesting caption:

Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset (the Israeli parliament), talks to reporters in Amman

That's a bit like saying a Canadian member of the US Congress.  Or are the Palestinians now an ethnic group separate and distinct from the Arabs?  That would be news.

New video underscores Reuters systematic bias

On July 14th, we commented on a story by Reuters correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan sympathetic to Haneen Zoabi, an Israeli Arab MP aboard the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara where the violence between members of the jihadist-linked IHH and Israeli commandos occurred.

At the time, we noted that while Fisher-Ilan cited Zoabi's assertion that she had tried to mediate between the sides before the melee, the Reuters correspondent failed to recount Zoabi's earlier testimony that she had not seen any weapons carried by the Turkish passengers.  We provided an embedded video showing the passengers with clubs, metal bars, and catapults along with Zoabi at or near the same locations on the ship and suggested that it was highly unlikely Zoabi could have failed to notice the weapons.

Now comes a new video again showing the Turkish passengers armed with various "cold" weapons on and under deck, this time with Zoabi in the same frame, interacting with these passengers -- proof positive that she did see the weapons and that she lied in her earlier testimony:



Will Reuters update their earlier hagiography of Zoabi with news of this latest video?  We're not holding our breath.

hat tip: EoZ

And another Big Lie

In addition to the canard of "food insecurity" in Gaza, Reuters continues to push the lie that the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara in the flotilla was carrying "aid" for the Palestinians.  We've repeatedly debunked this disinformation each time Reuters republishes it but regrettably, the agency persists:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the formation of a four-member panel of inquiry last week into the raid at sea in which Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists after boarding their vessel, which was attempting to bring aid to the Gaza Strip.

Again, there was no aid whatsoever on the Mavi Marmara.  Louis Charbonneau can offer no evidence to the contrary because he is lying.

Reuters tests our brain power

Did you know that human beings use only 10 percent of their brains?  Of course you knew that because you've heard it repeated over a hundred times.  It's actually false.  A popular myth.  An argumentum ad nauseam -- something we've given up refuting because its been repetitively drilled into that 10 percent of our brain we use.

Did you know that the Turkish ship boarded by Israeli commandos was carrying aid for the people of Gaza?  Of course you knew that because you've read it in over one-hundred Reuters stories.  Like this one today:

Already strained by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's repeated criticism of the Jewish state's policies toward Palestinians, relations dived after Israeli marines killed nine Turks aboard an aid ship trying to run a blockade of Gaza on May 31.

Except that, as documented, it's false.  There was no aid for the people of Gaza on-board the Mavi Marmara.  There were Jihadists. There were cold weapons.  (Is this what Reuters means by "aid"?)  But there was no humanitarian aid.  Let us repeat that: there was no aid for the people of Gaza on-board the Turkish ship.

Only 172 more repetitions and we're certain we'll have put a dent in the myth perpetuated by the liars at Reuters.

Birds of a feather

Reuters correspondent Allyn Fisher-Ilan reports on the Israeli parliament voting to remove certain diplomatic privileges from Arab MP Haneen Zoabi (also "Zuabi") for her participation in the Gaza flotilla.  Fisher-Ilan provides a platform for Zoabi's political views, devoting over one-third of the story content to quoting or paraphrasing her and focusing on red herrings like Israeli Arab rights:

Israeli Arabs enjoy full citizenship rights, though many complain of discrimination and poorer funding for their towns. 

Most are descended from Palestinians who stayed in what is now Israel when hundreds of thousands were driven out or fled during fighting in the late 1940s.

On the attempt by passengers to lynch the Israeli commandos who boarded the ship, Fisher-Ilan ignores the video evidence and twists the incident into a "he said/she said":

Israel says troops acted in self-defence when activists set upon troops with knives and iron bars, and defended the blockade as a measure to prevent weapons from reaching Hamas Islamists in charge of Gaza. Activists aboard the ship disputed that account.

And while Fisher-Ilan cites Zoabi's recent account of her role in the incident:

Zoabi had earlier told Reuters she did make efforts to mediate between the sides.

The Reuters correspondent fails to note Zoabi's previous risible testimony on what she did (or didn't) observe on board the ship:

"All of us didn't hold anything in our hands; there was no weapons; nothing at all."

The following video footage was shot on the Mavi Marmara traveled by Zoabi.  Beginning at 3:32, note the batons, bars and slingshots held (and used) by passengers on the lower deck where Zoabi was stationed during the battle.  At 5:00, note the passenger carrying the blue metal rod walking down the stairs to the lower deck.  And at 10:37, note Zoabi waving off the camera operator as she traverses the deck.



We're not quite certain who is more oblivious to the facts: Haneen Zoabi or Allyn Fisher-Ilan.

Reuters forgets a little something IV

Reuters reports that Germany has banned the International Humanitarian Relief Organization (IHH) from operating in the country due to its funding for Hamas.  What Reuters doesn't report is that the passengers on the Turkish-flagged ship Mavi Marmara who attempted to lynch the Israeli boarding party with knives and metal rods were members of the IHH.  

In over 500 stories published on its website since the incident, Reuters has maintained a strict blackout on the linkage we noted here, between the IHH and Islamic terror groups.  This, in a palpable effort to conceal the identity and true motives of the "activists" on board the ship.

Reuters neglects to mention something else:

Germany has staunchly supported Israel following the Nazi genocide of European Jews in World War Two and has strongly criticised Hamas, which Israel considers to be a terrorist organisation.

Hamas is of course, also classed as a terrorist organization by Germany and the rest of the EU.

UPDATE July 13, 2010: Reader Shai notes a Haaretz story asserting that IHH of Germany has "no connection to the Turkish group that organized the flotilla"; however, the Canadian Press reports that the two chapters were originally a single organization formed in Freiburg Germany.  The US State Department has confirmed that the Turkish IHH has links to Hamas and the organization is currently under review for designation as a terrorist group.

Spin, slant, and sucker

Reuters publishes another one of its infamous "Factbox" series on the Middle East conflict, this time focusing on political risk for the region.  There are so many gross mischaracterizations in this slanted piece, so much misleading and loaded language, it would take a lengthy critical monograph to fully address all of its fatal flaws.  For the time being, we'll simply paste an excerpt with emphasis added followed by our own "clarifications":

ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN DEADLOCK

Peace prospects look bleak, with a rightwing Israeli government dominated by advocates of Jewish settlement on occupied land, the Palestinians weak and divided, and few signs of progress in U.S.-mediated, indirect talks that began in May. Israel deeply angered one-time Muslim ally Turkey when its naval commandos killed nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists on May 31 in a melee on board an aid ship running an Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, territory run by Hamas Islamists. Turkey's robust rhetoric and downgrading of ties with Israel won it many friends in the Arab world, underlining Ankara's growing diplomatic and economic clout in the region.

- "a rightwing Israeli government dominated by advocates of Jewish settlement on occupied land"

Reuters consistently characterizes the current Israeli government this way as if it were extreme or unique in its view on the future of Israeli communities beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines.  But the fact is, by a large majority, Israelis of all political stripes support settlement construction and even the relatively left-wing Kadima party advocates for a united Jerusalem.  And of course, the current Israeli Defense Minister (and de facto Foreign Minister), Ehud Barak, is a member of the even more extreme left-wing Labour party which itself supports retaining major settlement blocs in the disputed territories.

- "the Palestinians weak and divided"

As an appeal to pity, this facile characterization forms the core of Reuters Palestinian advocacy agenda.  The Palestinians are perpetually portrayed and consequently perceived by the global community as weak, destitute, divided, and oppressed by the Israelis who are alternatively painted as mighty and rapacious, intent on stealing land and keeping the Palestinians disenfranchised.  This false narrative must be maintained at all costs or thousands of journalists, UN agency bureaucrats, and "human rights" jobbers would be plunged out of work.

- "pro-Palestinian activists on May 31 in a melee on board an aid ship"

As is now well-known, dozens of passengers on the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara were armed members of the jihadist group İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH).  They had planned violence, prepared weapons, and embraced martyrdom.  The ship itself, carried no humanitarian aid whatsoever.  It's time to end the charade about "activists" and "aid".

-  "Turkey's robust rhetoric"

Nice euphemism; the Turkish Prime Minister has referred to Israel as "a festering boil in the Middle East".  But the Turkish government, which, if it did not dispatch, certainly permitted the Mavi Marmara to sail despite Israel's many exhortations to interrupt it, is clearly complicit in the violence and deaths that resulted from the attacks on the Israeli boarding party.  Yet, in more than 500 stories on the incident appearing on its website, Reuters has yet to even broach this subject.  Perhaps the news agency doesn't wish to arouse Turkish ire.  One never knows what "robust rhetoric" Erdogan might dream up for Reuters correspondents.

It's time Reuters dropped the pretense

In a story on Lebanon granting permission for another ship to sail to Gaza, Reuters correspondent Yara Bayoumy recaps recent events:

Israel announced on Sunday new steps to ease a land blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, after an international outcry over an Israeli commando raid on an aid flotilla that killed nine pro-Palestinian activists.

Given that 40 or so of the passengers on the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara were members of a jihadist-linked group; armed with metal rods, combat knives, catapults, and stun grenades; agitating for violence and boasting of martyrdom; engaged in the brutal beating and ransoming of Israeli marines -- given the facts, isn't it time Reuters dropped the absurd pretense referring to these thugs as "activists"?

Please, George Orwell is rolling over.

Airbrushing the facts

Even when Reuters makes an ostensible effort to write a balanced story, its choice of language betrays its compulsive bias.  Correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi reports on Arab League chief Amr Moussa visiting the Gaza Strip today.  In an early version of the story, al-Mughrabi writes:

But Cairo reopened its Rafah crossing with the territory after Israeli marines killed nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists during a raid on a Turkish-flagged vessel in the aid convoy on May 31.

In a subsequent revision, al-Mughrabi (or his editor) makes the following change and addition:

But Cairo reopened its Rafah crossing with the enclave after Israeli marines killed nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists in a May 31 raid on a Turkish-flagged aid vessel where passengers with metal rods and knives confronted the boarding party.  [emphasis ours]

Note that the "Turkish-flagged vessel in the aid convoy" in the first generation story has become the "Turkish-flagged aid vessel" in the update.  As we know (no thanks to Reuters which has yet to report on the development), the Mavi Marmara carried no humanitarian aid whatsoever; the passengers -- members of the terror-linked IHH -- were on a singular mission of provocation and violence.

The updated story adds a reference to the weapons carried by the passengers but while explicitly mentioning those killed by Israeli marines, sanitizes the precipitating bloody assault perpetrated by the passengers with a reference only to the boarding party being "confronted".  No mention of the vicious beating, knifing, and ransoming of Israeli marines by members of the Turkish IHH which Reuters has attempted to airbrush from history.

Turkish captain knew IHH passengers planned violence. No comment from Reuters

Reuters has devoted nearly two weeks and literally hundreds of articles to the tale of the Gaza flotilla.  In that many iterations, their correspondents have yet to disclose details of the well-established links between the İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH), which sponsored the Turkish-flagged ship where the violence occurred, and Jihadist activities around the world.

We now know that IHH passengers on board the ship were planning violence:

The captain of the Mavi Marmara  tried to convince dozens of IHH activists not to engage in violent clashes with the IDF two hours prior to the commando's boarding of the ship, reported Army Radio on Friday.

The Gaza flotilla ship's captain, Mehmet Tubal, said while being investigated in Israel that he and other members of the Mavi Marmara's staff did all they could to prevent the activists from confronting soldiers, even throwing some of the IHH member's metal pipes and chains overboard.

Another senior member of the ship's staff said that 40 IHH activists took control of the Mavi Marmara and dictated the rest of the passengers' movements.

We also know that the Turkish government must have sanctioned the operation:

"[The] IHH acquired the Mavi Marmara ship from the AKP-run municipality of Istanbul. It is not conceivable that the IHH’s Gaza operation could have been carried out absent high-level government sanction," wrote Svante Cornell, a Swedish security expert who specializes in Eurasia, in an article published on Monday.

A journalist on-board the Mavi Marmara, described as having good links with the heads of the Turkish government and Bulent Yildirim, head of the IHH, had stated, "The flotilla was organized with the support of the Turkish government and Prime Minister Erdogan gave the instructions for it to set sail. That was despite the fact that everyone knew it would never reach its destination," according to the report.

We know all this with no thanks to Reuters which continues to maintain a total blackout on the story.

Revisiting a Reuters interviewee

On June 2nd, two days after the violent confrontation between the Israel Defense Forces and passengers on board the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, Reuters ran a story featuring a telephone interview with the "coordinator" of the Algerian contingent on the ship, Ahmed Brahimi [sic?].  Here are some excerpts from his interview with Reuters:

"They [the Israelis] humiliated us."

"We were not armed. We did not go there to fight."

"We were doing our morning prayer when the Israelis first tried to come on board the Marmara ship."

"[The Israelis] seized our cell phones."

A clearly upset but fairly sympathetic fellow, yes?

On June 4th, Al-aqsa TV ran a slightly more revealing interview with Brahimi:

I swear on Allah, live on TV, that we felt no fear whatsoever of those brothers of apes and pigs. By Allah, I loathed them before, and my hatred of them has only grown, not because they punished and humiliated us, but because I had thought them to be worthy enemies, but it turns out that they are too despicable even to be called our enemies, because they are not our equals. They are cowards. [...]

I took an oath that if they stamped my passport, I would rip it up and leave without a passport. Our hatred for these people is so intense that we wished, at those moments, that we could have been bombs, and blow up among those brothers of apes and pigs. [...]

I believe in the principle that all the infidels are one group. No good can come of any of those infidels. All these people have issued resolutions – like the Goldstone report or some rulings of the court in the Hague – but when the time comes to implement them, none of them can put Israel in its place.

If we want to profit from what happened, we must mobilize the Islamic peoples and the Arab nation, because the Palestinian cause is a purely Islamic religious issue. If Palestine is liberated, the whole world will change. We do not want a national Palestinian state or borders. We want Palestine in its entirety.

Somehow, Reuters seems not to have quite caught the full intensity of the man.

More eviscerating editing

In a previous post, we noted Reuters slashing of over a minute of graphic video footage showing Israeli marines being brutally beaten and a commando being cast overboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara.

In its latest effort to downplay the violence perpetrated by Turkish members of the IHH, Reuters runs a photo of an injured Israeli marine surrounded by attackers with a knife cropped out of the scene.  Here's the original photo showing the knife:

And Reuters' version here.

Hat tip: Suzanne at Elder of Ziyon.