CAMERA
New York Times
June 1: Isabel Kershner's front page story, "After Deadly Raid At Sea, Israel Is Sharply Criticized," is an overview of Israeli's seizure of the flotilla vessels in a format that largely casts the issues as matters of contending opinion, not fact. This approach is especially objectionable in depicting the Islamist IHH. Kershner writes: The fatalities all occurred aboard the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish passenger vessel that was carrying about 600 activists under the auspices of Insani Yardim Vakfi, an organization also known as I.H.H. Israeli officials have characterized it as a dangerous Islamic organization with terrorist links.
Yet the organization, founded in 1992 to collect aid for the Bosnians, is now active in 120 countries and has been present at recent disaster areas like Haiti and New Orleans.
''Our volunteers were not trained military personnel,'' said Yavuz Dede, deputy director of the organization. ''They were civilians trying to get aid to Gaza. There were artists, intellectuals and journalists among them. Such an offensive cannot be explained by any terms.''
As CAMERA has noted, according to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, there is reliable information indicating that in the past IHH had links with Islamic terrorist elements in the Middle East. As part of its connections with the global jihad it supported jihadist terrorist networks in Bosnia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya. IHH also served in the past as a cover for Al-Qaeda, acquiring forged documents, enlisting operatives and transferring weapons.
• Kershner implies that because IHH collected aid for Bosnians, is active in 120 countries and was "present at recent disaster areas" the group is not also linked to global jihadists and Al-Qaeda – or perhaps that it doesn't matter if it is, given these activities. In any case, she avoids using the words "jihadist" and "Al-Qaeda" – and fails to give key information about IHH.
• She further allows an IHH spokesman to suggest his 600 activists on board the Mavi Marmara would more correctly be seen as benign "artists, intellectuals and journalists," an absurd implication given the violence of the assault on Israelis boarding the IHH vessel.
Kerhshner gives similar cover to other flotilla organizers, writing:
The Israeli soldiers dropped onto the deck and ''opened fire on sleeping civilians at four in the morning,'' said Greta Berlin, a leader of the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement, speaking by phone from Cyprus on Monday.
• Berlin's ludicrous statement about Israel shooting sleeping civilians – again, belied by the video evidence of violent IHH attackers – is not countered either by the reporter herself or by inclusion of an Israeli voice. Nor is there any further identification of Greta Berlin as a far-left radical who traveled on a different ship from the Turkish one.
June 2: Sabrina Tavernise and Michael Slackman's story Turkish Funds Helped Group Test Blockade of Gaza ostensibly provides information on the IHH, ISM and the Free Gaza Movement. Once again, though, the tack is typically he-said-she -said, with the groups attacking Israel given notably bland, even positive, and sometimes factually inaccurate coverage.
The reporters state: "The Free Gaza Movement has its roots in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), another organization that sought to take direct action in defense of Palestinians, using nonviolent strategies to impede Israeli military actions in the occupied territories." (Emphasis added)
• Contrary to the Times, ISM founders Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Araf have been explicit and public about supporting violence, as they spelled out in a January 2002 article for Palestine Journal:
Nonviolent resistance is no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation. ... The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics — both nonviolent and violent. But most importantly it must develop a strategy involving both aspects. No other successful nonviolent movement was able to achieve what it did without a concurrent violent movement ...
Also, according to the Times:
Israeli authorities say I.H.H. bolsters Hamas, which runs Gaza and which they see as doctrinally committed to destroy the state of Israel. It also charges that the group has links to Al Qaeda and has bought weapons, charges the group denies.
• The Times's arms-length reference to the Hamas goal of destroying Israel is cast as merely a claim by Israel – as something Israeli authorities "see." This underscores again the paper's seeming reluctance to state obvious facts when it comes to the assault on Israel. Is it only Israel that sees Hamas "as doctrinally committed to destroy the state of Israel"? What does Hamas see? What does the Times "see"?
• A Danish NGO study as well as a CIA review and the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center cite the facts about IHH – that the group has longstanding Islamic radical ties to jihadist movements. Yet, again, the reporters cast the facts about IHH as a contested he-said-she-said matter, either between the Israel Project that "sent an Internet link to journalists" and IHH claiming the "group is a charity" or Israeli authorities saying IHH offices had been raided and weapons found and an IHH spokesman denying the raid found weapons. The Times seems unwilling to assert facts about the Islamist group.
Yet another section of the same Times story was little more than a public relations pitch for Greta Berlin and the Free Gaza Movement.
CAMERA Comments: Proponents of the so-called "Freedom Flotilla" are taking to the airwaves, newspapers and blogs in attempts to distort the cause and nature of the violence aboard the Turkish vessel, the Mavi Marmara. All too often, journalists covering the unfolding events fail to provide full context and essential facts.
The New York Times and CNN International were among those that come up short. Though the Times gave extensive coverage to the flotilla story, with three stories on June 1 alone, readers relying solely on the paper would be deceived about who the pro-Palestinian activists actually are, what Turkey's stance toward Israel has been and other key issues. A day later on June 2 a story about some of the sponsors of the flotilla soft-pedaled facts and got some wrong. (See In Detail below)
A CNNi segment of Backstory with Michael Holmes and a "security expert" offered viewers a strikingly discordant account of the Israeli landing on the Mavi Marmara. While the now familiar video of Israelis being lowered from helicopters into a violent mob and set upon with clubs and knives was playing in the background, Holmes and his guest chatted affably about the utility of helicopters to board ships – with no reference to the mayhem underway.
On other networks and in editorials, interviews and news clips there was a pervasive tendency to omit information about the radical-left, Islamist coalition that sponsored the flotilla. Nowhere did CAMERA find, for instance, a journalist asking secular radicals from Sweden participating in the flotilla why they are allied with Islamic supremacists (who subjugate women, persecute gays, oppress none-Islamic minorities and seek to impose Islam globally). Nor was the extreme political agenda of the secular radicals explored.
At the same time, there have also been solid news reports and commentary giving balanced focus to the IDF videos showing the assault on Israelis, offering full context about the story and underscoring the blockade was instituted to isolate a terrorist regime – Hamas. A FoxNews segment with Bret Baier provided an especially strong overview of the issues.
A column on The Daily Beast Web site by Leslie Gelb, also outlined the facts and provided essential information. (Others on that site were far less balanced!)
No comments:
Post a Comment