Hoax: Video Showing Heavy Weapons Discovered on Mavi Marmara is a Fraud

A video has been racing around the Internet — purportedly showing heavy weapons discovered behind bags of flour on the Mavi Marmara. The find would serve to justify the lethal raid on the flotilla to Gaza and some posters have asked why no uproar? The answer is because the video is a fraud — it shows a boat that was actually searched in 2009.

The video is often accompanied by the same text, which was posted by a commenter on this blog:

This video shows that during the unloading of the Marmara boat in the port of Ashdod, behind the bags of flour were boxes of heavy weapons and ammunition: mortars, artillery shells, bazookas, without counting a trunk where more than one million euros was found intended for Hamas. This video should be widely distributed as evidence of why the IDF Naval commandos were dispatched to intercept the six vessels including the M/S Mavi Marmara. One wonders what is aboard the Irish vessel, the M/S. Rachel Corrie, that Israel will intercept sometime today when it approaches the Naval blockade line off the coast of Gaza. Clearly the Turkish AKP Islamist government is complicit in permitting this military cargo to be loaded on the ‘peaceful’ Free Gaza Flotilla. Please distribute this video widely. If you had any doubt about what was on the flotilla, here is the video. The French explains that the arms on display were hidden behind sacks of grain.

There appears to be a conscious misinformation campaign afoot. The people who originally posted this video obviously knew it was false but wanted to mislead viewers. They succeeded.

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