EI, June 15, 2010
"The systematic attempt and very deliberate first priority for the Israeli soldiers as they came on the ships was to shut down the story, to confiscate all cameras, to shut down satellites, to smash the CCTV cameras that were on the Mavi Marmara, to make sure that nothing was going out. They were hellbent on controlling the story," commented Australian journalist Paul McGeough, one of the hundreds of activists and reporters who witnessed the deadly morning attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla on 31 May ("Framing the Narrative: Israeli Commandos Seize Videotape and Equipment from Journalists After Deadly Raid," Democracy Now, 9 June 2010). McGeough was one of at least 60 journalists aboard the flotilla who were detained and their footage confiscated.
Within hours of the Gaza-bound aid flotilla being intercepted and besieged in international waters by Israeli commandos, who killed at least nine -- some at point-blank range -- aboard the Mavi Marmara, news of the bloody attack had spread across the globe. Rage, condemnation and calls for an international investigation followed.
Meanwhile, Israel's campaign to spin the attack, distort the facts and quell an outraged public was already in full swing. Concurrently, activists and skeptical journalists began deconstructing the official story and assembling evidence to uncover the truth behind the violent deaths of activists on a humanitarian mission to the besieged Gaza Strip.
From the time the Israeli military apparently jammed the flotilla's communications, and for the next 48 hours as survivors were held incommunicado, their cameras and potentially incriminating footage seized, Israel's account of the raid dominated international headlines.
Central to Israel's media strategy was the rapid release of selected video and audio clips which, the government said, validated its claim that passengers had violently attempted to kill troops without provocation -- thereby forcing the soldiers to use live fire in self-defense. However, the initially and most widely-distributed clips bore signs of heavy editing, including the obscuring or removal of time stamps.
Although the clips apparently depicted passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara hitting Israeli troops with poles and other objects, the context of the images was completely unclear. It was impossible to determine at what point during the assault the clips had been filmed, raising questions about exactly which party had been acting in self-defense.
Al-Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal, among others, corroborated accounts by other flotilla passengers, including Israeli Knesset member Hanin Zoabi, that the Israeli commandos had allegedly started firing before commandos began rappelling to the deck of the ship ("MK Zoabi: Israel wanted highest number of fatalities," YNet, 1 June 2010; "Kidnapped by Israel, forsaken by Britain," Al-Jazeera, 6 June 2010).
These clips were quickly supplemented by footage put on YouTube, also heavily edited, which Israel said had been taken from the ship's security cameras and from the journalists whose equipment had been seized ("Flotilla Rioters Prepare Rods, Slingshots, Broken Bottles and Metal Objects to Attack IDF Soldiers," 2 June 2010). The Israeli military spokesperson's office also distributed numerous still images allegedly documenting fighting on the deck.
After the commandeered flotilla ships were brought to the Israeli port of Ashdod and were unloaded, on 1 June the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) began distributing via the Flickr website photographs of objects it said were found aboard. Materials the MFA classified as "weapons"-- thus supposedly supporting its claim that activists had planned to conduct a "lynching" of Israeli troops -- were identifiable to the public as standard nautical equipment and kitchen utensils ("Weapons found on Mavi Marmara").
In addition, the ships were inspected multiple times prior to setting sail for Gaza, both by Turkish customs authorities and by an independent security firm, and had been found at both points to contain no weapons, according to a Free Gaza Movement press release ("Did Israel deliberately murder civilians aboard Freedom Flotilla?," 3 June 2010). Participants also say that all passengers were subject to thorough security checks before boarding, regardless of where they embarked.
These photographs of "weapons" became the first flashpoint in the effort to analyze and expose inconsistencies in Israel's claims. Shortly after the release of the images which appeared on the MFA's official Flickr page on 1 June, commentators began calling attention to the fact that several of the images included digitally-encoded information indicating that they had been shot several years prior. The MFA responded to this by modifying the dates, and issuing a statement that one of its cameras had been incorrectly calibrated.
While this claim can be neither confirmed nor disproved, the gaffe exposed the fact that Israel's rush to promote its version of events in the media was leading to significant mistakes and oversights. As surviving flotilla passengers began to be released and expelled following detention in Israel, the accounts they gave of events aboard the ships -- and on the Mavi Marmara in particular -- clearly diverged from the official Israeli narrative.
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