Freedom Flotilla and the BBC’s Shame

UPDATE: See Jairo Lugo’s report on the protests outside the BBC offices in Manchester and elsewhere here.

The BBC proves its despicable subservience to the Israeli propaganda machine once again. Before it was shamed by Al Jazeera and others into covering the Freedom Flotilla massacre, it reported the story as a mere claim by Hamas. Here is how it first appeared on the BBC’s website:

BBC News – Israel intercepts Gaza flotilla, says Hamas

The Palestinian movement Hamas says the Israeli navy has intercepted a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza strip.

The massacre soon became the top news story on Google News and Twitter. The BBC could no longer maintain the pretence of ignorance. It finally reported on the massacre as a matter of fact, but appended this line: “Hamas, a militant palestinian group that controls the Gaza strip, has fired thousands of rockets into Israel over the past decade.”

The victims weren’t innocent, you see. They were on their way to aid these terrible people who fire ‘thousands of rockets into Israel’. That’s all you need to know. And if you mention those hundreds of thousands of bombs, missiles and rockets that Israel has shot into Gaza…Why, you must be an anti-Semite!

I took the risk, and sent in a complaint. I am assuming I wasn’t the only one questioning the relevance of the line to the report because it was swiftly removed. In its place, it posted a short video segment in which the reporter went out of his way to ‘stress’ that according to the Israeli military no one was killed. He then went on to excuse the killings because ‘clearly when you have as many as 600 people on board these ships, at night, in high sees, it is a very very difficult situation…and you can imagine a rather chaotic situation. Of course the Israeli military is very well experienced with dealing with crowd control’. But turns out he wasn’t entirely shameless. He did add: ’but certainly if you’ve got live fire being fired as well as tear gas canisters which is what is being reported was fired, then that is a very dangerous situation in a very crowded space’.

The BBC has now added a sidebar in which ‘diplomatic correspondent’ Jonathan Marcus tells readers how terrible this massacre is…for Israel’s image! The clueless ass tells us that ‘this was always going to be a high-risk operation’… for Israel! He addes: ‘Taking over vessels at sea is no easy task, even if the units carrying out the mission are well-trained, and it is especially difficult if the people already on board the vessels resist.’ But at least he thinks the deaths are a tragedy…but for Israel! Because they ‘threaten to make what was always going to be a potential public relations disaster for Israel into a fully-fledged calamity.’ So the BBC pays a ‘diplomatic correspondent’ your tax money so he can worry about the myriad ways Israel hurts itself by killing innocent civilians in international waters!

Thanks to all who’ve written in. Don’t let them get away with using your tax money to feed you propaganda on behalf of a foreign criminal entity. For more on the BBC’s disgraceful record of whitewashing Israeli crimes here and here.

This is your money being used in the service of murderers and child molesters. You have a responsibility to act. At minimum, you can complain.