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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 6/2/10

Israel's Dangerous Turn

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By contrast, one can only imagine how the U.S. press corps would rise up in collective fury if, say, Iran sent its commandos into international waters to attack and seize vessels that were on a humanitarian mission.

Lost Objectivity

What's striking in all this is how far the U.S. news media has veered away from its supposed commitment to objectivity, even as it pretends to continue abiding by that journalistic principle.

The U.S. media also would drip with sarcasm over some of the post-facto rationales used to justify the attack, if the attacking nation wasn't Israel.

For instance, there's the Israeli accusation that the cargo on the ships wasn't packed properly.

Shuki Sagis, chief executive of the Israel port at Ashdod, complained to the Jerusalem Post that the supplies including scooters for the handicapped, wheelchairs, stretchers, hospital beds, boxes of medicine, food products and toys weren't neatly stacked.

"The cargo ships were loaded haphazardly, with all of the equipment mixed up in the large holds," Sagis said. "Ships loaded in this way would not be accepted in any port. We are loading the equipment on the trucks far more carefully than it was loaded on to the ships."

Other Israeli officials claimed that the humanitarian supplies on the ships were not items that were needed by the Gazans.

"I can say with great assurance," said Colonel Moshe Levi, "that none of the equipment on board is needed in Gaza. The equipment that we found is all equipment that we have regularly allowed into the Strip over the past year."

Levi said that fact "proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the whole premise of the voyage was for propaganda and provocation and not for humanitarian purposes."

However, the Israelis did concede that their searches of the vessels turned up no weapons being smuggled into Gaza. The only "contraband" was construction equipment, including sacks of concrete and metal rods, Levi said.

Levi explained that Israel won't let construction equipment in to rebuild Gaza, which was devastated by a month-long Israeli offensive that ended in January 2009, because the material might be used to build fortifications for "terrorists."

The notion that bombed-out Gazans must be made to survive in makeshift shanties so some future Israeli assault won't be complicated by the existence of buildings that might be used by Gaza's defenders could be regarded in a different context as evidence of grotesque inhumanity.

That is, if the perpetrators were some nation or group that the U.S. media didn't like.

The Israeli Navy also claimed that it had learned an important lesson from its assault on the Freedom Flotilla.

A top Navy commander told The Jerusalem Post that the next time, Israel will use much more military force to stop the ships.

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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
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