TT News Agency Ignores Bad (Flotilla) Memories

Knives and other weapons from Mavi Marmara: IDF photo

Here’s another item which has typically gone missing from the Swedish media. The monopoly foreign news source TT opted out of covering it. In this case a Panorama report by the BBC about the Flotilla/Ship to Gaza was found to be accurate overall and impartial, confirming that the Mavi Marmara activists were belligerent attackers.

The BBC Trust released the results of their investigation into over 50 “questionable” points submitted against the BBC’s Panorama documentary on the Gaza Flotilla titled “Death in the Med”. According to the Guardian—a newspaper which cannot be termed pro-Israel—the Beeb found three of these complaints to be valid:

-“...two relating to breaches of the BBC's editorial guidelines regarding accuracy and one on impartiality.
“The accuracy breaches related to the failure to include preliminary autopsy reports into how activists died and more details of the exact nature of the aid for Gaza being carried by the flotilla.
“Panorama was also found by the BBC Trust to have breached impartiality guidelines by not verifying that the Israelis took proper care of the badly wounded following allegations of mistreatment of some of the casualties.”

Note that the aid issue, which was covered by the Jerusalem Post, simply alleges that not all the medical aid was reviewed and found to be useless and expired, only the sample that was examined in the program. Storing useless equipment and pharmaceutical dumping are issues that Gazans themselves have complained about. Gazans have no proper methods of disposing with old meds, an ecological problem.

Regarding care for wounded enemy combatants, Flotilla participant Israeli Arab Knesset member Haneen Zoabi, actually tried to prevent  Israeli medics from caring for the wounded (see last minute of video). Apparently, it would wound their pride to be cared for by Israelis. The Israeli medic reminded her that he was the doctor, and did his job.  Ironically, Zoabi later charged that treatment of the wounded was delayed by the Israelis.

As the Ship to Gaza/Flotilla was a popular cause in the Swedish Press, and with so-called intellectuals such as author Henning Mankell, and Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (Moderate) it’s understandable that Panorama’s accuracy is an embarrassment to the Swedish media and governmental authorities. After all, the BBC crossed a lot of red lines when it showed the ship’s own security footage of the “peaceful” Turkish IHH “protesters” cutting metal rails to use as clubs against Israelis.

No wonder TT couldn’t be bothered to cover the story—when two notably pro-Palestinian media entities like the Beeb and the Guardian admit that a documentary justified the Israeli position, the report had no chance of appearing in any major Swedish newspapers.

By Chanah Shapira