Bizarre, International, Military, Society

Israel Admits to Editing Flotilla Tapes and Issues “Clarification” on Offensive Comments Attributed to the Mavi Marmara

After Israel released a tape purportedly showing passengers on the Mavi Marmara making inflammatory comments, many questioned the authenticity of the tapes and charged that they had been edited. Leaders on the ship said that they never radioed the IDF to tell them “Go back to Auschwitz” and that they are “helping Arabs go against the U.S., don’t forget 9/11.” Now, the IDF has issued an unedited tape and admitted that the earlier version was edited. It also admits that it is not clear that these comments came from the Mavi Marmara.

Here is part of the original tape released by the IDF that was widely distributed over blogs and news channels:

Here is the unedited tape:

The IDF insists that it was merely trying to edit out long periods of silence, but now admits that due to “an open channel, the specific ship or ships in the Freedom Flotilla responding to the Israeli Navy could not be identified.”

Activists have objected that the IDF seized their own recording equipment that would have shown such editing as well as how they responded from the Mavi Marmara.

For the full story, click here.

41 thoughts on “Israel Admits to Editing Flotilla Tapes and Issues “Clarification” on Offensive Comments Attributed to the Mavi Marmara”

  1. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 19% of voters think the Israelis are to blame. Thirty-two percent (32%) more are not sure.

    But 51% say Israel should allow an international investigation of the incident. Twenty-five percent (25%) agree with the Israeli government and reject the idea of an international probe. Another 24% are undecided.

    http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/israel_the_middle_east/49_say_pro_palestinian_activists_to_blame_in_gaza_ship_incident

  2. HEAVY WEAPONS FOUND IN THE CARGO OF THE M/S. MAVI MARMARA FLOTILLA VESSEL.

    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 w ere hidden behind sacks of grain.

    http://www.flix.co.il/tapuz/showVideo.asp?m=3423928

  3. BIL:

    I certainly agree that the Israelis have handled the entire affair clumsily, but I don’t think that excuses the role of IHH in creating the incident. I told you my solution would have been to disable the props of the flotilla and let the humanitarian vessels drift until cooler heads or the non-mercentary contingent aboard decided to call off the running of the blockade. I note the other ships in the flotilla offered little or no resistance to IDF boarders.

  4. Carylye:

    “The problem for Israel is that Israel was established on land confiscated from another people but the remnants of those people are still in the area and have not yet been destroyed.”

    **************************

    As you note, that’s a pretty apt description of the U.S. However, we don’t see too many Navajo suicide bombers because we have established programs to assist the indigenous population. Not that we have done a perfect job, mind you. The difference is simply that the American Indian is not deluded by their religious convictions into thinking that attacks on kids or other civilian targets are the will of the Great Spirit.

  5. The problem for Israel is that Israel was established on land confiscated from another people but the remnants of those people are still in the area and have not yet been destroyed.

    Israel is no different from other settler colonial states such as the US, Australia, South Africa and Brazil except in that it has not yet destroyed the indigenous people it displaced.

    One may ask why Un-Australian aborigines descendants of unlawful migrants who entered Australia 40,000 years before the arrival of the rightful owners are not girding themselves in explosive belts and detonating themselves on buses in Brisbane or Perth as revenge for the necessary and rightful confiscations and massacres. The reason is that in Australia the genocide has been completed, yes there remain a small number of people descended from who the prior illegal occupants but they have been reduced to a demoralized dysfunctional underclass whose rage is directed inward towards each other. Instead of killing Australians they drink themselves to death, rape their children and beat their wives and girlfriends to death. The work of genocide continues but we white Australians no longer need to dirty our hands, we can stand leaning on our swords and smirk.

    Israel needs to reduce the Palestinians, descendants of the illegal occupiers of the land prior to the establishment of Israel to a similar level of demoralization. They should get advice from Australia, but the US also could give valuable advice based on its successful reduction of the descendants of the slaves wrongly freed in that most egregious excess of political correctness, the abolition of slavery to a dysfunctional crime ridden underclass.

  6. mespo,

    In order for a trap to be sprung, a creature must enter first. And whose fault is that? The hunter or the rabbit? Even if I bought the reasoning that this is an IHH setup, where does Israel come into play in re responsibility for their actions? Playing to an opponents worst nature and foibles is a well worn battle tactic. But who owns that exploitable nature? Predator or prey? Why prey of course. As sentient beings, only they can change their nature. If their own worst traits are exploited by the enemy, who carries that burden for the misstep?

  7. Barney Frank was on the Chris Matthews show last week and said that no one should come to any conclusions about the Marmora event until Israel conducts its own independent investigation. He said that the Israeli report could be trusted completely and that Israeli jurists were harder on the Israeli government than any outside adjudicators would be. He ridiculed the Goldman [?] report issued by the UN and told Chris’s listeners to wait for the “inevitable” Israeli investigation of the raid.

    Now I read in the NYT that Israel is not going to conduct any investigation into the raid whatsoever.

  10. mespo727272

    ” … Thankfully, braggarts make for poor manipulators of public opinion. …”

    =================================================================

    … and, thank god, they never learn for craftiness is not an indication of intelligence.

  11. BIL:

    Here are the motives of the IHH group in the words of former U.S. Marine O’Keefe while commenting on his claim of a prior running of the Israeli blockade of Gaza:

    We proved that an intelligent plan, with skilled manipulation of the media, could render the full might of the Israeli Navy useless. And I knew then that this was only the tip of the iceberg. {[emphasis mine]

    That about sums up the goal of this episode. Apparently O’Keefe knew how to run the blockade in the first place and also how to create a media event in the second place. He chose the latter here.

    What Ken can’t do, apparently, is keep his mouth shut on his motives. Thankfully, braggarts make for poor manipulators of public opinion.

  12. willbt,

    I knew to what you were referring and disagreed with the incompleteness of “handed to them on a silver platter” … one can rightfully, even easily, present the Palestinian plight without such spin.

  13. Ire?

    You haven’t even seen my ire, sport.

    But you keep on abusing the language and eventually you will.

  14. -Buddha Is Laughing (I doubt it, really!)

    I wrote: Why must _Israel_, on the other hand, make the Palestinians bleed and bleed…etc.

    You slice and dice statements looking for arguments for argument’s sake, Professor.

    It is perfectly clear that I distinguish between “Jews” and the State of Israel. – Isn’t it a pity that we do not have the luxury of distinguishing between “Palestinians” and “Palestine?” “The State of Palestine?” “Where’s THAT?!”

    I return to my earlier allusion to the issue of Quebec separatism in Canada. I do believe you’d skewer any writer who dared use the “Quebecois” in that context. You’d call them “bigots” too. The fact is that some “Quebecois” citizens of Canada wish to separate from Confederation. They live in “Quebec.” They are also known as “Quebeckers.” Does that draw your ire too? Choose your words as you will. In context, I believe a reasonable reader would understand your message clearly. It’s not that tricky.

    Israel, Israeli. In context, any reasonable reader “gets it.”

    At this point I vacate this miasma of empty SEMANTICS.

  16. – Blouise:

    re: “Some silver platter !”:

    On November 29, 1947, the _United Nations General Assembly_ voted 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, in favor of a Partition Plan that created the State of Israel. The British reliquished their mandate over Palestine in 1948. War broke out between the Arabs and Jews soon after. *[http://www.theocracywatch.org/christian_zionism_israel_forms.htm ]

    I was trying to convey this rather unnerving monolithic sponsorship – almost a Biblical cooing & swaddling – of the international community attending the creation of the new State of Israel.

    Thus my “sliver platter” metaphor.

    Who has done so much for the Palestinians? What international power[s] of any consequence today will step up to advocate for a Palestinian state? No one! The Palestinians are the new Jews of the Diaspora. Israel drives them away, smashes their homes, murders them, wishes they would disappear into the sand dunes.

    Yes, the day after Israel’s Independence Declaration, war broke out.

    HOWEVER: backed by Western military powers and the might of the UN, ultimately “Israel was able to draw its own borders, occupying 70% of Mandatory Palestine, fifty percent more than the UN partition proposal allotted them.” *[same citation as above].

    Israel was the darling of the western world, and could do no wrong. And Israel’s preferential standing persists in the West to this day, though damaged and frayed.

    This,coupled with the racialist & belligerent behaviour of various Israeli governments over the decades has made today’s Israel a Rogue State. A state not to be trusted. No longer such a darling!

    Rightly so.

  17. What could be more clear is not using the false equivalence of “Jew” as if it meant the same thing as “Israeli”. Not all Jews are Israelis just as all Israelis are not Jews and the Jewish community is not homogeneous in their support of Israel. That’s a perfect example of the logical fallacy pointed to earlier – the fallacy of composition. Fallacies are logical errors, usually formal but they can be informal as well. If you are content with the fact that your imprecise use of the term “Jew” made your statements sound bigoted on their face that would mean you are also comfortable with that reasonable prime facie interpretation of your statements. The question you have to ask is are you bigoted or just a sloppy writer? One is excusable, the other not so much. Precision in language is not the enemy. Bigotry on the other hand is not just an enemy to those of the Jewish faith but to all of mankind. Bigotry begets hatred begets killing not out of self-defense or defense of others, but merely because someone is “different”. It is also an enemy to the bigot as well for when we harm or seek to harm others, we also harm ourselves. So unless you like people considering you a bigot based on your statements, use greater precision in your application of language. Misunderstandings are a form of trouble and the best way to avoid trouble is not to be there when it starts.

  18. – dear Bhddha Is Laughing:

    The concluding statement in my last post re: Israel vs. Palestinians begins, as I have already pointed out to JamesM:

    “Why must _Israel_, on the other hand,… &etc.” What could be more clear?

Comments are closed.