Palmer Report: Israel Vindicated, Media Shrugs
September 5, 2011 12:56 by Simon Plosker
The UN’s Palmer Report into the events of the first Gaza flotilla in 2010 came to a number of important conclusions that, in the main vindicated Israel’s positions:
- Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is legal and Israel has the right to enforce the blockade, including in international waters.
- The decision to breach the naval blockade was a dangerous and reckless act which needlessly carried the potential for escalation.
- The conduct and true objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly the IHH, included plans to violently resist any boarding attempt.
The Israeli Government adopted the Report albeit with reservations concerning the characterization of Israel’s decision to board the vessels in the manner it did as “excessive and unreasonable” as well as alleged mistreatment of some flotilla participants following the docking of vessels in Israel.
But what did the media choose to focus on and emphasize with the publication of the Palmer Report? A grudging acknowledgment that Israel did indeed have a valid case?
Horrendous Headlines
Not judging by these headlines, which made it clear which way the story was framed:
Washington Post
The Independent
Daily Telegraph
Wall Street Journal
In addition, this Sky News headline also makes it abundantly clear who the guilty party is considered to be:
Sky News
A Different Standard for Israel
Joseph Ciechanover, Israel’s representative on the Palmer Panel, stated that:
Their [the Panel members'] efforts should send a message to the international community about the need to engage with all sides to a dispute and to avoid prejudging an incident before all of the facts are known.
This certainly applies to much of the international media that unleashed a maelstrom of vicious reporting, working on the assumption that Israel was the perpetrator and turning Israel into a virtual pariah at the time of the incident.
Think back to the media coverage of the flotilla and the UN’s Goldstone Report, which also generated a wave of anti-Israel sentiment in the media and beyond. So why then is a UN report that, in the main, supports Israeli policies not deemed equally newsworthy? After all, these days, anything positive concerning Israel, particularly from a problematic body such as the UN is news in itself.
No Turkey Shoot
Recep Erdogan
Perhaps Turkish PM Erdogan knew exactly what he was doing when he hijacked the news cycle and turned the media’s attention to the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador to Ankara alongside a downgrading of relations with Israel.
Could it be that he did not want to draw attention to the parts of the Palmer Report where Turkey did not exactly come out smelling of roses? Or could it be the current Turkish bombing campaign against Kurds in northern Iraq that has barely come under any real media spotlight?
In any case, a lazy media preferred to concentrate on Turkish histrionics rather than addressing a certain hypocrisy on the part of the Turks and the substance of the Palmer Report itself.
Missing Context and Underreporting Facts
Hanin Zoabi
Some media just couldn’t help but go looking for contradictory voices concerning the Palmer Report. Turkey publicly admonished the findings. But what better than the comments of an Israeli politician to muddy the waters even further as The Times of London (subscription only) concluded its article:
The report’s finding that the blockade is legitimate was rejected by Hanin Zoabi, a member of the Israeli parliament, who called for “those who sent the army to stop the flotilla [to] be brought before international tribunals”.
What The Times failed to mention was that Zoabi, apart from being a member of the radical Balad party with a very large axe to grind against the Israeli state itself, was also a passenger on the Mavi Marmara.
Meanwhile, Sky News only considered it relevant to mention the Palmer findings in the penultimate and tenth paragraph of its report on the Turkish moves against Israel.
The BBC continued its ever so subtle use of strategically placed headings to steer readers in the direction that it would like, as evidenced by this:
The Guardian was probably the most vociferous media outlet at the time of the flotilla and a perrennial cheerleader for the Goldstone Report and UN actions against Israel. This time, however, The Guardian’s support for a UN-sponsored report melts away when it does not like the conclusions:
Where the Mavi Marmara went, Turkey will follow by challenging the Gaza blockade in the international court of justice. And rightly so. The Palmer panel’s finding went against every statement the UN secretary general has made about Gaza, the Goldstone report and a report by the UN human rights council in September. If, as Palmer found, the siege is legal in international law, the occupation is too. This must be challenged in court.
A Game Changing Report?
Jennifer Rubin
Jennifer Rubin, writing in the Washington Post, asks what the Palmer Report has to do with the Palestinian statehood effort at the UN this month and notes how the Report clearly acknowledges the necessity of Israel having to defend itself from rocket attacks and terrorism from Gaza. Rubin states:
Not only is this an implicit repudiation of the premises of the Goldstone Report (which, in Operation Cast Lead, portrayed the Israelis as aggressors and Gazans as victims), but it is a powerful argument against granting the Palestinians their request for a declaration of statehood. The government of that new state is co-run by the very terrorists described in the flotilla report as waging war on Israel.
The consequences and implications of Israel being in the right may well go far beyond just the flotilla incident. But then, in the eyes of many, Israel can only ever be in the wrong even when it is found to be in the right.
Owe Carlsson
3:00 pm
Sep 05, 2011
Thank you!
Also here in Sweden our Media has a very biassed reporting!
So dont think that swedish newspapers and TV should be any better then others.
Most of the time they are the worst!
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Jerry Verlin
3:03 pm
Sep 05, 2011
The Philadelphia Inquirer headlined 9/2 “UN: Israeli Blockade of Gaza Legal” on page EIGHTEEN, and next day, 9/3, had Turkey expelling ambassador and demanding apology above the fold on page ONE.
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DAVID KAPLAN
4:59 pm
Sep 05, 2011
The Inquirer has been viciously anti-Israel for decades. This is why I long ago stopped my subscription to this rag.
Of course, it could be worse. It could be the New York Times.
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Fred
3:09 pm
Sep 05, 2011
Perhaps, one needs to look at the route cause of the media bias against Israel and address this while dealing with the reports at the same time. I.e who is funding these newspapers and what legal avenues are open to challenge inaccurate reporting in the various countries.
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Traveller
3:21 pm
Sep 05, 2011
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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Traveller
3:14 pm
Sep 05, 2011
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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Wolz the African Zionist
3:18 pm
Sep 05, 2011
Traveller, what exactly do your ramblings have to do with the release of the Palmer Report or the lack of honest media attention the report has received?
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Wolz the African Zionist
3:14 pm
Sep 05, 2011
I enquired from our local news/talk radio station why they failed to carry the findings of the Palmer Report considering the time they spent on the initial incident. They replied that the report wasn’t newsworthy enough! The put the phone down on me when I ask if they would have felt the same way had the report condemned Israel.
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G. Ben-Nathan
3:15 pm
Sep 05, 2011
Has Honest Reporting found any major media, press or audio, that HAVE reported the UN findings honestly?
If so, could you let us know.
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Phil M
3:30 pm
Sep 05, 2011
Watching France24 on TV and comparing their reporting to the BBC and SKY. They could be referring to completely different events when they discuss Israel and what is happening here in the Mid East. France 24 is far more balanced and even handed in its reporting of events.
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Wolz the African Zionist
3:41 pm
Sep 05, 2011
Al Jazz, unsurprisingly, only reported on Turkey’s response to the report. They also pretty much character assassinated Prime Minister Palmer and President Uribe, members of the panel who wrote the report.
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Edgar Davidson
3:58 pm
Sep 05, 2011
The Times article, as mentioned here, was one of the most ignorant and biased reports ever written in that paper. Full details (together with complaint made to the Times) here:
http://edgar1981.blogspot.com/2011/09/times-uses-anti-zionist-terrorist.html
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Henry Federman
4:42 pm
Sep 05, 2011
I read in “Le Monde” a French newspaper that only said that Israel was guilty of using too much
power, nothing about the blockade being legal,unfortunately I don’t subscribe to that paper therefore I could not answer.I just twitted that their paper is just a dirty rag and I would not even use it in the bathroom. Now that the shoe is on the other foot Turkey does not like it,maybe now they know what it is to be singled out. I don’t think they will go to war over this incident but they will try to send warships close to Gaza with maybe another flotilla to test Israel’s response.
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Chris Orren
7:37 pm
Sep 05, 2011
same in EuroNews
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» Palmer Report: Israel Vindicated, Media Shrugs Freedom Alert!: Defending American Freedom by exposing Radical Islam, Socialist, Liberals, and all the Enemies of Freedom, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness!
4:46 pm
Sep 05, 2011
[...] article can be viewed at Palmer Report: Israel Vindicated, Media Shrugs on [...]
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Paul Tenenbaum
4:53 pm
Sep 05, 2011
I wish to remind the readers that the world news media prefers reporting ONLY news which is sensational. This is what journalism has come down to. Reporting HONEST news is not
NEWSWORTHY.
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philip
5:53 pm
Sep 05, 2011
Unfortunately it’s increasingly ‘normal’ for all sorts of publications to castigate Israel. Are their journalists comments their own or are they dictated by their editors? And who or what tells them what to think and say?
Scripture has the answer – ‘Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’
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rabbi haim levi
6:37 pm
Sep 05, 2011
Nothing surprices me when it comes to deny us the tight to defend ourselves
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Vera Mundakova
7:01 pm
Sep 05, 2011
The reason for media is biased against Jews is simple plain Antisemitism that whole Christian and Muslim worlds were fed with the milk of their mothers. This is so obvious that any discussion on the topic “WHY?” looks to me laughable.
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Shimona
8:16 pm
Sep 05, 2011
I thought the initial GUARDIAN headline:”UN investigation backs Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza” – were too good to be true.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/01/un-investigation-backs-israel-blockade-gaza
I wonder how they managed to get that one past the copy editor. I see they wasted no time in back-tracking – er, I mean “modifying”.
(“This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 23.26 BST on Thursday 1 September 2011. A version appeared on p21 of the Main section section of the Guardian on Friday 2 September 2011. It was last modified at 09.23 BST on Friday 2 September 2011.”)
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Mark
8:18 pm
Sep 05, 2011
There is a subtlety that allows reportage that is extremely biased against Israel onto the front pages, albeit through the back door, so to speak. Anti-Semitism per se is, by and large, discredited and rejected by the Western mainstream media. However, with a simple wave of a magic wand, the exact same type of biased anti-Semitic reportage has been legitimated as anti-Zionism, and Voila!, the most scurrilous lies can be printed, not about Jews qua Jews, but about Jews as Zionists.
The media have the imprimatur of the UN, which once voted to declare that Zionism = racism…and EVERYbody can feel good about themselves for hating racism and racists. Thus, people have official blessing for hating Jews, while avoiding that evil old anti-Semitism, which they can claim died with Hitler. In a further twist, anyone who supports those horrible ‘racist Zionists’ is also, of course, a racist; therefore, most conservatives, who tend to be strong supporters of Israel, are themselves racists – a two-fer for the media, which can scourge both Jews and conservatives with the same stroke of the pen.
It is an extremely clever technique, and once the idea that Zionism = racism is inculcated in the public discourse, anything goes. Honest Muslims at least will acknowledge that Jew-hatred is a bedrock pillar of their cult…but squeamish Westerners must take a much more circuitous and devious route to allow expressing their rage at the continuing existence of Jews.
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Palmer Report: Israel Vindicated, Media Shrugs « THE BLACK KETTLE
8:21 pm
Sep 05, 2011
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Gili
9:06 pm
Sep 05, 2011
It is so sad that any other country will do all that it can to defend it’s citizens and the world will remain silent, but when it comes to Israel, who confronts terrorism every day, and stands in the front line for years now, the hypocrisy of the world celebrates. Absolutely disgusting.
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Brent Pudsey
10:01 pm
Sep 05, 2011
It is both sad and troubling that the media is so biased that it fails to realize that there is not just one party which is guilty. Israel is an innocent peace loving nation who is constanty being maligned.
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Rob
10:22 pm
Sep 05, 2011
Crazy — why is there no button on this page to allow me to tweet the article?
Are you guys trying to hide away, or do want to get better coverage?
Crazy.
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CB
6:03 pm
Sep 06, 2011
Ummm, there indeed is a “Tweet” button at the end othe actual article (underneath the section “A Game Changing Report?”
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