BBC. Ken O’Keefe: A Beautiful Gift from the BBC. 3 articles + VIDEO's
Reageer (0)Britains need to wake up tho the fact that their media is just as corrupted by Israel as the US media! (WRH)
Open Letter to the Panorama BBC Team
21-8-2010
Dear BBC Panorama Team
I write to you regarding your programme of 16th August, 2010, about The Freedom Flotilla and particularly the killings of unarmed civilians by Israeli Navy Seals on the ship MV “Mavi Marmara’, on 3lst May, 2010.
I have been campaigning for the rights of Palestinians for over ten years. I have visited Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories many times. I was part of the Freedom Flotilla in May on the MV ‘Rachel Corrie’, my third journey on a Free Gaza boat. I am deeply disappointed at the misrepresentation, lack of truth, and bias displayed by your programme.
This programme had an opportunity to inform and educate the public about the background to the flotilla, the motives of the passengers and crew on board the MV ‘Mavi Marmara’, who (like all of us on the boats trying to get to Gaza) were concerned for the suffering of the people of Gaza. Over 650 people – from all faiths and none, – from over 40 countries, representing the human family and uniting in nonviolent resistance to break a cruel siege (collective punishment is illegal under International Law) to bring hope and support to the people of Gaza. Before leaving their various ports, as part of the undertaking, all passengers made pledges of nonviolence, all people, and cargoes were searched, and all undertook to go in a spirit of peace to resist (as is our moral right and duty) the breaking of Human Rights and International Law by Israel through its siege of Gaza and occupation of Palestine.
This journey of courage and call for justice by people on board the MV ‘Mavi Marmara’ and the flotilla represented the conscience of the world. The boats carried no arms, and were no threat to Israel, but what they did carry were voices of dissent from every corner of the world, (including Jews) saying to Israel ‘no more sieges, occupations, wars and threats of violence’, we refuse to be silent in the face of your ethnic cleansing and persecution of the Palestinian people.
Our motives were honourable, we did it for the children of Gaza, knowing that in the end, truth and justice will prevail.
Sadly, the Panorama programme did not see the true significance of this historic journey and missed an opportunity for the media to fulfil its responsibility to ‘tell the truth and nothing but the truth’. They choose instead to try to demonize the passengers on the from the word go MV ‘Mavi Marmara’ by trying to make them out as violent terrorists. They choose to collude with the Israeli propaganda of lies and manipulation of facts thus trying to turn the victims into aggressors.
The fact that Israeli commandoes started shooting from the zodiac assault boats and the helicopters from the word go was not stated. The audio and video footage used (provided by Israeli military intelligence) was proven to be doctored, and the IDF have admitted this.
Your programme showed audio containing what was purported to be anti-semitic remarks issued over the radio by members on the flotilla, and you showed a clip of a percussion grenade exploding in one of the Israeli zodiac assault boats. These things never happened. There is so much commentary in this documentary that is inaccurate that it does a grave disservice to investigative journalism and the BBC.
But the real people hurt by this programme, are the families of the 9 unarmed passengers who were assassinated in this unprovoked, illegal, massacre by the Israeli navy seals. So too the more than 40 unarmed people who were injured on the illegal military assault in International waters, whose only crime was to care about Gaza and its people.
The programme failed totally to cover the real suffering of the Palestinian people, it failed totally to cover the fact that the mass kidnapping of 650 unarmed world citizens and the high-jacking of 7 boats, was in International waters and it failed totally to ask the real questions of Israel ‘why is this Port of Gaza – the only port in the Middle East to be a closed military zone (42 years) – not open for the people of Gaza and Palestine to travel and trade with the world as is their human right?
Perhaps, the BBC Panorama will stop taking the propaganda of the Israeli Government (Jane Corbin travelling on Israeli Zodiacs embedded with Israeli military, hardly leads to objective report of facts). These same zodiacs which boarded all the flotilla ships (including the one I travelled on) kidnapped unarmed citizens, hijacked boats (an act of piracy), confiscated all possessions (which Israel still hold onto), forced all under military arms to go to Israel, detained all, violently assaulted many, imprisoned and repatriated foreigners – all an abuse of our human rights and most of which was not reported by BBC Panorama.
The role of the BBC is not to give credibility to the Israeli military but to report facts and allow the public to make up their own minds. By planting doubt in the minds of the public about the events on board the MV ‘Mavi Marmara’. It has done a grave injustice and further injury to the families of all those who were assassinated by Israeli Navy seals, on that terrible morning of 3lst May, 2010.
I would like to ask the BBC Panorama Team, ‘what do you intend to do to redress the injustice you have done to the good names of all those who were killed, and injured, and their families on board the MV ‘Mavi Marmara’ on 3lst May, 2010?
I await your response.
Peace,
Mairead Maguire
Nobel Peace Laureate (www.peacepeople.com)
Tel: 0773 614 7713
Source
---------------------------------------
Jerusalem Post
BBC’s flotilla film slammed as ‘biased’
By Jonny Paul
Anti-Israel groups outraged at 'racist' documentary; plan protests.
20-8-2010
LONDON – A BBC documentary screened this week that investigated the Gaza flotilla incident on May 31 is causing a storm of protest – from critics of Israel, who are furious that the program was not as hostile to Israel as they thought it should be.
The critics, including an activist from the Free Gaza movement who was aboard the Mavi Marmara, are organizing demonstrations on Sunday outside the BBC’s London headquarters and other BBC offices, and are calling for a mass campaign of complaints to the BBC in general and the program makers in particular.
In Death in the Med, the BBC’s flagship documentary series Panorama examined the ill-fated Israeli interception of the Mavi Marmara, the only ship from the Free Gaza flotilla which saw confrontation between activists and Israeli troops.
The half-hour program had exclusive access to the Israeli navy unit that took part in the raid and interviewed a number of the commandos, as well as members of the Free Gaza group and the IHH movement that organized the flotilla.
Using previously unseen video footage from the IDF and confiscated passenger tapes, mostly recorded by members of a group called Cultures of Resistance, the program concluded that the main aim of the activists had not been to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza, but rather to orchestrate a political act designed to put pressure on Israel and the international community.
The program also concluded that the Israeli commandos encountered a violent, premeditated attack by a hardcore group of activists organized by IHH members. Nine Turkish nationals were killed by the commandos after they came under attack when boarding the Mavi Marmara.
Demonstration outside BBC's London headquarters planned
Sunday’s demonstration outside BBC headquarters in west London is being organized by Ken O’Keefe, one of the Free Gaza activists from the Mavi Marmara, who was interviewed in the documentary, and a group called the Muslim Defense League.
“Enough is enough, we all know the truth of the terrorist attacks committed by Israel on unarmed peace activists! The BBC needs to know that it cannot continue airing lies as the truth,” this group proclaims on its Facebook page.
Other protests are being organized at regional BBC offices in Manchester and Belfast.
Calls to action began even before the program was aired. The radical group Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), whose founder Asghar Bukhari made a donation to convicted Holocaust denier David Irving in 2006, urged people to complain to the BBC ahead of time.
“No doubt, the BBC will once again be airing and spreading propaganda on Israel’s behalf,” MPAC predicted on its Web site.
An action alert published by the radical fringe group Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is calling on people to complain. In it, the group asks why the program’s presenter, Jane Corbin, does not mention “the bombs, rockets and white phosphorus dropped on Gaza by Israel during Operation Cast Lead over a three-week period, killing 1,400 people.”
The group also asks why the IDF boarded the ship at night if it had peaceful intentions, and questions why the presenter gave the flotilla a religious context.
“If Israel’s intentions in boarding the ship were peaceful, why did the commandos board in the early hours of the morning, in the dark, instead of during daylight hours? Why is [Corbin] giving the aid flotilla a religious context when it had none? Again, she presents no evidence of the recruitment of ‘fellow Islamists,’” PSC asked.
Birmingham University lecturer Sue Blackwell, a major player in the call to boycott Israel academia, also sent a call to action highlighting “the aspects of bias” of the “abysmal piece of broadcasting.”
Screening film during Ramadan 'unfair'
Blackwell maintained there were no interviews with any Palestinians or representatives of any other organization apart from IHH. She was corrected by Mike Cushman, a fellow boycott activist, who told her: “Lubna Masarwa, who was interviewed (badly) in the program, is a Palestinian and a representative of Free Gaza. We mustn’t weaken our complaints by making avoidable mistakes.”
Blackwell also suggested that the time of the screening was unfair.
“Scheduling the broadcast during the evening in the first week of Ramadan, when many Muslim viewers were unlikely to be watching because they would be breaking their fast, [was unfair],” she said.
“If you have just watched Panorama on the Mavi Marmara, please complain in the strongest terms to the BBC about outrageous Israeli propaganda being passed as investigative journalism,” University of Exeter senior lecturer Kamil Mahdi urged, in another call to action.
Alluding to a point raised in the program on Hamas’s stance toward Israel, he said: “It repeats the talk about Hamas not recognizing Israel and thousands of rockets fired at apparently peaceful Israel.
“Israeli allegations of ‘terrorism’ coming from the ship and IHH’s alleged terrorist links are given BBC credence (for what it is worth). The whole tone is also disgusting. Please pass this on and ask all to complain,” Mahdi said.
Free Gaza activist Ewa Jasiewicz said the whole tone and framing of the program was “utterly Islamophobic and racist and demonizing of Muslim activists.
“Jane Corbin and her team reduced the Israeli navy’s violent attack on six ships down to the attack on the Mavi Marmara. It was clearly the worst attacked, but by singling it out as an exception/provocation and ignoring the fact that each ship was extremely violently attacked by Israeli commandos who fired as they boarded and passengers from each ship put up resistance, served to split and isolate activists on the Marmara from the rest of the movement.
“New depths have been sunken [sic] to with this documentary, really people need to get out and complain about this appalling whitewash of Israeli crimes masquerading as ‘journalism’,” Jasiewicz said.
Last month, Jasiewicz was part of a group of activists who spray-painted “Liberate all ghettos, free Gaza and Palestine” on a wall of the original Warsaw Ghetto.
Source
---------------------------------------
My Catbird Seat
By Ken O’Keefe (Veterans Today)
If you Haven’t Seen It, Check out the BBC Panorama’s “Death in the Med” program (watch video below at bottom (H.)) and You’ll be Treated to First Class Propaganda as Only the BBC Can Deliver
18-8-2010
I am one of the passengers/witnesses interviewed for this program and I am very much aware of BBC’s role in justifying war and covering up Israeli crimes. I am in no way naive about this; to the contrary my motivation for the interview lay largely in the all too likely opportunity to expose the BBC.
A relevant job considering the BBC’s role in the slaughter of over one million Iraqi’s, a direct role by virtue of the war they justified. BBC from start to present, justifying Iraq, a massive war crime and crime against humanity based entirely on lies (propagated intensely by the BBC). The British Broadcasting Corporation, synonymous with millions of orphans and refugees and countless lives destroyed in Iraq, beating the drums of war without pause, the ultimate prostitutes of propaganda.
With this understanding I solicited an agreement with the BBC producers, in return for my interview the program would include the fact that we disarmed, captured and ultimately released three Israeli commandos (after giving them medical attention no less). That was the deal, a deal I made with an audio recorder in service.
http://www.facebook.com/1worldcitizen#!/video/video.php?v=1440199638883
(unfortunately I cannot open it H.)
And yes the poor Israeli commandos were beaten, just as any invader in any capable persons home would be beaten. I take no issue with that fact.
But truth be told, the commandos we captured should thank us for their lives. I ask the Israeli’s, British and American people specifically, if your home was invaded, your family being murdered, would you be willing to disarm, completely control, and then set a murderer of your family free???
You can lie to yourself if you like, bury that head right down deep in the sand, but that ship was our home, and we were all brothers and sisters, aunties and uncles, united, a family, engaged in a most righteous cause, with the vast majority of the planet behind us. The primary beneficiary of our mission, over 800,000 innocent children
For those lost in a pit of ignorance and indoctrination, those currently stripped of all reason, absent of conscience, duped and hoodwinked, I know you very well because I was once you, a US Marine robot volunteering to kill or be killed. I see my past self in the Zionist who has no capacity at this moment to think, for in that state it is all about regurgitation, independent thought is but a possibility. For you I maintain no hate, for nobody actually, rather it is pity, pity for you that you sacrifice the greatest gift of all, the gift of humanity.
Ken O’Keefe interviewed by Jane Corbin of BBC Panorama
And so it is that the BBC, absent of integrity, contemptuous of humanity, attempts in this program to turn disarmed, helpless Israeli commandos into heroic self-rescuing commandos who managed to Superman their way out of a circle of well over 100 very motivated men whose brothers lay murdered with multiple gunshot wounds. That is what we call a bald-faced lie. Big time lie, in your face lie, you in the audience are a bunch of drooling idiots lie.
Returning from the Zionist alternate universe, we held in our power the fate of three boy commandos who may well have been murderers on that night. Think about that, under these circumstances, we let them go. That is what we call preserving life.
It is not that BBC does not know the truth, there are literally hundreds of witnesses and overflowing facts to reveal it; it is simply BBC’s slavish duty to produce a Zionist storyline of illusions and deceptions. And the story goes that we are the aggressors, “terrorists”, “extremists” and killers. Only in this context can the poor Israeli commandos be victims. How is it possible to dominate and control commandos simply to let them go if we are killers? Answer, it isn’t. And that is precisely why Panorama blatantly lied.
Ah but the irony, the kind of irony that always provides me a smile from the inside out, the irony of these lies being big, beautiful gifts. In all sincerity, thank you BBC.
The BBC says there is doubt as to who fired first. There is no doubt at all who shot who and when to the hundreds of us on the Mavi Marmara and other ships. The Israelis have said we shot at them, well where are their gunshot wounds? And even if you have gunshot wounds, how do we know you did not shoot yourselves? Exactly like you did in “Operation Cast Lead”?
Returning once again from the Zionist alternate universe, the Israeli military attacked in international waters and murdered within the first five minutes of the attack. The attack resulting in scores of gunshot wounds and death in rapid succession. Blood spilling all over the ship. In that environment I took possession of a 9mm pistol that I removed from one of the commandos… and I emptied it of the (real) bullets. Other weapons were seized by other brothers and thrown into the sea, one of which was an assault rifle. Yet when others and myself had the power to end life, and believe me it was as simple as release the safety, point, shoot, over. Instead we preserved life, by taking those weapons away from established killers, we prevented them from killing more. We literally saved our lives and their lives. That is what we call cold, hard facts.
We could have taken out at least three of them, but we did not. Nope, we let them go.
The BBC mentions that we were in international waters at the very end of the story, as if this were an insignificant fact. The fact that Israel stole all the footage that it could, footage that undoubtedly shows them firing 4 bullets to the head of the 19-year-old American passenger, Furkan Dogan. No problem. Executing people at close range, no worries. The fact that the blockade itself is illegal, nah, don’t mention that. 800,000 plus children in Gaza, malnourished, anemic, traumatised… not important.
I would need to review this program many times over to identify every poisoned tactic that the BBC employed in order to do what they do so well, justify murder and war.
Nevertheless BBC’s perversion of the truth will elevate the cause of justice immensely, delegitimizing itself in such grand fashion was indeed a great big gift.
Hats off to ya BBC!
PANORAMA: DEATH IN THE MED with Jane Corbin
Also see:
* The Iraq War Begins
*
The ‘Audacity of Hope’ Ship Sails from New York to Gaza in Human Rights Mission
*
Photo Essay ~~ NEW YORK’S FLOTILLA CRUISE FOR GAZA
*
Gordon Duff: Hero Of Gaza Flotilla Goes Head To Head With Biased BBC “ISRAELI FIRSTER”
*
Alison Weir: As Israel Kills and Maims, Outrage is Directed at Helen Thomas
*
Survivor Testimonies From Flotilla 31 May 2010
*
FORMER US ARMY COL. ANN WRIGHT SEEN ARRESTED BY ISRAELI COMMANDOS
*
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with Kenneth O’Keefe
One Comment
1.
Patricia Blair on the 18. Aug, 2010 remarked #
I was fortunate to hear Ann Wright Speak twice in the past week. Readers can hear her speak,”Flotilla Survivor Criticizes Israel” at http://www.kitv.com/news/24641211/detail.html?taf=hon Then send your check to support the U.S. Ship, “Audacity of Hope” to join the Free Gaza Flotilla in Oct.
Source
