The Truth about Israel's Attack on the Mavi Marmara, as Opposed to what The BBC Reports

Does The BBC have its own Rupert Murdoch? Is it Jane Corbin?

Ken O'Keefe and The BBC's Jane Corbin in the summer of 2010.

(SALEM, Ore.) - Is Rupert Murdoch's yellow journalism a contagion to The BBC? The answer to that it would seem, would be yes if the agency is doubling as a political agent and representative for a foreign government's interest.

Rupert Murdoch is charged with attempting to pressure the Prime Minister to "back away" from investigating the News of the World newspaper over a series of phone-hacking incidents. That's serious, but this scandal involving The BBC is over their brushing aside the importance of nine human lives. I can't imagine that not being a serious issue in comparison to a few bruises and scratches suffered by Israeli soldiers who illegally boarded a Freedom Flotilla ship in international waters last year.

Following broadcast of the program, dozens protested outside the BBC building. Fifty-one formal complaints were filed against The BBC, three of which were upheld. They covered issues of accuracy regarding how people died; clarity on the description of the aid content, and the misleading claims made in the documentary that “the Israelis evacuated the badly wounded to hospital”. This did not at all reflect detailed testimony of mistreatment by the victims contradicting the BBC portrayal of the events that fateful night.

Ken O'Keefe was on the ship the Israeli's attacked and he says last summer's BBC Panorama program, 'Death in the Med' contained so many factual errors about Israels attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, that it is a violation of the British Broadcasting Corporation's own charter on non-partiality.

Tim King sets the shot for the interview posted below - Bonnie King asked Ken O'Keefe questions based on a chronological breakdown of The BBC Panorama program 'Death in the Med'.

Acclaimed reporter Jane Corbin works for The BBC, but when watching 'Death in the Med', it almost seemed like she was carrying out a mission -on assignment for Israel. There is no questioning the fact that the program is crafted to convince the British public that Israel was right in attacking the unarmed activists, and that the people trying to free the 1.5 million imprisoned Gazans, were wrong.

Her pro-Israel positioning manifests in almost every sentence delivered. Of course The BBC could not be operating with a larger conflict of interest, since BBC Panorama’s Jane Corbin’s husband is John Cradock Maples, former MP & President of the Conservative Friends of Israel.

The Boycott Israel campaign asked:

"Has Lord Maples and his Israeli affiliations brought any pressure to bear on how his wife approaches the making of publicly funded, yet appallingly unbalanced, BBC documentaries?"

It seems lady Jane has family obligations to tend to.

In the beginning of this program, just :06 seconds in, Ken O'Keefe references how "dead bodies were piling up" shortly after the attack, but immediately after that, :17 seconds into the episode, The BBC shows an Israeli commando saying:

"They were trying to kill each and every single one of us, and we just defended our lives".

This quote brings to mind a scenario that is nothing like what happened that night on the Mediterranean Sea. It is also placed at a point in the program when the viewer is just starting to gather a picture of what BBC is trying to say. There seems little question that their goal was to influence and mold thoughts, not just to report.

The Israeli soldier in the Death in the Med sound bites was one of many involved in the open ocean raid on the cruise ship Mavi Marmara that left nine unarmed humanitarian activists dead and scores badly injured. Almost all were murdered execution style, according to a United Nations investigation. Even if this was the only objectionable item in the program, the bias is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

It doesn't seem possible that The BBC is serving the public interest when choosing to exhibit a clear bias toward Israel and Israel's largely unverified account of the events.

Tim King, Ken O'Keefe and Bonnie King in the fall of 2010.

But instead the tone continued for the duration of the program. Again, early in this show, as people are formulating their opinions, Corbin poses the question:

"But did Israel fall into a trap, and what was the real agenda of people who call themselves peace activists aboard the Mavi Marmara?"

Among other things, Corbin's interest in the profound suffering among Gazans seems to draw little of her attention. She contradicts herself by claiming in one sentence that Gaza does not lack food, but suffers from a lack of supplies making it across the blockade. It seems clear a large aspect of the missing supplies are indeed food products.

What may be the most regrettable part of Corbin and The BBC's performance, is the serious treatment of Israel's comedic release of a fake audio tape.

The Israelis titled the audio clip "Radio Transmission from Mavi Marmara to Israeli Navy", and it is clear that it was fabricated.

Not only do the voices have different natural sound beds making them a skeptical product in the first place, but Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, even identified the woman's voice.

He says it is that of his wife Huwaida Arraf, chair of the Free Gaza Movement.

Oddly enough, Arraf was not aboard the Mavi Marmara. She was aboard one of the small passenger vessels in the six-boat flotilla, called Challenger 1.

Here is a transcript of the audio released by the IDF:

CLIP #1 (AUDIO ONLY):

CLIP #2 (AUDIO/VIDEO)

ISRAELI SHIP: "This is the Israeli Navy, you are approaching an area which is under a naval blockade."

MAN'S VOICE 1: "Shut up, go back to Auschwitz."

WOMAN'S VOICE: "We have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter."

MAN'S VOICE 2: "We're helping Arabs go against the US, don't forget 9/11 guys."

Huwaida Arraf spoke to Russia Today, among other major media outlets, and gave her first hand account of what took place.

This is the BBC Panorama episode in question, with Jane Corbin

"It would appear that Israel has once more been caught fabricating evidence in its desperate effort to justify its violent assault on the Free Gaza Flotilla, a civilian convoy carrying humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip," said Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

"Thanks to Marian Houk (http://twitter.com/MarianHouk), I have learned that the Israeli army originally uploaded a video in which the same naval officer in the video above has an innocuous conversation with a ship in which the only reply from the ship is 'Negative, Negative, our destination is Gaza'," said Abunimah.

"There is no 'anti-Semitism' or anything that paints the Flotilla passengers as raving bigots. The earlier video actually shows the officer moving, whereas in the previous video in which a speaker allegedly says 'Go back to Auschwitz' we simply see a still picture of the same naval officer while the audio plays. This is further evidence of complete fabrication."

The people who defended their ship from Israeli commandos 31 May 2010, say the Israelis were intent on killing them when the case was the exact opposite of that. Israel set out to kill a bunch of unarmed peace advocates and succeeded. Yet the members of that unarmed crew are hung out to dry by The BBC's Jane Corbin in this program.

In the fall of 2010, not long after Israel's deadly attack on the Turkish ship carrying peace activists bound for Gaza, our team worked closely with Ken O'Keefe, a Salem-News.com writer and survivor of the attack, with a plan of producing a TV documentary.

The need for this program stems from the airing of this BBC program that explicitly failed to provide a fair or balanced account of the events that night that left so many unarmed people dead and wounded. An established national program, The BBC's Panorama was used as an apparent tool by reporter Jane Corbin, to further the cause of Israel on a military level.

She left so many of Israel's claims unchallenged, presenting them as fact, that it necessitated our team's work simply to set the record straight.

There are other programs about the Mavi Marmara including a recently released documentary by al Jazeera and in Turkey a movie titled Valley of the Wolves - Palestine shows a Turkish Rambo-type character taking revenge against the Israelis behind the decision to attack the unarmed protesters.

While we still intend to produce a full-scale documentary about the experience of Ken and others that night, the new video (below) is simply Ken O'Keefe's bare bones clarification of the points of the program made by BBC.

A great deal of misinformation is associated with the Israeli 'side' of this story that The BBC could have shown integrity and challenged. Israel has maintained that the commandos were "surprised" when the crew of the ship tried to defend the vessel and prevent the military troops with clear intentions of violence from forcibly boarding.

Israel has stated time and time again that the people aboard the Mavi Marmara were terrorists when there is absolutely no evidence of any kind to support this allegation.

Corbin's presentation takes the word of Israel on many points without attempting to verify the authenticity of statements and claims, and investigating some of what Israel said through sources other than Israel, would have been advantageous to all mankind. As mentioned above, she allows an Israeli soldier :17 seconds into the program to say that the people aboard the Mavi Marmara were "trying to kill" him when in fact Ken O'Keefe personally took the weapons from two of the Israelis, but instead of shooting them, he and others ensured they received medical care. They were almost immediately released.

Jane Corbin and The BBC lost a great deal of public credibility with Death in the Med.

Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Tim has several years of experience in network affiliate news TV stations, having worked as a reporter and photographer at NBC, ABC and FOX stations in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com