Request for BBC Director General to Dismiss Members of Panorama Team

As it stands BBC Panorama has its once formidable reputation in tatters and it is your responsibility to improve the situation in the interest of all BBC staff and viewers.

Photographer Cevdet Kılıçlar who was shot between the eyes for documenting the marksmen shooting from the helicopter. Other photos provided by Fiachra Ó Luain.

(DUBLIN) - Most of our readers are familiar with the human tragedy of Gaza; one and a half million people living in a walled 'open air concentration camp' operated by Israel, and that a flotilla of ships loaded with humanitarian relief supplies tried to reach these people last May to deliver food, medicine and much needed building material.

Ken O'Keefe and Fiachra Oluain at The BBC

Israeli attacks on Gaza have damaged and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, and Israel's response to the 'Freedom Flotilla' was to attack these peace activists in international waters, killing nine people who were targeted by Israeli soldiers who carried a 'hit list' designating which activists to kill.

The ship Israel attacked was the Mavi Marmara; a Turkish flagged vessel. Aboard the Mavi Marmara were many who refused to look away as Israeli commandos began murdering the activists. One of those crewmembers is a former U.S. Marine named Ken O'Keefe. He, along with other crewmembers, captured and disarmed several Israeli soldiers, then made sure they received medical treatment. This is proof positive by any standard that the crew did not seek or desire to kill any Israeli soldiers.

Yet a recent BBC program called Panorama broadcasts a statement from an Israeli soldier in the first :17 seconds that the Mavi Marmara crew "wanted to kill" every Israeli invader. It is a ridiculous suggestion, and the choice to turn the British TV show into an Israeli propaganda documentary, has landed the Panorama team in hot water.

Fiachra Ó Luain, who wrote the letter below to The BBC, was the 2nd Mate on the Challenger 1, another Flotilla ship, and eyewitness to the attack on the Mavi Marmara.

From the complaint to The BBC:

The casual description of passengers as ‘terrorists’ has gone without any challenge at all in the programme. There is not even an attempt to provide a definition of the term.

One common definition is

‘violence used against civilians to achieve political ends.’

By this definition attacks on soldiers are not terrorism, although attacks by soldiers can be.

According to the CIA

‘Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.’

Here the importance of legality can be seen and the complete avoidance of this issue is a serious failing of the programme. Clearly a ruling is required on this and the most eminent and highly qualified investigation currently appointed to do this is the UN Human Rights Council’s fact finding mission, which Israel is determined to sideline and avoid at all costs. (Why? Turkey and the flotilla organisers have expressed no reservations about this committee.)

Allowing Israeli military personnel, some of whom may have killed or wounded flotilla passengers, to freely use the word ‘terrorist’ against their civilian assailants, without consideration of the fact that under international law the Israeli operation may itself have been an act of state terrorism to which the defence was perfectly legal, is a serious failing on the part of the programme.

This was biased, misleading and unfair reportage that was quite possibly inaccurate as well.

Dear Mr. Thompson,

I wrote to you over a week ago regarding the extremely unfair and biased documentary, in effect an apology for state terrorism, that was perpetrated by the BBC Panorama Team and the IDF together. I did not receive a response from you or anybody at your office. To this moment I do not know whether you even read the letter that I bothered travelling to the BBC in Hammersmith to hand deliver. Please pay me the respect of responding to this email personally.

Instead I received an email from one of those people directly implicated, Mr. Daniel Pearl. Now please keep in mind that many of us who were attacked and kidnapped by the IDF consider the fact that the BBC used stolen footage without the consent of the owners to be itself a criminal act. Therefore one of those involved in this criminal act, Daniel Pearl (Deputy Editor at Panorama) has effectively been allowed to represent the entire British Broadcast Corporation. Unless you take personal responsibility on this issue there will be for further consequences for the reputation of the British state broadcaster and that is a serious issue for every Briton. Please understand the seriousness of the situation that the BBC now finds itself in.

Not only that but Mr. Pearl claims the right to respond to my letter to you and in the second sentence tells me that he is not even open to hear my reply. Instead he directs me to http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints, in effect fobbing me off back to square one just when the BBC was beginning to enter into dialogue. What class of gentleman responds to a letter that was never intended for him, to questions that I never even asked, and then in effect denies me the right to respond to his impertinence? Ridiculous. This is exactly the sort of behaviour I witnessed when I tried to get some accountability from the IDF and the prison guards while kidnapped. Everybody is ready to add insult to injury but nobody takes responsibility at any stage. There does seem to be some consistency in the IDF's and BBC approach to this whole issue.

Mr. Thompson I am asking you to take responsibility. The entire BBC Panorama Team needs to have their methodology investigated following the broadcast of perhaps the most politically biased piece of "journalism" produced by the BBC in a generation. My references to Bloody Sunday were not pointless. My hope was that at this stage the BBC would realise what they are doing again.

Then Mr. Pearl continues to answer questions that are not even mine. This sort of cherry-picking is somewhat reminiscent of parts of Alice in Wonderland, if not of Orwell's 1984.

How can Mr. Pearl answer a letter that was not addressed to him and then "answer" questions or points that I never made? Pray tell me, because I am still quite bemused by that.

To save us all time I have attached an academic analysis of the bias we all witnessed in Panorama's 'Death in the Med'. I am ccing this to some of your staff, my lawyers and also Article 19 so that we may all be on the same page as the BBC either apologises or attempts to further justify itself. Please cc the same individuals when you respond.

I would like to draw people's attention to the fact that the members of the Fact Finding Mission of the OHCHR told me that they had seen the BBC documentary before they had interviewed us, the eye-witnesses and victims. Therefore we have had to press the reality of the situation on people who have already been influenced by the fiction we saw on BBC Panorama.

The programme has already been discredited but massive damage has been done by the timing of such an inaccurate "documentary". The BBC may have perverted the course of international justice, willingly or not, this is what really is so sad and unjust.

I would like you to consider the broader implications of this. Please read the academic analysis as well as my testimony that was today submitted to the UN Secretary General Panel of Inquiry. Having done so, I would like you to consider the BBC's role so far. I honestly believe that the only honourable thing left to do is ask somebody like Article 19 to independently assess the programme and then ask Jane Corbin and anybody else shown to have had ulterior motives to please relinquish their position. As it stands BBC Panorama has its once formidable reputation in tatters and it is your responsibility to improve the situation in the interest of all BBC staff and viewers.

I did not receive an answer to the question I put to you regarding the execution of journalists in their line of work. Please let me attach the graphic photograph of the photographer Cevdet Kılıçlar who was shot between the eyes for documenting the marksmen shooting from the helicopter. Journalists of such bravery are a rare commodity and I'm sure the BBC would be very glad to have people of such calibre working for them. What, in that case, would you do if one of your journalists was shot between the eyes for doing their job? Please note that I am also ccing this to the National Union of Journalists in Britain and one of their board members in Ireland, Mr. Eamon McCann.

Please closely study the documents I have attached Mr. Thompson. We all look forward to your prompt personal reply.

Yours Sincerely,

Mr. Fiachra Ó Luain

2nd Mate on the Challenger 1 and eyewitness to the attack on the Mavi Marmara