Israel may have botched its raid on the Gaza Flotilla, but it is still successfully deploying its time-honored news management practices — as outlined by the Dutch journalist, Joris Luyendijk, in his impressive book, People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East.
The London Financial Times provides its readers with an entire article documenting the Israeli strategy. The reporter, Tobias Buck, explains:
Desperate to counter a mounting diplomatic backlash, the Israeli government and army sought to flood the airwaves with their version of events, bolstered by heavily edited scenes from the assault. More importantly, the authorities ensured that their narrative gained early dominance by largely silencing the hundreds of activists who were on board during the attack.
Let’s look and see how The New York Times handled the same story. In my print edition, I had to read down to the 11th paragraph before I discovered,
Israel did not provide journalists with access to those detained.
This is a nice euphemism for "Illegally arresting hundreds of people on the high seas, killing at least 9 of them, detaining the rest unlawfully for several days, and not permitting scores of international journalists who were on the scene to listen to their side of the story."
Eventually, the hundreds of activists will be deported, and start to talk. By then, the cement will have settled around the Israeli story, and if another Goldstone comes along to calmly challenge it, he will be dismissed as anti-Semitic.
