How Western Media Whitewashed Israel’s Mass-Abduction of Activists

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Since 6pm on Wednesday evening, I have spent every waking minute documenting Israel’s illegal abduction of 455 international passengers on board the Global Sumud Flotilla, people I was forced to leave behind after my boat broke down on the final stretch.

You may have seen it mentioned in the British press: “Israel’s naval ships intercept Gaza-bound flotilla” (BBC News). “Israeli navy intercepts and reroutes Gaza aid flotilla” (FT). One word was conspicuously missing from all headlines: “Israel illegally intercepts Gaza flotilla”.

What occurred was unambiguously criminal. In 38 hours, 42 civilian boats were commandeered in international waters by machine gun-wielding soldiers. The unarmed passengers were taken against their will into Israeli territory, denied diplomatic access for over 24 hours and driven to a prison in the desert. They had been exercising lawful rights: to navigate the high seas under maritime law, and to carry aid towards famine under humanitarian law. They never entered Israeli waters, nor would they have, had they not been dragged there.

Piracy. That is how maritime law defines what happened. Under humanitarian law, blocking aid during famine falls under the remit of a war crime. But instead of calling it what it was, our media euphemistically dubbed it an ‘interception’. If that is not whitewashing, I do not know what is.

This is exactly why people sailed: much of our news media, like our governments, has become so implicated in the moral stain of Gaza’s genocide that their crumbling defence is to normalise Israel’s crimes. Now the global public have lost so much faith in them, that they have literally sailed into the arms of a genocidal army.

I can speak personally to the UK Government’s spinelessness, as a passenger on-board the fleet while it was pummelled with drone attacks in high seas during the midnight hours spanning Tuesday to Wednesday last week. My mother called the Foreign Office in the days that followed, begging them to pledge protection for their citizens on the water; they said no.

Three weeks ago when I wrote this column from on-board, my main complaint was that there weren’t more journalists with me, leaving news outlets free to diminish such attacks as ‘alleged’ and ‘unverified’. But today I see our media’s failings are far greater. Today I see how they legitimised the very propaganda that laid the groundwork for my fellow passengers’ abduction.

The day before the midnight drone attacks, Israel’s Government and media began referring to the aid ships as the “Hamas flotilla”, launching a series of tweets containing what they claimed to be “evidence” that the movement had “terrorist” organisers and intent. In reality, these were petty smears seeking to prove guilt-by-association, rather than documentary proof that the fleet carried anything other than aid and civilians. Nevertheless, baseless lies were elevated to the status of household news by Western journalists.

LBC ran the headline: “Greta freedom flotilla ‘partially funded’ by Hamas, Israel claims”. The Telegraph wrote: “The Israeli government has repeatedly said the flotilla is a Hamas operation” tailing it with the telling caveat: “without evidence”. As if it isn’t fatally dangerous to publish such slander when Israel maniacally hurls “Hamas” accusations to justify the killings of children, medics, and journalists every single day.

The consequences are material and direct. Israel’s government released footage this morning showing far-right minister Itamar Ben Gvir verbally abusing the flotilla captives as “terrorists”, and touring the notorious “anti-terrorist” facility in which they are now being held. Their incarceration will be a black stain on our media and government every day it endures without uproar.

Outlets that lacked the stomach for false terror accusations instead peddled Israel’s backup line of defence: diminishing the flotilla as a “publicity stunt,” rather than the global coalition of hundreds of seafarers and tens of thousands of donors, land coordinators and traumatised family members who put their bodies, careers, and savings on the line to make it happen.

Laura Kuenssberg asked Greta Thunberg on her BBC morning show whether the flotilla was a publicity stunt. This enabled the BBC to run the headline: “Thunberg denies claims Gaza flotilla is a publicity stunt”, presenting humanitarians as the ones who need to defend themselves, rather than the naval blockade causing children to starve.

The Telegraph came in at all angles, running an oped titled: “Greta’s Gaza flotilla is nothing but a ship of fools” (referring to a fleet of over 50 ships in total). The author, Jake Wallis Simons, diminishes a passenger with whom I became very close, Kieran Andrieu, but fails to mention (or perhaps does not know) that Andrieu is half Palestinian and has six siblings living under occupation who have been shot, imprisoned and terrorised by Israeli forces– possible motivation besides “publicity”.

These media failings are their own loss. I livestreamed the bulk of Israel’s attack on the flotilla on Middle East Eye and over two million people tuned in, figures that blow primetime news out of the water tenfold. Too often has our legacy news turned its back on the stories that matter in favour of culture wars and divisive clickbait, and no subject highlights its self-made obsoleteness more than Gaza.

But these failings are no loss to the flotilla. The global public did not fall for the whitewashing, and protests broke out across cities from London to Istanbul to Buenos Aires. To quote my dear detained friend David Adler: “Let [Israel] try to justify it. Let them explain to the international community why our humble efforts to feed the starving people of Gaza represents some threat to their national security. No one will believe them. The Hasbara simply doesn’t hit anymore.”

The Flotilla may have been prevented from delivering its aid to Gaza’s shores, but its victories prevail. It forced four European governments to dispatch naval vessels and actually use NATO’s military might to briefly protect civilians from Israeli fire. It also drew Israel’s navy away from Gaza’s shores, clearing 38 hours in which Palestinian fishermen could feed their starving communities without coming under fire.

Greater still, was the media victory. CCTV attached to the boats showed Israeli commandos assaulting peaceful passengers with water cannons. The humanitarians sat calm and resolute, their hands spread before them in a sign of nonviolent resistance. They refused to rise, but they refused to stop, sailing inches closer towards the people of Palestine – whose pain they had tried to take upon themselves, even if just for a moment.

Media Storm’s latest episode ‘Piracy & propaganda: Israel ILLEGALLY intercepts the Global Sumud Flotilla’ is out now.