New York Times Needs My Help to Find Flotilla Planners' Terrorist Ties: OK! Here's A Start for Their Research

Barry Rubin
GLORIA Center
12 June '10

The New York Times is a vast and wealthy organization with highly paid reporters and news bureaus around the world. Unfortunately, however, it seems to need a little help in gathering the news. In an editorial, the newspaper has held forth with the following sentence:

"The Israelis claim that Insani Yardim Vakfi is a dangerous organization with terrorist links. They have yet to offer any evidence to support that charge."

This is like Goldstone who keeps saying that no one has challenged his report despite literally hundreds of specific refutations. It is like the little boy who doesn't want to hear something, puts his hands over his ears, and keeps yelling, "I don't hear you!"

It does, however, mark some retreat from the Times earlier statement of intense suspicion about documented Israeli claims, in which one of its writers dismisses the video footage of the soldiers being attacked with these words: "Those images of commandos being attacked with clubs and chairs are lacking context. Were they shot before or after the boarding party started using force?"

Of course, the video clearly shows the deck of the ship with no Israeli soldiers on it. There is no fighting at all. The first soldier comes down the rope, holding on with both hands. He is attacked. Then a second, he is attacked. And so on for the next two. So how could the boarding party be using force when it had not yet boarded? How's that for context?

In other words, the Times has updated the three famous monkeys: See no terrorism, Hear no terrorism, Report no terrorism.

But since I had an hour to spare, I decided to offer my services to the New York Times to provide some evidence about IHH links to terrorism. I offer this to the Times for publication, further research, and the names of people who might be interviewed. If the newspaper wants more of my research services, I suggest it hires me as a consultant. Otherwise, it might assign some reporters to open their eyes and read material that is available easily from reliable sources. Or they might actually do some research themselves!

(Read full article)

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