BBC Exonerates Israel

'We're going to defeat the Israeli commandos,' the IHH head tells BBC.


Benjamin Weinthal
The Weekly Standard
27 August '10

A rare note of European journalistic optimism in the aftermath of Israel's naval interception in May of a flotilla headed for Hamas-ruled Gaza: BBC Panorama, an investigative TV program, aired several weeks ago a remarkably hard-hitting exposure (“Death in the Med”) of what unfolded on the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara, when nine radical Islamists died. Jane Corbin doggedly pursues questions involving the jihadists’ animated ideology that spawned many of the Mavi Marmara activists. BBC shows previously unseen footage aboard the Mavi Marmara and fresh interviews with the Israeli naval commandos who participated in the naval mission.

One piece of evidence in “Death in the Med” that proves that the Mavi Marmara was a vessel containing a large number of jihadists seeking to kill Israelis (instead of its self-proclaimed “peace mission”) is footage of the head of the Turkish IHH “charity” Bulent Yildirim himself. In the clip, Yildrim proclaims, aboard the vessel before the Israeli interception:

We’re going to defeat the Israeli commandos –we’re declaring it now. If you bring your soldiers here, we will throw you off the ship and you’ll be humiliated in front of the whole world.

Corbin then asks Yildirim:

You said that if they board the ship you would throw them into the sea. Isn’t that a provocation, saying that to your supporters on the ship?

Yildirim’s response:

(Read full article)

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