First the Massacre, Then the Lies

"Initial autopsy findings showed a Palestinian boy [Mohammed Khadeir] found dead after being kidnapped in East Jerusalem was burned alive... Mohammed's cousin Tariq Khadeir... was savagely beaten on Thursday by what human rights groups said were undercover Israeli officers... Spokesman for the Israel police Micky Rosenfeld said a video circulated by the rights group was 'edited and biased'... he said Tariq was one of 6 Palestinians arrested - three of them carrying knives - after a clash in which 15 officers were injured when 'hundreds of rioters, many of them masked, hurled at the forces pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, fireworks and stones'." (Palestinian boy was burned alive, autopsy suggests, Jodi Rudoren, New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 6/7/14)

Alert readers will find Rosenfeld's lies here familiar.

That's because they come from the same Israeli lie machine wheeled out when another group of uniformed Israeli thugs swung into action on the night of May 30, 2010, shooting up those on board the Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship Mavi Marmara.

Some extracts from Max Blumenthal's account of how the Israelis spun that massacre, from his must-read book Goliath: Fear & Loathing in Greater Israel (2013):

"As soon as the Israelis gained control of the Marmara, they rushed to the ship's kitchen and gathered all the knives they could find. Then they laid them out beside keffiyehs, Qurans, and any object that might convince the average Western news consumer that the flotilla was in fact a covert terrorist convoy...

"Having stockaded the flotilla activists, the Israelis proceeded to the next phase of their mission, robbing passengers - including credentialed journalists - of their cameras, laptops, and recording equipment... The Israelis intended to exploit the footage they had seized in order to establish a narrative that portrayed themselves as the true victims. SD cards and videotapes containing footage shot by passengers... were thrown in a giant junk heap, ensuring that the most damning and disturbing records of the attack would never see the light of day... The 5-second clip of what Israelis came to refer to simply as 'The Lynch' was culled from the trove of footage the IDF had stolen from the flotilla activists and journalists. Heavily edited over the course of 2 days, the clip was the only piece of footage that seemed to support the army's line. It was broadcast around the clock on the country's 3 main news channels, branding into the Israeli public's mind a sense that the commandos who stormed the MM had been unfairly and savagely abused by a band of terrorists and were forced to open fire just to survive.

"To complement this clip, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit pumped out buckshot of unsourced press releases to the national press corps insinuating that the flotilla was in fact an al-Qaeda-linked armada captained by anti-Semites. In almost every case, reputable military correspondents and network anchors diligently reproduced the press releases as news with only the most minor alterations...

"Two days later, the Spokesperson's Unit released an audio clip purporting to consist of transmissions between the MM and a naval warship. 'Go back to Auschwitz!' a Marmara passenger shouted to the Israeli naval captain, according to the IDF. YNet and Haaretz reported on and reproduced the audio clip without investigating its authenticity. Not only did the anti-Semitic slur sound like a mentally disturbed teenager making a prank call, but had reporters performed a cursory search of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit website they would have found a longer clip released on May 31 that featured a dramatically different exchange between the Israeli Navy and the MM with no mention of Auschwitz. Further, the voice of flotilla organizer Huwaida Arraf was featured in the 'Auschwitz' clip, yet Arraf was not aboard the Marmara... It seemed the army had fabricated the clip in order to inject the Holocaust into coverage of the flotilla raid, thereby inflaming the Israeli public with the notion that the whole world was indeed against them - and through no fault of their government.

"On my blog, I pointed out the discrepancies in the IDF's footage and raised the question of doctoring. The next day, the IDF conceded that it had, in fact, doctored the footage, releasing a 'clarification' and a new clip claiming to consist of the 'full' exchange between the navy and the flotilla..." (pp 105-10)

There's more in Goliathon the above, but I'm sure you've got the idea. (I might add, while I'm at it, that if you're interested in the psychopathology behind Mohammed Khadeir's immolation while still alive, and the radical re-arranging of his cousin Tariq's face, then Goliath's the book for you.)