The Israeli Take was an imported "in-depth" news item shown last night on NZTV Sunday programme. Previously we had had a home-grown item interviewing Nicola Enchmarch, a real Kiwi hero, who had been on the Mavi Marmara. She had attended to a dying man who had been shot numerous times, including the head. She did not hide down below with other women, she was obviously not an extremist, and she had important things to say about what happened. But she had a wonderful Michaelic will and focus for what had to be done for the people of Gaza.
The Israeli Take threatened to be a complete excuse for the Israeli military, but surprisingly the voices from two or three persons on board the Mavi Marmara were included. Perhaps in the interest of "balance", for the whole item was the usual ambiguous establishment news item in which no firm journalistic stance was taken. It was an essentially disgraceful piece of work which chose not to deal with the relevant issue of the blockade. Instead time was wasted on wondering who started the hostility, as though - yet again - we are dealing with two equal and morally equivalent forces.
If I put aside the fact that the Israelis have no right to own a good deal of the eastern Mediterranean and do just what they like there, and were therefore "starting" the "fight" - having already started it by setting up Gaza as a concentration camp - if I put these facts aside, the programme itself seemed to answer this question for me. The Israeli commander was heard to warn the Mavi Marmara that it was entering an area of hostility - that is, an area made hostile by the presence and intentions of Israeli forces. But the programme makers chose not to notice this.
Instead I think we were shown men on the Mavi Marmara sawing lengths of metal from the railings, as if this was the moment which started the fight. It was also the moment at which the programme makers seriously took the side of the Israelis by implying that it is not OK to take steps to defend yourself from a pirate in uniform. As if it is not quite the done thing to actually be serious about the objective of the flotilla. As if it was indeed just a stunt. The Israelis - and presumably the British programme makers - do not accept the right of others to resist.
When I see men making weapons out of a ship's railing I draw the conclusion that essentially they did not have weapons. When I realise that not a single Israeli soldier was killed this conclusion is reinforced. When I learn that firearms taken from Israeli soldiers were not used against them, even the moral standing of the flotilla is reinforced.
This was a programme which enabled the Israeli perspective to be given. What did we get? Surprisingly little. We saw flotilla men justifiably manhandling - but not killing - soldiers who assumed they had a right to board a vessel. We saw men making those metal bars. We saw - note this well - Muslim men having an anti-Israeli meeting. Surprise, surprise. With an adversary capable of any crime it would have been just one way to bolster courage. We heard Israeli soldiers claiming they were being shot at. Did any of them receive gunshot wounds? The Israelis and the programme failed to say.
We were told that the Israeli commandos fired paint-ball guns, as though they were carrying out an exercise in benevolence. An example of Israeli humour perhaps? The programme told us that the very first person shot was shot by a paint-ball. He was one of the persons from the Mavi Marmara who was interviewed, but curiously he was not asked - for the viewer anyway - to confirm that his seeming agony on the ground and the red patch on his body was due to a paint-ball. It would have been so easy to have cleared this matter up.
Having been thumped by establishment media for presuming to resist tyranny, the flotilla was then trounced with the accusation that they were not so much humanitarian, as political. How dare they also presume to take part in the political process. The writer William Trevor was once asked if he was a political person. He replied that he took a concerned interest in matters that occurred in the world, but this did not make him political. I take this as a starting point and from this one's concern is made to be political by others who really are political. If you are concerned and do nothing about it you are not political. If you do something about it you are forced to be political. Yet you have as much right to be political as any other human being set up as an agent of state.
Once again time was wasted on the intentions of the flotilla, rather than the obscenity of people in a concentration camp. There is absolutely no shame in saying that the flotilla was both humanitarian and political. The people of Gaza needed to be strengthened and the state of Israel needed to be weakened.
This accusation of political action was reinforced by the programme makers by making fun of some of the items eventually delivered to Gaza. Wheelchairs which appeared to have been damaged in transit from helpful Israel, and out of date medicines. The programme did not wonder why so many wheelchairs were in bad condition. It did not imagine that perhaps any medicine is better than none and that only the comfortable worry about expiry dates. No, these two amusing items reinforced the supposed hypocrisy of the flotilla mission, rather than perhaps its ability to do the best it could with the resources available.
