Left I on the News

[Originally posted 9/28/10, 10:31 am; updated below]

No matter how shocking and outrageous you thought the Israeli assault and the murder of nine activists on the Mavi Marmara was, it was actually even worse, with at least six of the nine not just murdered, but executed, as revealed by the U.N. report that was recently issued.

Equally (?) outrageous is the almost total lack of coverage of the U.N. report in the U.S. corporate media. Actually I'm being generous; I don't think there's actually been any coverage. How's this for shocking - a search of The New York Times over the past 12 months shows exactly one regular news article in which the name "Furkan Dogan" appears - the article about his funeral. And the Washington Post was even worse; I couldn't find a single article by searching for that name.

By the way, there's a trial going on in Israel right now relating to the murder of yet another American citizen by the Israeli military - Rachel Corrie. Number of mentions of that trial in The New York Times? Zero. Number of mentions in the Washington Post? Also zero.

Update: Two of the nine dead were filming with video cameras as they were shot.

Testimony of an ex-U.S. Marine on board the Mavi Marmara who witnessed the first dead passenger before Israeli troops were even on board. Reported extensively in Ha'aretz. U.S. media? The story has made it to Salem-News.com. That's it.

Today, the full UNHRC approved the report of the investigative committee by a nearly 2/3 vote - 30 out of 47 (and all but one of the rest - the U.S., naturally - abstentions). Reuters, whose coverage appears in Ha'aretz, gives at least a reasonable lead to the story, without actually noting any of the details mentioned above:

The United Nations Human Rights Council Wednesday endorsed a fiercely critical report on Israel's raid on a Gaza aid flotilla in May but stopped short of pressing for an international criminal inquiry.

AP takes a very different tack, leading with a second vote which continued to delay followup (i.e., legal action) from the earlier Goldstone report about the assault on Gaza:

Palestinian human rights groups sharply criticized a U.N. resolution — backed by their own government — that delays action on a report alleging war crimes during the 2009 Gaza conflict.

That's all well and good, but what about the new report and its utterly damning conclusions about the assault on the Mavi Marmara? Here's the sum total of reference to that report by the AP, contained in the penultimate paragraph of the article (and, as I point out so often, no doubt headed for the cutting room floor of most print media and certainly not making the lead of any broadcast reports based on the AP story):

A separate resolution in the council endorsed the findings of an independent expert panel that concluded the Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla was "clearly unlawful."

I wonder if that was their lead on 9/12? "Arab terrorists yesterday committed acts that were 'clearly unlawful.'" Yeah, I don't think so.