Anait Brutian
Sabbah Report
24 June
On June 2, 1010, immediately after the massacre on Mavi Marmara, in an emergency IAC meeting in NYC, Sara Flounders briefly described the events of the past few days: "While world opinion has been galvanized over the massacre that took place in an Israeli raid on ships bringing humanitarian supplies … Israel has carried a whole number of bombings in Gaza … resulting in at least 16 deaths. Has anyone here heard about that?" As expected, the overwhelming response from the audience was negative – indeed, no one had heard of the recent bombing raids on Gaza. Sara Flounders charged "the U.S. and the entire Western media" with "absolute corruption" for framing the questions relating to Palestine in a way that Palestinian lives didn't matter – "16 dead Palestinians in Gaza, lost in bombing raids are completely off the news here." Comparing the total "silence" on the 16 deaths to the world-wide attention given to the massacre on Mavi Marmara, Sara Flounders observed that the "silence" had been going on for too long and that the world was unaware of the conditions in Gaza – "An absolute concentration camp, which is what Gaza is, an open-air concentration camp."
According to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, keeping Israeli atrocities off the news is achieved through the "Zionist Media." Even after the killing of U.S. citizens by Israel, the U.S. has not held Israel accountable. The killing of the American activist Rachel Corrie, crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer, did not stir an outcry in the American media. The same is true for the 34 seamen killed and 170 crew members wounded on USS Liberty exactly 43 years ago, on June 8, 1967. During the Six-Day War, Israeli Air Force and Navy attacked U.S. Navy technical research ship USS Liberty in international waters, killing, wounding and severely damaging the ship. Yet, "to this day 99.9% of the Americans know nothing about the 34 seamen killed on the Liberty and 170 wounded because our Zionist media have kept that out of the public domain." McGovern's assessment is accurate: not only Israel's attack on the USS Liberty was deliberately kept off the news, but also, according to Charles K. Ebinger, "the attack on the Liberty is the only maritime incident in U.S. history where … [U.S.] military forces were killed that was never investigated by the Congress."
