BBC, excessive zeal and lesser priorities

I quite expect The Guardian (and I expect "Comment is Free Watch" to be having fun with The Guardian report on this) and The Independent to get all things Israel the wrong way round, but I would have hoped that on their website, the BBC might just escape the Jeremy Bowen influence. However, the headline and the first sentence of this item both start by announcing that the UN Report by the Palmer Committee on the "peace flotilla" found Israel's use of force to be excessive, but the blockade to be legal in international law.

Funny that, anyone wishing to report fairly would have put that the other way round, as it justifies Israel's use of force, just not the level at which it was used. And, yes, as others have already noted, given the response that the IDF met when they first attempted to board the vessels, especially the Mavi Marmara, whether that response actually was excessive is, to say the least, debatable.

Follow the link to read the whole BBC item, and if you wish to find the UN Report, follow the links through the BBC piece to the New York Times, and their links to the Report. This starts with a 3 page summary of the whole Report.

This post was contributed by Brian Goldfarb.