Edward Peck: Israel "smearing" the opposition

Edward Peck, a former U.S. Ambassador to Mauritania, speaks to demonstrators in front of the White House in Washington June 1, 2010 about his experience aboard a Gaza aid ship as that was seized by Israeli commandos.
What do you think of the American media coverage of this event?
Here's the thing. I just got off a radio interview. One of the things that distresses me is the extent to which Israel has been successful in, for example, getting Americans to ask questions as to why the passengers on that big Turkish ship attacked the Israeli soldiers.
I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, they were defending the ship against people who were attacking it. You've got it backwards. There are civilians, men and women, on a Turkish-flagged vessel, in international waters. And here comes a group of heavily armed -- forget the paintball story -- heavily armed guys who are going to take over the ship by force and then take it to Israel, where the passengers don't want to go. And so they pick up deck chairs and other things to fight off these heavily armed -- and by the way, masked -- commandos, and somehow they become the attackers. So, that depresses me a little bit.
Leaving aside the horrible bloodshed and all, it becomes a war of words. Americans are reading what comes out of Tel Aviv, which is carried in the American press ... So, all of a sudden, the people on the Turkish ship are described as terrorist, Israel-hating, Hamas supporters, murderers and killers. I say to myself, What would you expect the Israelis to call these people? Tree-hugging environmentalists? No, they're all killers! Every single one of them. It's called smearing the opposition. And the press seems to take that. And I find that distressing. It's the use of the language that concerns me. Who's defending and who's attacking?
What questions do you think the media should be asking right now?
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This is from a day or so after the incident but is still worth posting.