(In the same paper: a brief, sensible account of the recent evolution of Turkey’s foreign policy.)

In an aerial video released by the Israelis (with yellow Hebrew text and a circle to draw people’s attention to another incident – something being thrown, I think), I remember seeing a blurry figure approach another – who appeared to be stationary, perhaps already lying stunned or wounded on the deck – and, arm extended, discharge two shots at close range. Given that Israel had released the video, I thought I must be mistaken (was I?) – forgetting that the propagandists assume, sadly often correctly, that video so absorbs and befuddles us that we will see what we are told we are seeing, or at least forget to ask even the most basic questions (“Who is holding the camera?”, “When were the images recorded?”, “Why are we not seeing footage of the other things we are told happened?”). Remember how during its last war on Lebanon Israel released aerial footage of a mobile rocket launcher firing from near a house and then immediately leaving the scene? Anyone who wanted a justification for the Israeli destruction of the house some time later, killing many civilians sheltering inside, was inexplicably quite satisfied by these pictures. It seemed TV-treated brains couldn’t accomodate more than one idea at a time, so that “Did Hezbollah fire any rockets from the vicinity of civilian buildings?” completely eclipsed “So if the Israelis had these images then why the hell did they bomb the house?!” People even believed that these large rockets were launched from inside houses, never wondering whether such a weapon could be fired out of a window, let alone manoeuvred into a room, or if it could, whether the blowback in a confined space might kill the person firing it, or if it didn’t whether the house would afford any protection from Israeli bombs and missiles.

When it comes to Israeli propaganda, we can believe none of what we hear and half of what we see. Part of the reason for the Mavi Marmara atrocity may be that, while we tend to assume Israel’s more hysterical propaganda is directed at sustaining the stupidest, most reflexively Islamophobic constituency abroad, many Israelis believe their own lines about “humanitarian terrorists”, etc.