Michael Oren makes stuff up. But the NY Times doesn't have to publish it.

On 06.26.10, By Max Blumenthal

Nearly a month after publishing Israeli Ambassador the US Michael Oren’s apologia for the flotilla massacre, the NY Times has yet to correct two of the most glaring lies Oren made. The first of Oren’s deceptions was his assertion that “religious extremists embedded among those on board were paid and equipped to attack Israelis.”

The notion that al-Qaeda affiliated mercenaries were on board the Mavi Marmara was discredited as soon as the IDF Spokesman’s Office changed a headline on a press release about terrorist “mercenaries” to read, “Attackers of the IDF Found Without Identification Papers.” The headline was quietly altered on June 3, the same day the Times published Oren’s op-ed. Shouldn’t their fact checkers and editors been better informed?

The second of Oren’s lies was at least as ludicrous as his first. He wrote:

Also found on the boat were propaganda clips showing passengers “injured” by Israeli forces; these videos, however, were filmed during daylight, hours before the nighttime operation occurred.

If this was true, then where were the clips? Why hasn’t the IDF released any footage to support Oren’s claim? Probably because such clips do not exist anywhere. As far as I can tell, they were never on the website of the IDF Spokesman’s Office or the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The footage is not even available on YouTube. So where are they? Certainly the IDF would have wanted to publish anything that supported its version of events. But they could not conjure anything to bolster Oren’s bizarre claim (which seemed to suggest that the killing and maiming of flotilla passengers by Israeli commandos was simply “propaganda” and therefore never happened).

Unless Oren or the Israeli military can produce the “propaganda clips” Oren mentioned, the New York Times should be compelled to retract the falsehoods it published. The Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt can be reached at public@nytimes.com or (212) 556-7652

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