Smuggled Images of Israeli Assault: Gaza Raid Photos Fuel Propaganda War - News - International
More on how the photos of “Peace Activists” beating and kidnapping Israeli Soldiers came to be published first in a Turkish Paper.
Three days later, on June 7, the photos were published in Turkish newspaper Hürriyet — together with other photos taken by Turkish photographer Adem Özköse, who works for the Islamic publishing house Hayat Dergisi.
The fact that “the moments when the Israeli soldiers were beaten up,” as Hürriyet put it, were published in a Turkish newspaper of all places is the climax of a bizarre war of interpretation that pro-Palestinian activists and the Israeli government have been waging against each other ever since the deadly raid.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan railed against Israel’s “banditry and piracy.” But Hürriyet belongs to the media group of entrepreneur Aydin Dogan which has been critical of the government in the past. Initially, Dogan’s newspapers had criticized the Israeli raid just like Turkey’s pro-government papers. But since then they have been warning against excessive Israel bashing and against the prime minister’s increasingly authoritarian style of government.