A Soldier’s Tale Of What Happened Aboard The Marvi Marmara
THE Mavi Marmara – details are emerging:
But the account of Andre Abu Khalil, a cameraman for Al Jazeera TV, described how activists seized four Israelis before other commandos stormed aboard, firing on activists. “There were four Israeli soldiers brought to the lowest deck. They had fracture wounds,” the Lebanese told Reuters. The soldiers were captured during attempts to descend on to the ship from helicopters.
On Monday, an Israeli commando said he was struck with metal bars while other troops were held down and stripped of their helmets and equipment. “Twenty Turkish men formed a human shield to prevent the Israeli soldiers from scaling the ship, said Abu Khalil. “They had slingshots, water pipes and sticks.”
THE Israeli sergeant who killed six of the people on board the Mavi Marmara:
Looking to his side, he saw three of his commanders lying wounded – one with a gunshot wound to the stomach and another with a gunshot wound to the knee. A third was lying unconscious; his skull was fractured by a devastating blow with a metal bar…He pushed the wounded soldiers up against the wall of the upper deck and created a perimeter of soldiers around them to begin treating their wounds, he said. He then arranged his men to form a second perimeter, and pulled out his 9 mm. Glock pistol to stave off the charging attackers and to protect his wounded comrades.The attackers had already seized two pistols from the commandos, and fired repeatedly at them. Facing more than a dozen of the mercenaries, and convinced their lives were in danger, he and his colleagues opened fire, he said. S. singlehandedly killed six men. His colleagues killed another three.
On the other side:
Alex Harrison, a Free Gaza activist who was on the smaller Challenger yacht, which was crewed mainly by women, said the Israelis used rubber bullets, sound bombs and tasers against them.
“Two women were hooded, they had their eyes taped,” she said, describing how the yacht was quickly overwhelmed. “We stood and tried to obstruct the armed, masked men and maintained no other defence and still they used violence.”
Harrison, 32, from Islington, north London, also witnessed the Mavi Marmara being stormed from above by helicopter and said the Israelis started firing before their troops touched down on the boat.
“I have seen some selective footage that the Israelis have chosen to put out suggesting that we responded with violence,” she said. “You must remember that these are unarmed civilians on their own boat in the middle of the Mediterranean. People picked up what they could to defend themselves against armed, masked commandos who were shooting.
Paul McGeough says:
The Sydney Morning Herald’s chief correspondent Paul McGeough told of being aboard one of the Gaza aid flotilla vessels and seeing shadows of the Israeli navy’s Zodiac boats circling.
He said it felt like “hyenas hunting an animal in the night”.
Hyenas? Laughing? He goes on:
But as they came alongside the Mavi Marmara, the dozen or so helmeted commandos in each assault craft copped the full force of the ferry’s fire hoses and a shower of whatever its passengers found on deck or could break from the ship’s fittings.
What’s lying about the deck of your boat, skipper?
And let’s have a sea shanty, with the peaceniks:
Despite their claims to be an entirely peaceful organisation, The Foundation for Human Rights, Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) has a history of involvement in Islamic extremism around the world and has been linked with an attempted bombing of an airport in the US.
The charity had 40 members on the Turkish-owned ship Mavi Marmara when it was boarded by Israeli Navy commandos on Monday. Nine people died in the operation.
To read Charles Krauthammer today is to enter a twilight zone of an alternate reality. A country permanently occupying and colonizing a neighboring region, and treating its original inhabitants as dangerous interlopers, is the victim. An elite commando unit attacking a ship carrying toys and wheelchairs in the hours before dawn are those we should feel pity for…
Posted: 4th, June 2010 | In: Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
