No wonder Israelis detained him for three days. Jamal ElSheyyal, speaking from Istanbul:
There is no doubt from what I saw that live ammunition was fired before any Israeli soldier was on deck.
Indiscriminate fire from helicopter-- one man shot in the top of the head. Three shot passengers died because they did not get treatment over many hours.
Passenger violence: "I definitely saw iron bars." Passengers took apart the railings and used them to fend off the Israelis. "I did see a number of Israeli soldiers being beaten by them." There were no weapons. People wielded those bars as the Israelis tried to come aboard the ship.
He heard accounts of three Israeli soldiers being taken captive by the passengers. The Israelis were released, because the capture produced more intense
Treated with contempt by the Israelis, he said. Hands tied for 24 hours. "Soldier requested that I urinate where I was."
Al Jazeera reports on bias handling of the issue by US cableTV News–except for MSNBC:
link to youtube.com
This is like watching the US devolve in fast forward.
Too bad. I guess I’ll get that passport to Spain.
The congress needs to be replaced. We’re at crisis level.
Reporters were forbidden from talking to any of the people on the boat. IDF soldiers were also posted in hospital wards to prevent the media from interviewing the wounded in hospitals. The IDF imposed a blackout on the names and nationalities of those killed. Journalists on the flotilla had all their equipment confiscated as soon as the commandos raided.
Obviously the other side of the story will get out sooner or later but I think the Israelis wanted the initial reports to reflect their viewpoint as much of that sticks with people rather than later reports.
And here’s Daily Show on Beck’s courageous showing of the Pro-Palestinian activists beating up on the poor IDF commandoes:
link to huffingtonpost.com
This account from one of the British activists has similar points:
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/03/british-survivor-gaza-flotilla
According to Canadian activists, the wounded were not given medical care, despite the appeals of a few Israelis on board telling the commandos in Hebrew to do so.
That would explain part of the reason why Turkey wanted to withdraw its citizens so quickly — they were, quite literally, in mortal danger by a country that uses the Geneva Conventions as toilet paper.
They handcuffed fellow prisoners attempting to provide what care they could.
I’m waiting for the NYT to report this–you know that the quantum wave function doesn’t really collapse into something that has classical reality until they deign to observe it.
At least for the MSM.
Never thought I would realize that
this country is the underwriter for apartheid.
-my head hurts. I need to lie down.
Oops, I have to give credit where it is due. From Glenn Greenwald today (who has a good post on the subject) it turns out a NYT blogger is reporting the evidence that contradicts the Israeli account. If they haven’t collapsed the wave function onto whatever the truth is, they’ve at least spread some of the probability amplitude away from the Israeli version.
link
Yes, that NYT blogger, Robert Mackey has (it seems to me) quietly filling in the holes of the regular coverage. He did a post on Emily Henchowicz and Edward Peck too.
That’s surely to be commended, but when will the NYT publish this in the folds of its print edition, or better yet, on the first page?