I haven't had a chance to read this all the way through, but it looks like the most comprehensive reports into the flotilla attack yet. Here is one particularly chilling passage on the initial Israeli attack (p.22):
Around 4:10, messages from the ship Defne, which was part of the flotilla, began to be received by the Mavi Marmara, which stated "Mavi Marmara, all the boats and ships are approaching you." Shortly after this warning was received, when most of the participants were performing their morning prayer, at around 4:30, pursuit boats carrying masked, armed soldiers came alongside the boat. There were at least 10 Israeli soldiers in every boat. While the soldiers in the boat were trying to grab onto the boat with heavy grappling irons, they also started to fire on the ship. Three different shots were heard. The highest frequency sound was the most intermittent. The second most frequent heard sound was a full and loud noise that resembled a gas bomb. The third sound was the constant sound of machine-gun fire. While these developments were taking place, military helicopters full of armed soldiers came over the ship and soldiers started to repel down. The soldiers were shooting as they were descending.
Here the most important matter that needs to be emphazised is that the operation developed in a hostile manner that was geared directly towards killing. The Israeli soldiers did not open fire on the ship as a warning, but rather to directly kill the unarmed civilians on the ship. At this juncture, the Israeli soldiers shot a couple of the participants on board the ship, where there were no arms of any kind, in the head, killing them; they also injured a number of people.
The Goons That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.
They could prevaricate straight either.
Ooops! Make that “they couldn’t prevaricate straight either.”
an important question is why the IDF attacked in twilight and confiscated all the media devices. It seems as though the IDF intent was to incite fear, which could turn to violence. Because nothing sells morning newspapers, when peddling a story about angry Muslims on the high seas. If the IDF were serious about a civil and safe operation, they would have performed this action in the morning light, since the Mavi was many hours from reaching the Gaza shoreline.
But the facts will have little effect in the media. The IDF eeked out a win with the help of the media again. But any one who asks the simple questions, like why the sound grenades and why attack at dusk, will understand who the aggressor is. -
The truth may score in a second round.
“But the facts will have little effect in the media.”
Maybe not with the israeli occupied mainstream u.s. media, but world media got the story and israel continues to be viewed as a criminal nation. The mainstream u.s. media is a sick joke little different from the crap in nazi Germany.
It’s quite obvious that the israelis attacked with intent to kill. There was no peaceful intent just to stop the ship, only to attack the Mavi Marmara and kill people. And the Mavi Marmara was purposely singled out for this atrocity. This was obviously an attack by israel on the nation of Turkey and intended to be from the very beginning.
The world response should be total isolation of israel.
hayate,
If the intent was to kill, why board the ship? why not just rocket it from the air, or spray the machine guns from a distance? seems quite unnecessary to put themselves in harms way so they can be beaten with metal rods and stabbed with knives. Heck, they could have even torpedoed the ship. Personally, if I was commanding the operation, I would have unleashed a pack of frothy rabid saber-tusked wild hayate boars on the deck, which would have for sure caused death from sheer disgust no less. especially the female ones…
Oren, did you read the report? They didn’t exactly unleash a “pack of frothy rabid saber-tusked wild hayate boars” but they did dispatch police dogs to terrorize the innocent aid workers. Oh, sorry, I meant the terrorists. Three words for you — READ THE REPORT.
Oren June 29, 2010 at 3:33 pm
The zionists must be running out of decent shills….
Hayate,
This is old news, but it seems last year the Israeli Foreign Ministry began recruiting platoons of bloggers to infiltrate anti-Zionist websites and spread The Truth As Defined By Israel. Google this phrase: “Twitterers Paid To Spread Israeli Propaganda”. Wonder whether any of them have made landfall at Mondoweiss? Now who might they be, I wonder….
bookwoman
When that news came out I used to follow ziotroll posts with an article describing just that propaganda programme. :D The zionists have been doing that stuff since there was a mass media to d it on. Before the web, they ran mass letter writing campaigns (to politicos and media outlets) and when they took over the Christian fundies, they taught them how to do it as well. With the internet, they recruited people to spam the web en mass. It’s been an ongoing thing and one can see the results when waves of new spam start hitting sites after something important took place of before something important to these knuckledraggers is set to happen, such as an election, congressional vote, attack on another country, etc. Over the years I have noticed that an unusual percentage of this ziospam (from the usa, anyway) seems to come from two disparate general groupings. One is retired people who were involved in law enforcement or guv spookery outfits and the other is out of work actors and such. Entertainment people who never made the cut. The latter I’ve suspected were being paid, like as a telemarketer job, and were recruited through telemarketing adverts in entertainment industry periodicals and such or by word of mouth from recruiters in that industry. A funny thing about this actors group of spammers, though, is that so many of them are obviously gay, yet they are invariably on line spouting nonsense in support of homophobic ziofascists.
BTW, I noticed a further large percentage of ziotrolls are lawyers, advert agency employees and sales people. Says a lot about the zionist cause, I’d say. :D
Oren – hayate did not say the intent was to kill EVERYBODY. If that had been the intent no doubt the strategy would be similar to that used on the USS Liberty in 1967.
Turkey is forbidding the military overflights at this time.
If they felt isolated now. It could get a lot worse, says Cole.
link to juancole.com
Chu
The Turks have gone a lot further than that. They’ve retty much consigned their relations with israel to garbage bin. I suspect that is what israel hoped for since they have a new enemy to yell antisemite at. The israelis want chaos in the region or total subservience. Turkey made it clear quite a while ago that they were not israel’s bitch like the usa is.
Wow. No need for Israel to conduct an “internal investigation” on the flotilla killings. This eyewitness account tells you everything you need to know in just about 40 pages. The most glaring hypocrisy of the entire, murderous affair is that Israel made it seem as if its soldiers dropped down onto the decks in an unthreatening, how’s-it-going, let’s-be-friends approach. This report blows that hasbaric bs out of the water.
This was a military operation, people. You won’t read about it in the mainstream press, but if you have a decent memory and you’re well read, you may recall that the Israelis had codenamed it Operation Sky Breeze and Operation Sky Winds. They had declared war on these people.
I’m stunned as an American that 83 of our senators signed on to a letter approving of this unconscionable “defensive action.”
85 senators.
“85 senators.”
85 suckuptors
Oscar, does this account point out that the Israelis only boarded the ship to hand out flowers and lollipops, and to ask very nicely if the evil terrorist “aid workers” wanted any help in handing out their stocks of anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank missiles, and canisters of weaponized bubonic plague to the slavering hordes of swarthy, unshaven, Jew-hating, fanatical, Gilad-Shalit-torturing Gazans?
No?
Then an Israeli internal investigation is absolutley necessary. How else could we learn the TRUTH?
Why is no official body demanding that Israel release the confiscated evidence that would back up this account? (Which I believe has been erased or deleted)
I’d like to know too potsherd.
You mean you can’t guess?
Well I can guess – in fact state with certainty – that the stealing of all the independent recording of the raid was about a coverup. But I’m disappointed that journalists haven’t done more to recover their stuff. There was talk of a legal class action but I haven’t heard anything lately. Israel has a history of killing/injuring journalists and they should be held more accountable for it.
Sorry to go off topic, but I just had this little tete a tete with the Ted Belman of the smart set – Eric Alterman:
Eric Alterman,
Hamas doesn’t have to conform to the effete standards of a superannuated second-rate Jewish intellectual to earn a seat at the table. They’re no different than Irgun or the Stern Gang. In fact, considering the murderously racist nature of the “Settler State” they’re fighting – they’re morally far superior to those Jewish “freedom fighters”. Cling anxiously to your Jewishness if you must, but it puts you in the same camp as Ted Belman, Melanie Phillips, and Baruch Goldstein.
Ranier Mack
Washington, D.C.
“going to recommend to The Nation that they print this so they can see what stupid schmucks I have to deal with. I deserve a raise.
And don’t bother responding. You’re spam.” (Eric Alterman)
Was I talking about your looks? PLEASE have them print it so that all four of The Nation’s readers can see what a scrofulous vuntz Eric “poor, poor, Israel” Alterman is As far as that raise, how many shekels do you think a burping, scratching, neurotic little Afrikaner Jew nerd deserves?
DC, DC
Extraordinary, really, that the Israeli warmongers thought this was a good idea. Their instinctive reflex is, as usual, hit out with overwhelming and lethal force, then manipulate the media, whining on about ‘poor Jews’ always being attacked. Not a single one of their ridiculous and cynical lies is remotely believable. Not content with murdering 9 innocent people, and injuring others, they apparently think they have a right to kidnap and humiliate people who are no threat to them, not to mention the petty thievery which resulted in the theft of hundreds of laptops, phones, cameras and money. It is beyond satire or reason that they consider themselves beyond any accountability for these blatant crimes, that they lie, steal and murder in order to preserve an entirely illegal medieval blockade of 1.7 million people, half of whom are children. No wonder they have to lie, the aim of which is mainly to convince themselves and an absurdly gullible Israeli public that they are, somehow, incredibly, unbelievably, in the right. The delusional and destructive nature of the Israeli mindset is there for everybody to see – how anybody can think they are fooled by the false, mendacious, murderous thugs who constitute the IDF is a mystery to us all.
“It is beyond satire or reason that they consider themselves beyond any accountability for these blatant crimes”
Accountability, a good, solid word, and both morally and legally an important concept. Shortly after the flotilla incident a brave man at the Brookings Institution, Mr. Charles Ebinger, wrote an article discussing that most taboo of subjects, the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, in the light of recent events. His point was precisely that it’s high time the US begins to hold Israel accountable for its actions, especially when said actions turn out to be damaging to us. Not surprisingly I gather he has become the target of the usual vicious hate campaign. You know the modus operandi—silencing by intimidation. Perhaps someone could send him a kind word, I’m sure he would appreciate it. Unless he has joined the ranks of the unemployed since the article his email address is: cebinger@brookings.edu
I like your name, justicewillprevail. Wishful thinking?
…Poor Eric will have to cringe without benefit of moi:
Dear Ranier Mack,
We would like to print your letter to Eric Alterman as a letter to the editor. Permission granted?
Judith Long
Letters page editor
The Nation
Sorry, Judith, no go, it’s already been posted/published on Mondoweiss. Too, the exchange will be included in an upcoming Harper’s piece specifically dealing with the mounting pressure being put on a number of “progressive Jews” (Alterman, Jeff Goldberg, Chait, Richard Cohen, etc.) who are being called out for their defense of the indefensible (Israel). The Nation has to be questioned (if not outright condemned) for sanctioning the employ of anyone who cravenly hides behind their Jewishness to support a murderously racist “Settler State”. Archbishop Tutu is on record stating that Israel’s oppressive treatment of the Palestinians is uglier and more heinous than that suffered by blacks at the hands of Apartheid South Africa. Yet, there’s Eric Alterman, The Nation rubbing his tummy, patting his back.
I’m sure some folks will suggest that the IHH report is bogus, just as others will suggest that any Israeli report is / will be bogus. The only correct thing to do is to have a third party – or, better yet, several third parties – gather all the evidence (including all video and photographic evidence seized by the Israelis) and conduct objective investigations into the events surrounding the boarding of the Mavi Marmara.
Or would that be construed as “working for vengeance”?
“Or would that be construed as ‘working for vengeance’?”
Already been. By Zionist government, stridently, and by Obama & Co, more demurely.
I think that both sides obfuscate, although the plain truth is that only one side can be guilty of murder.
The people who were on board emphasize “aggression from the start” on the side of the troops. However, upon careful reading, it is almost certain that in the initial stage troops did not use lethal ammo. In particular, the dead were shot from mostly from point blank range, so probably not during the landing. The sounds of weapons during the initial landing can be easily explained by psychological attack.
Some activists were clearly (a) well trained in hand combat (b) eager to beat up some troops. That does not mean that they should be killed in execution style, but it is not particularly “Gandhian”.
I speculate that something like that happened.
(a) During the initial landing, troops duty was to secure dramatic footage of heroically overcoming resistance of the passengers of the “hate boat”, hence theatrical weapons (paintball guns??!!) etc.
(b) Nevertheless, they were totally surprised by the actual resistance. Three troops were separated from others and beaten up. Commandoes really should not allow that to happen. But they did. If I understand Israeli version, they basically retreated for 20 minutes and asked for permission to use deadly force (which took 20 minutes? what kind of chain of command was it?)
c) Now subjective narratives were “objectively split” — very different perception of the same fact. The hotheaded activists were not interested in “provocation” but they really wanted to deliver aid. In the meantime, the captured soldiers were isolated for their own protection and given first aid. But from the troops perspective, the initial photo op turned into the WORST nightmare: three captured soldiers sail to join Gilad Shalit, i.e. to be delivered to Hamas. I cannot imagine anything that would equally enrage Israeli troops and officers.
d) Enraged soldiers kill. This is true everywhere.
I wonder what IDF is more ashamed of: the ineptness showed at the beginning, or the murderous behavior later. My bet would be on the former. But either one suffices to avoid a meaningful investigation.
In the meantime, The Whitewash committee is denied requested brushes and paint. Israeli government has a bit of a problem: what kind of consistent version of events will make it look good? I do not mean “truthful”, but simply consistent. For example, there was a report, not repeated, that at the time when the action took place, both Barak and Ashkenazi were asleep. Just imagine a committee getting to the bottom of that innocent detail.
piotr
Before the israelis even tried to board, they had already fired on Mavi Marmara and killed 2 people. There is no question the israelis intended to kill people on the vessel no matter what the people aboard Mavi Marmara did.
Faced with that situation, what would you have done, had you been aboard. At the same time, think about what happened to the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967.
What the Gaza Convoy needed was a strong international naval/air escort with enough muscle to send any attacking israeli force to hell, should the israelis have a [extremely] rare flash of courage and be fanatical enough to attack anyway under those circumstances. And follow up it up by destroying israel’s ability to conduct war, completely.
Basically, follow up any israeli aggressive moves by doing to israel what the Russians did to israeli’s proxy, Georgia, in Aug. 2008.
I am not sure, the timelines are very confused.
There is a story that activists sabotaged lines that descended from the first helicopter, and that lead to the interruption in the action and a separation of a small group from the rest. I just do not see how the activist under lethal fire could tie up the ropes. Therefore I think that the “firing before boarding” happened during the second attempt, when the troops were already humiliated and enraged.
Concerning military escort, in a “real” naval engagement vessels can be destroyed with torpedoes and missiles. Look at the havoc created by one (alleged) North Korean torpedo. So an escort is a suicide mission without proper diplomatic cover. Basically, a threat of grave consequences if the escort is attacked. But then you do not need more than a token escort?
Theoretically, Iran/Hezbollah have the ability to retaliate in the form of missiles in South Lebanon, but the do not have a good diplomatic position, and things would go seriously out of hand. Although I would advise IDF to go gently on the Lebanese nuns. Turkey could announce a blockade of Israel. Even if rarely enforced, sinking or hijacking a few cargoes would wreck havoc with the insurance rates for the traffic to Israeli ports. Basically, according to the international law, if I understand correctly Israeli experts, anyone can announce blockade anywhere by declaring that some entity is hostile. And anyone can announce human catastrophe anywhere and intervene (call it Kosovo precedent). There is only a practical issue what you can get away with.
Concerning Georgia as “Israeli proxy” this just makes no sense. Georgian hired some Israelis to do their training, and Israel was stupid enough not to put kibosh on that idea, but the initiative was Georgian. I even suspect that no “Western power” contemplated the possibility that Shaakashvili can be THAT stupid. From the point of view of Israel, the fact that “Georgia got a bloody nose” was the best it could happen. Imagine that they would win. Russia’s policies are in “do not get mad, get even”, and in the aftermath they supplied some serious hardware to Syria, but I guess that they could do much more if humiliated. And on the assumption that Russian supplies are technologically backward and make to strategic difference, why not allow them to supply Hamas?
Your theory isn’t supported by eyewitness accounts such as that of Al Jazeera journalist Jamal El Shayyal, who states he saw people with lethal gunshot wounds on the top of their heads.
“Until that point I had not yet seen an Israeli soldier on deck. As far as I am concerned, it’s a lie to say they only started shooting on deck. Only then did I see an Israeli soldier on deck.
The men who were dead had been fired on from above.”
link to independent.co.uk
There’s three different sources of footage in existence: that shot by the IDF, that shot by journalists and activists onboard the MM, the CCTV footage from the MM. Israel is in possession of nearly all of it and has released precious little of it.
If there were conclusive proof of your theory in that footage of course the Israeli MFA would release it. Instead we were treated to all sorts of ridiculous amateur propaganda.
Until proved otherwise I’m firmly of the viewpoint the IDF did as Jamal El Shayyal claimed they did. Israel has fought an independent international investigation of the raid, not for no reason.
Travelling 61 miles outside Israel’s territorial waters for a nighttime commando raid was an act of aggression designed to intimidate, unnecessary given many other ways the MM could have been stopped and boarded.
Perhaps Turkish forensic reports can help. I recall reports of shots from very close proximity. Now, how can you shoot before stepping on the deck? Either you shoot from the helicopter, or you keep rope in one hand, the gun in the other and you shoot. That sounds like a good scene for Bond movie, but not like an actual tactic. Shots from a helicopter/boat would come from a large distance.
There was surely some huge confusion, plus some people at some point, perhaps initially, where shot with rubber coated bullets. Wounded people falling on the deck bleeding from their heads could look like dead.
But I admit that I am theorizing. Is there an account on minute-by-minute basis, how many helicopters were involved, when did they fire, when they sent people onto the decks, was there a 20 minute interruption in the boarding etc.
While I do not think that the activists are spreading well coordinated lies, they have some reason to exaggerate some aspects and confuse the time line. One question which is not properly answered is: why there was such fierce resistance? Version H: natural impulse of self-defense, version I: because they were terrorists.
One of the killed passengers was a Taekwendo instructor, our Hawaiian O’Keefe, a former Marine, I suspect that there was a large group there well versed in martial arts. And I think that their main motivation was to deliver aid to Gaza, with resistance and guile if necessary. They could also explicitly plan to provoke the troops to go bonkers (by capturing some of them).
Sumud, what is being questioned is not what happened but the sequence in which they happened; there is no doubt that Israel provoked this whole mess and came looking to make trouble and to make an example of the activists and there is also no doubt that some were shot from above. In one of the very first interviews I saw on TV, one activist described how the helicopters had come in 2 waves with the first one having the commandos come down the ropes and of which 2 or 3 were immediately overpowered, disarmed and dragged downstairs and the helicoper pulling away from the ship. A little while later, the helicopter came back but this time with the commandos firing from the helicopters before they started coming down the ropes.
We have to take into account that this interview happened a few minutes after the activist was released and therefore very agitated and he may not have recounted the sequence of events as they actually happened but the version I heard from his interview was similar to the one being discussed by Piotr and it makes sense to consider that when the commandos were jumped, there was no shooting going on as the activists would not have been able to disarm or even approach the ropes if the shooting was going on.
Walid ~ I agree the sequence of events is the problem but piotr is willing to ignore witness testimony which I quoted, and seems more interested in his theorising than questioning why all the photos and footage (which could likely settle all debate) was confiscated. I also hear no calls for an independent internationla organisation, which I believe is necessary given Israel’s extremely poor track record of self-investigation and the involvement of around 35 different nation’s citizens in the flotilla. Instead, piotr is quietly pushing the Israeli version of events (innocent soldiers attacked by flotilla ppl) which I do not find credible.
There was nothing innocent about so many armed and masked soldiers assaulting a civilian ship by sea and air in the middle of the night after having jammed its communications and having confiscated all recording equipment on board.
My version is that the Israeli command wanted a photo-op of a commando operation and bungled it badly, and subsequently lost all reason and executed people in rage and panic. This makes more sense that a theory that they pre-planned a massacre.
I accept certain elements of Israeli version, but there is no way that they fit into a scenario in which Israeli military “looks good”. Another observation is that IDF may be “patient” in the face of even genuine terrorist attacks, but when one of the troops is taken prisoner, the hell gets loose. It unhinges them. Example: the last war in Lebanon, and to a degree, Cast Lead. I am not saying that they should get unhinged.
I would also like to stress that while perhaps subjectively lethal force was in “self-defense” and to “rescue the captured comrades”, but it really makes no sense. The ludicrous justification was that they had the choice of using paintball guns that, alas, were ineffective on brazen activists or handguns with regular bullets. But the killings were done by the “second wave” when they had everything, tear gas, rubber bullets and perhaps even riot gear.
Armed and angry people often behave badly. For example, it happens that anarchists or some other “non-Gandhian” protesters force police to retreat during a demonstration, and perhaps break some windows, and/or smash some cars, and when the demonstration is OVER, police “restores order” by capturing a small group and beating them to pulp. And the narrative is of restoring order, self-defense and resisting arrest. But even in Iran they would rather not kill “their own people”.
Were soldiers innocent? According to a song of Okudjava, soldiers are always innocent.
THE SONG OF A HAPPY SOLDIER
I’ll take a bag, a helmet and a ration,
a jacket of protective coloration,
I’ll tramp about the streets, a barracks lodger,
it’s easy to become a real soldier.
I will forget my daily cares and pledges,
I do not have to think of jobs and wages.
I’m playing with my gun, a barracks lodger,
it’s easy to become a real soldier.
If something should go wrong, I do not care.
It’s, so to say, my Motherland’s affair.
It’s great to be a simple barracks lodger,
an innocent and inoffensive soldier.
[It is hard to translate well. The original is more like "...not our problem. They say -- Motherland so ordered. How well to be a simple soldier. Always simple, never guilty."]
“But the killings were done by the “second wave” when they had everything, tear gas, rubber bullets and perhaps even riot gear.”
There’s no evidence to support your theory, and there is flotilla activist / journalist testimony that directly contradicts it.
Piotr & Hayate I am taken with both of your interpretations of the Mavi Marmara, but would like to add a third factor:
Sayeret 13, the IDF’s elite naval commando unit, is just as much a trigger-happy undisciplined rabble as the rest of the IDF, and quite incapable of undertaking a quiet, efficient, non-lethal ship takeover. They should be restricted to attacking innocent Gazan fishermen, where no-one can see them.
One of the most revealing photos was of the Sayeret officer, being led downstairs for medical attention, blubbing and weeping, with merely a bloody nose.
link to flickr.com
Note: The man holding him and fending off a camera was specifically delegated by IHH to protect him.
Read between the lines of the IHH report; the delays after the takeover, and the incidental brutality meted out to humanitarians before they even arrived in Ashdod, says it all. These were not soldiers; they were half-trained thugs.
Richard Parker
Notes From The Levant
link to levantnotes.blogspot.com
(Reviving Now!)
Richard Parker
I saw that photo of the israeli blubberboi. I had wondered if he was one of the two who had already killed people on the MM when captured. Three israelis got captured, 2 of these had killed one the MM people just prior to being disarmed and captured. The idf are like the German occupation troops in occupied territories during WW2 who would wipe out a village in response to the resistance killing a German soldier. These were the rejects unfit for frontline duty. Much like the plugs the usa is using in Iraq and Afghanistan now.
Interesting information about the make-up of the propaganda people, hayate. Thanks.
Cheers, bookwoman.