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Israelis arrived shooting, say flotilla activists
‘It was like war,’ say the activists. Israel’s claim of self-defence is ‘ridiculous’
International pressure is mounting on Israel to launch a full and honest inquiry into the Freedom Flotilla disaster, as more first-hand accounts of the Israeli commando raid emerge from the pro-Palestinian activists aboard the aid ships.
In almost every respect, the eye-witness accounts tell a different story to the version offered so far by the Israeli military and politicians.
DID THE ISRAELIS ACT IN SELF-DEFENCE? The German politician Annette Groth, who was travelling on the flotilla's biggest ship, the Mavi Marmara, said the Israeli claim that its commandos acted in self-defence was "ridiculous".
"It was like war," said Groth (above). "They had guns, Taser weapons, some type of teargas and other weaponry, compared to two-and-a-half wooden sticks we had between us. To talk of self-defence is ridiculous."
Nilufer Cetin, one of the many Turkish activists on board, told how she hid in her cabin below deck while the ship "turned into a lake of blood".
"I put a gas mask and lifejacket on my son," she said on her return to Istanbul. "They used smoke bombs followed by gas canisters."
Iara Lee, a Brazilian filmmaker also aboard the Mavi Marmara, told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo how Israeli troops came down to the deck where a lot of women were sheltering and confiscated all their telephones.
"We expected them to shoot people in the legs, to shoot in the air, just to scare people, but they were direct," said Lee. "Some of them shot in the passengers' heads. Many people were murdered it was unimaginable."
DID THE ISRAELIS GIVE ANY WARNING? Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Defence Force, said the activists were given several warnings before commandos began descending from helicopters on to the deck of the Mavi Marmara. "We found ourselves in the middle of a lynching," she said.
But the Brazilian Iara Lee (see above) said the attack in the middle of the night took the activists by surprise because they were still in international waters. They had expected a confrontation but not until they were closer to the coast.
"Their first tactic was to cut all of our satellite communications and then they attacked," she told Brazil's TV Globo from the Israeli prison where 600 activists were being held before being repatriated. "They said we were terrorists - it was absurd."
Dimitris Gielalis, a Greek activist aboard the Sfendoni, said: "Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat. They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used."
WERE THE ACTIVISTS ARMED? According to journalist Seth Freedman, invited to give the Israeli side of the story on The First Post yesterday, the activists were armed with knives, iron bars and clubs and attacked the commandos before any Israeli opened fire. The Israelis have also released photographs showing a cache of knives, heavy wrenches and wooden sticks.
But Hanin Zoabi, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, who was on board the Mavi Marmara, said "not a single passenger... raised a club".
Mihalis Grigoropoulos, one of the crew who took the flotilla from Cyprus, said the commandos were already using teargas and firing live ammunition as they hit the deck. "We did not resist at all, we couldn't even if we had wanted to," he said.
"The only thing some people tried was to delay them from getting to the bridge, forming a human shield. They were fired on with plastic bullets and stunned with electric devices."
Among the activists was the celebrated thriller writer, Henning Mankel, author of the Wallander books, travelling aboard the Swedish aid ship Sofia. En route back to Stockholm, he told a Swedish reporter: "I can promise there was not a single weapon aboard the ships."
Mankel is one of those now leading the call for global sanctions against Israel to pressurise them into lifting the three-year blockade of Gaza.
"I think we should use the experience of South Africa, where we know that the sanctions had a great impact," he said. "It took time, but they had an impact." ·
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I wonder if the Israelis will treat the vessel "Rachel Corrie" with the same brutality as they used against the young woman after whom it is named? Scary thought.
No surprise to find the Zionist hatemongers posting here, eager to talk-up their massacre? Normtrub, your *pirates* boarded a foreign ship in international waters, and shot the people on board. Israel *will* feel the consequences of this, very soon. The world is sick of Zionist whackjobs murdering at will.
Israel, like James Bond, has a license to kill- wherever, whoever, whenever- given to it by the US and to a lesser extent Europe. It is to be hoped that it will not be business as usual- a slap on the wrist- by the new UK government, following slavishly in whichever direction the US leads on Israel. A properly set up INTERNATIONAL body should investigate the killing and maiming of innocent people (which of course Israel says it regrets, what else is new?) Whoever heard of a party involved in any incident being allowed to investigate itself and its actions? Echoes of Dracula and the blood bank ring. This is probably the only aspect of President Obama's government which continues to disappoint me. Many of us had hoped fotr a more even handed approach to the Isarel- Palestine conflict. Sadly it is not to be.
Avi-Hecht's comment that the Bible says that 'Palestine belongs to the Jews' is not altogether correct. God put a condition on the possession of the land namely that they must treat the inhabitants of the land as they would treat themselves. The first law of the Jews goes as follows:- 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart all thy mind and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself'. So far the Jews have found it hard to obey the last bit. Jews, Moslems and Christians got along fine in Palestine until the influx from Europe changed everything. Ethnic cleansing, carried out to establish the state of Israel, is hardly loving thy neighbour as thyself. This included shooting men women and children in their beds. God puts serious sanctions on disobedience. Its easy to claim that God has given the land to the Jews, not so easy to fulfil the requirements of the conditions. I'm sure that many devout Jews are aware of the dangers of the disobedience of the Isreali state.
Pathetic Israel has run out of any new ideas to cover up its usual horrendous barbarity on defenceless people.
As usual, they cut off any means people have to let the world know what these Zionist barbarians did by confiscating telephones, cameras, satellite communications and then tell the world they were attacked and had to fend for their lives. Ya right!!
Attack people with Apache helicopters, bombs and gizmos mankind has never seen before and then they fear being thrown in the sea with catapults and sticks.
Isn't that a typical formula that they have always used to get sympathy from deplorable western backers of injustice. The mantra is always to kill and maim with' shock and awe' and then blame the victim.
I am awaiting justice for a change and waiting to see what Britain, the U.S. and Canada have to say and whether they possess the morality and gumption to do what should be done in this case..
Reign in the source all turmoil in the Middle East...this monster of a country called Israel. This snake has to have its wings clipped and if not, humanity will continue to suffer because of its evil deeds.
Your picture is very telling. It shows Annette Groth with the logo of her party, Die Linke in the background. Now Die Linke is the successor of the East German communist party, the SED. With a horrendous record like that, she is hardly in a position to preach.
Such incidents are deliberately provoked for propaganda purposes by the usual suspects. People genuinely interested in providing humanitarian aid would never have provoked such an incident.
The eyewitnesses are not disinterested third parties.
The goal of the mission was to give Israel a black eye.
Israel imposed a blockade of Gaza to prevent weapons from reaching the radical Islamic regime there that continues to make war on Israeli civilians. Egypt, too, has blockaded the strip,hoping to choke off weapons to Hamas, which it views as a threat.
Fact: Humanitarian relief is delivered to Gaza from Israel on a daily
basis. During the first three months of this year, 94,500 tons of
supplies were transferred to Gaza from Israel, including 48,000 tons
of food products; 40,000 tons of wheat; 2,760 tons of rice; 1,987 tons
of clothes and footwear; and 553 tons of milk powder and baby food
for the strip's 1.5 million inhabitants. Representatives of international
aid groups and the United Nations move freely to and from the Gaza
Strip.
Fact: Upon learning of the intentions of the Gaza flotilla, the Israeli
government asked the organizers to deliver their humanitarian aid
first to an Israeli port where it would be inspected (for weapons)
before being forwarded to Gaza. The organizers refused. "There are
two possible happy endings" a Muslim activist on board explained,
"either we will reach Gaza or we will achieve martyrdom."
Fact: The flotilla ignored multiple instructions from Israeli navy ships
to change course and follow them to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
Fact: On board one of the ships, according to Al-Jazeera, the "humanitarian" Palestinians sang"Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return" â?? a reference to the 628massacre of Jews in Arabia at the hands of Muhammad.
Fact: The flotilla's participants included the IHH, a "humanitarian relief fund" based in Turkey that has close ties to Hamas and to global jihadi groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya and elsewhere, and which has also organized relief to anti-U.S. Islamic radicals in Fallujah, Iraq.
A French intelligence report suggests that IHH has provided documents to terrorists, permitting them to pose as relief workers. Among the other cheerleaders â?? former British MP and Saddam Hussein pal George Galloway, all- purpose America and Israel hater Noam Chomsky, and John
Ging, the head of UNRWA, the U.N.'s agency for Palestinian support.
Fact: When the family of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was kidnapped during a cross border raid by Hamas in 2006, offered to support the flotilla if they would agree to ask Hamas to permit international agencies to visit their son, they were rebuffed.
Fact: When Israeli commandos rappelled down ropes to the deck of the Mavi Marmara, they were assaulted and beaten with metal poles and baseball bats by the Palestinians on board.
The blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba put the world at the precipice. When a country proclaims and imposes a blockade those who challenge it suffer the consequence, furthermore, the land belongs to the Jews as it is written in the bible which all hold true, hypocrisy reigns supreme
You know something's fishy when one side (the Israelis) issue a highly edited footage. When people do that, you know they have something to hide. They've simply turned it into a propaganda video. Why not release all the footage so people can make their own minds up? Someone made a decision: edited footage would be denounced as propaganda, but this was deemed preferable to the wholesale denunciation that would ensue if the whole footage were shown. So the propaganda video is a damage limitation exercise.
The propaganda video supplied by the Israeli government is a pretty good reproduction of the old fashioned "Punch and Judy" show and in the midst of this tragedy it has provided some good comic relief and certainly gave me a good chuckle.
Pesky video tape!