Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Gaza Flotilla - Who fired first?

One constant refrain among the Freedom Flotilla folks has been that IDF soldiers fired first. Herewith some excerpts:

AOL News: In almost all cases, their eyewitness accounts conflict with the narrative set out by the Israeli military and government. Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Defense Force, and other officials have said commandos used their firearms -- killing at least nine activists, and injuring dozens more -- only in self-defense after being attacked by knife- and club-wielding activists aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara. However, Iara Lee, a Brazilian filmmaker traveling on the ship, claimed Israeli troops opened fire without provocation before boarding.

The Christian Science Monitor: The various versions of what happened aboard the Mavi Marmara differ starkly. Aid workers say the Turkish ship was on a purely humanitarian mission to deliver building materials, food, medical supplies, and clothing to the Gaza Strip, which has been under a blockade since 2007 when the militant Hamas took over the government there. They say Israeli naval commandos fired first.

New York Times: The Israeli soldiers dropped onto the deck and “opened fire on sleeping civilians at four in the morning,” said Greta Berlin, a leader of the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement, speaking by phone from Cyprus on Monday.

Chicago Sun-Times: The Israeli government released video of activists attacking commandos with metal poles, but activists claim the Israelis fired first.

And, of course, the BBC: Mr Nowarah, originally from Ramallah, said he was the first to be sent home because he had injured his leg during the raid. He runs the Glasgow-based group Justice for Palestine and was in one of the smaller ships in the convoy. "The minute they landed into our vessels they were shooting and killing innocent people," he told the BBC. "We were in the international water, we were not a threat of any kind to the Israeli civilan, government or army." He said an Israeli soldier hit him on his back and leg with his gun. "We were unarmed, all we had were the chairs and tables we were sitting on to defend ourselves from the Israeli guns," he said.

I wonder: What do they do with these videos from the boat's own security cameras?


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As Tommy Lee Jones asked in The Fugitive, as he held the evidence in his hands - "Do you want to change your b------- story?"

For more updates, see Jameel...

5 comments:

  1. It seems like a modern version of the blood libel, the Jew as murderer the Jew as killer no matter what the facts say. The video is ignored the facts irrelevant.
    Also, there were not 10k tons of aid, CAMERA debunked that. Yet it gets repeated and repeated.

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  2. Funny, does anyone really believe that only 9 people would be dead if the IDF had come out shooting.

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  3. Dovid Efune, the director of the Jewish Continuity Foundation has
    drawn attention to the following unique dimension:

    "According to an Israeli Channel 2 reporter who interviewed the army personnel involved in the incident, after the attackers grappled away the soldiers’ weapons, they then proceeded to shoot their own people on the boat
    and then threw the weapons overboard. According to this report they thus effectively framed the IDF by shooting their own people in order to hurt Israel in the international arena."

    http://matzav.com/the-failure-of-the-media-in-the-flotilla-fiasco

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  4. The IDF fired first, see this account from a commando:

    T [IDF commando] said he realized the group they were facing was well-trained and likely ex-military after the commandos threw a number of stun grenades and fired warning shots before rappelling down onto the deck.

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  5. Anonymous:

    Why not provide the article link itself, so people can see how you cherry-picked a line to suit your cause?

    So dishonest.

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