More on the incident off the coast of Gaza
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
These are the facts that the Israel haters don't want you to know.
The Israel Navy commandos who on Monday raided a flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid had no choice but to defend themselves against the violent activists, a captain of the elite marines unit who carried out the operation said Tuesday.http://tinyurl.com/37crhuo
"We knew there would be resistance, but not at such an enormous scale," said Captain R., who led one of the teams and was wounded in the mission. "Every [activist] that approached us wanted to kill us."
Captain R. was the second commando to be dropped from a military helicopter onto the Turkish-flagged ship. During the mission, a large mob of the activists hurled him from the upper to lower deck of the ship.
From the Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Captain R. said that every commando who entered the ship was met by a number of activists who charged at the soldiers and attacked them. At least 75 percent of the activists took part in what the soldiers later described as a "lynch."
Activists on board a six-ship flotilla carrying aid to the Gaza Strip tried to lynch the Israel Navy commandos who boarded their Turkish-flagged boat early Monday, Israel Defense Forces sources told Haaretz on Monday afternoon. At least nine people were killed and several more were wounded in the fighting that erupted aboard one of the ships.http://tinyurl.com/25fc967
The IDF confirmed that at least seven Navy commandos had been wounded, two of them seriously, in a fight which apparently broke out after activists tried to seize their weapons.
The commandos, who intercepted the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara after it ignored orders to turn back from its course to Gaza, said they had encountered violent resistance from activists armed with sticks and knives. According to the commandos, the activists threw one of the soldiers from the upper deck to the lower after they boarded. The organizers of the flotilla said the troops opened fire first.
An Israeli military spokesman said some of the commandos were equipped with paintball guns but the non-lethal weapons were not enough against activists who charged in with batons.
"They had pistols with live ammunition as back-up, to defend themselves," he said. The IDF said it had confiscated two pistols from the boat.
One of the commandos told reporters he descended by rope from a helicopter onto one of the six ships in the convoy and was immediately attacked by a group of people waiting for them.
"They beat us with metal sticks and knives," he said. "There was live fire at some point against us."
