In their own words: Survivor testimonies from Flotilla 31 May 2010
http://www.freegaza.org/en/boat-trips/survivor-testimonies
http://www.freegaza.org/en/boat-trips/survivor-testimonies
The crimes I saw on the Mavi Marmara
Lubna Masarwa writing from Kfor Qara, Live from Palestine, 8 June 2010
Palestinians in Haifa demonstrate in protest of Israel's attacks on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, 1 June 2010. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
During the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara, deep in international waters, I was inside the body of the ship. We were unarmed civilians ranging in age from a one-year-old child to an 88-year-old priest. We were going to Gaza to break the siege that Israel has imposed on a million-and-a-half people for the last four years. We were carrying a cargo of humanitarian and construction aid as well as letters from Turkish children to the children of Gaza. We were full of hope. When the attack began at 4am on 31 May 2010, our ship was transformed into a military target. On the deck, at first there was heavy firing, and then the Israeli occupation's commandos took control of the ship.
Minutes after the attack began, wounded and corpses were being brought inside from the deck. We were then held for several hours with four bodies and dozens of wounded, some in critical condition. Blood was pouring from the bodies of the dead and the injured. We wanted to help them, but we had no medical equipment to treat them. There was nothing we could do. One Turkish woman was crying and saying goodbye to the body of her dead husband, petting his face and reading the Quran over him. Another man had a bullet wound in his head and was dying.
From 5am on, we were begging the Israeli navy to provide medical assistance to the wounded and dying but received no response. We made the request in English and Hebrew through the loudspeaker and also wrote a sign in Hebrew reading, "SOS ... people dying in need of immediate medical attention" and put it on the window in front of them. They ordered the people with the sign to get lost.
At around 7am they ordered us to come to the exit door one by one. I requested in Hebrew that medics be allowed to stay with the wounded; a solider told me to shut my mouth. Later he called me, "You, tell the wounded that if they want to stay alive, they should come out one by one." We tried to bring the injured out individually, but they could not walk and were falling down.
We were transferred to the upper deck. We were searched; our hands were tied, and we were forced to sit or kneel on the deck as a military helicopter hovered within meters above our heads. Heavily-armed soldiers with guns and knives strapped to their arms and legs stood guard over us with dogs. They were standing around us with the blood of their victims on their boots, joking and making lewd sexual suggestions to each other about the female prisoners. Then Israeli personell came and strutted around the ship. We were held this way for hours. I was held here until 1:40am on 1 June 2010.
As soon as the Israeli occupation forces learned that I was a Palestinian Israeli citizen, I was treated more harshly and isolated from the rest of the other imprisoned passengers. I was taken to a prison in Ashkelon where I was held in isolation and subjected to humiliations such as strip searches four times a day. The next day we were brought to court, and I was held in a small metal box inside the police car for eight hours with my hands and legs shackled. We were subjected to various accusations, from attacking soldiers to carrying weapons. The judge gave the police permission to extend our detention for another eight days. After international pressure forced the Israeli authorities to release all the foreign prisoners, all the Palestinian citizens of Israel were taken to court again. This time, the judge ruled that we would be subject house arrest and would be forbidden to leave the country for 45 days.
As an occupier and a colonizer, Israel depends on the principle of "divide and conquer" in order to maintain its control. It is especially threatened by people like the Palestinian delegation from 1948 (what is now referred to as Israel) who sailed to Gaza on the Mavi Marmara, because we defy Israel's attempt to divide us as Palestinians. By struggling with our sisters and brothers under the siege, we also send the message that we are one people and our struggle is one struggle. Israel is threatened by solidarity.
That Israel should murder civilians in international waters is not strange. It is a direct continuation of its policy of targeting civilians with lethal force and deadly policies such as the siege of Gaza, and Israeli policies of occupation and apartheid.
Israel feels entitled to besiege, to kill and to attack civilians in international water. This results from the silence of the world that makes Israel believe it has the right to do so.
This is the time to break the silence and to take action. To say "enough is enough" for Israel. Israel's impunity must end. Israeli war criminals, such as the ones who committed piracy and murder on the Mavi Marmara and their superiors, must be held accountable for their crimes in international courts.
Lubna Masarwa was a Free Gaza Movement representative aboard the Mavi Marmara and wrote this essay from her house arrest in Kfor Qara, Palestine. She can be reached at Lubnna A T gmail D O T com.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11327.shtml 11 jun 2010, 11:11 , Respect Maria http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/opinion/11iht-edkouchner.html 11 jun 2010, 11:16 , Respect Maria June 13, 2010
Footage proves indiscriminate Israeli live fire at Mavi Marmara passengers in Gaza Flotilla
The one hour long raw footage released by the Cultures of Resistance Foundation (CoR) of the 31 May Israeli attack aboard the Mavi Marmara shows clear evidence of indiscriminate Israeli fire aboard the ship. Nine people were killed and dozens injured when Israeli forces boarded and seized what was the largest passenger vessel in the six-ship Gaza Freedom Flotilla in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea about 80 miles west of the coast of Israel.
Starting at about 43 min 29 sec into the footage we begin to see injured people being carried by other passengers. This continues throughout the rest of the footage -- some of the people have gunshot wounds in the neck, shoulders, stomach, legs, or are so covered in blood it is difficult to tell where they have been hit. At 46 min 58 sec, for example, we see a white-haired man with blood pouring from his legs being carried down a main staircase into a lower deck of the ship to an area where other injured people are being treated:
The injured man in the picture above appears to be Çetin Topçuoglu, 54, who coached Turkey's national Taekwondo team, and who subsequently died of his injuries. As he is brought downstairs a woman, who appears from many other published photographs to be his wife Çigdem Topçuoglu, watches:
There are several other disturbing scenes of severely injured and dead people. Israel claims that its soldiers, who invaded and hijacked the Mavi Marmara along with the other five ships and then kidnapped all their passengers and forced them to the Israeli port of Ashdod, fired live ammunition only in self-defense -- when they faced imminent risk of harm. But at least one sequence in the CoR footage disproves this claim.
Starting at about 50 minutes the camera operator walks up the staircase from the area where the injured are being treated on blood covered floors. There are many people on the landing and up the next flight of stairs. Some are holding sticks, others cameras. There is blood on the wall:
At the top of the stairs one man is standing against the wall trying to peer out of a porthole through the door leading to the outside deck. On the wall is a sign that says "5 Bridge Deck." At about 51 min 5 sec there is the sound of a gunshot and the man dives. There is commotion as people apparently prepare to defend the lower deck area in case of an Israeli invasion. Someone shouts "la ilaha illa allah" (There is no God but God) -- a common exclamation in the face of danger. It is apparent that Israelis are shooting through the porthole. At 50 min 52 sec, the red dot from a laser gunsight comes through the porthole and illuminates the internal wall of the ship:
At about 52 min 25 sec one of the passengers pushes open the door with a pole but recoils as there is a loud popping sound and flash, possibly another gunshot. After this the camera operator pans away and goes back down the stairs to the area where injured people are being treated.
Careful analysis of the frames shows that the Israelis had been using live fire. This can be seen by the damage done to the door jamb in the following stills, the first taken at 50 min 31 sec and the second about a minute later at 51 min 47 sec:
This single sequence proves that Israeli hijackers fired live ammunition into crowded spaces when they were not threatened from inside the space and could not have had a clear view of whom they might hit. The cameras and recordings that Israel seized and confiscated may contain many other such sequences. No wonder Israel is so adamant about hiding the evidence and rejecting a truly independent investigation.
See also:
* Video reveals European, American weapons used in Israeli attack on Gaza Flotilla
(video staat bij de gadgets)
http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/ 14 jun 2010, 12:21 , Respect Maria June 13, 2010
12 hours ago
Video reveals European, American weapons used in Israeli attack on Gaza Flotilla
On Friday 11 June, the Cultures of Resistance Foundation (CoR) released a full hour of video taken aboard the Mavi Marmara before and during the Israeli assault on the ship in the early hours of 31 May in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea about 80 miles west of the coast of Israel. At least nine people were killed and dozens injured in the Israeli attack.
CoR director Iara Lee and camera operators from her organization were aboard the ship and managed to smuggle the raw footage out of Israel despite Israel's confiscation of all other recordings and images from journalists and passengers when they were taken against their will to Israel and later expelled from the country.
This video reveals information about some of the weapons used by Israel. In using these weapons to enforce an illegal blockade on Gaza and to carry out an illegal attack on civilian ships in international waters, Israel may have acted in violation of the US Arms Export Control Act of 1976, the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports or other international law or human rights laws of the exporting countries.
Sa'ar class corvette warship
In this still taken from the CoR video at 1hr 26sec, an Israeli warship appears:
By comparison with this publicly available image from Wikipedia, (below) it is clear that the ship in the CoR video is a Sa'ar 5-class corvette built by US company Northrop-Grumman. According to Wikipedia, the Israel navy owns three of these ships which are the most advanced in its fleet.
AS 565 "Panther" Eurocopter
Note that a helicopter is clearly visible on the stern of the ship seen in the CoR image. This is an AS 565 "Panther" combat attack helicopter manufactured by Eurocopter, a subsidiary of the European weapons and aeronautics company, EADS. Below is a publicly available image of an Israel Air Force Eurocopter, which is described by Wikipedia as a "multi-purpose twin-engine helicopter" that "is used for a wide range of military roles, including combat assault, fire support, anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, search & rescue, and MEDEVAC."
Beyond being present and available on a warship that was participating in the attack on the Flotilla, it is unclear what additional role if any the EU-built helicopter played in the Israeli assault.
Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk
Israel used Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters to drop armed commandos onto the top of the Mavi Marmara, as can be seen in these stills taken respectively at 40 min 32 sec and 41 min 10 sec in the CoR video:
By comparing with this publicly available image of an Israeli UH-60 and other images on the internet, it's easy to identify the helicopters used in the attack on the Mavi Marmara by the characteristic landing gear, the shape of the inlet ducts for the engines, the shape of the windows on the sliding side door among other features.
According to Wikipedia, Israel operated 49 military UH-60s as of November 2008.
Morena Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boat (RHIB)
By comparison with images on the Internet, it is possible to identify the speed boats which Israeli commandos used to try to board the Mavi Marmara from the sea as Morena Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boats. These boats can be seen from these stills taken from the CoR video at 36 min 20 sec and 38 min 07 sec:
I have been able to find little information about where these boats are manufactured. If you can find out more, please email me and I'll update this post.
Paintball guns
In addition to the live ammunition which killed 9 passengers and injured dozens of others (as clearly visible in the CoR) video, Israeli forces also used paintball guns. In this image at 36 min 42 sec in the CoR video, an Israeli soldier can be seen firing what appears to be a paintball gun up toward the Mavi Marmara from a Morena RHIB alongside it.
It is impossible to identify exactly what make and model the Israelis are using, but as can be seen from this image taken from Amazon, the Israeli weapon has the characteristic shape of a paintball gun with the large loader on top which drops the paintballs into the barrel for firing.
Israeli propaganda made much of the fact that the Gaza Freedom Flotilla hijackers "only" used paintball guns (that is until they started shooting people with live ammunition), as if this was somehow a "safe" or even a nonviolent thing to do! Paintball is considered by many people a sport where opposing teams hunt each other down and fire projectiles which explode against a target marking them with paint. Everywhere that this activity is legal, it is strictly regulated for safety, because firing paintballs at a person who is not wearing protective gear, especially a face mask, can result in serious injury including loss of eyesight and possibly even death. Firing paintball guns indiscriminately against unprotected civilians is an incredibly reckless and inherently violent and dangerous thing to do.
If anyone went into a public place in any country and started shooting at people with paintball guns, he or she would be subjected to very serious criminal charges. It is unclear where the weapons used by the Israelis originate, but these dangerous weapons should be investigated along with the others in the hijackers' arsenal.
Note: All the stills taken from the CoR video are unaltered and have not been enhanced in any way.
See also:
* Footage proves indiscriminate Israeli live fire at Mavi Marmara passengers in Gaza Flotilla
http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/20299014
What Kevin Neish Saw
Eyewitness to the Israeli Assault on the Mavi Marmara
By DAVE LINDORFF
Kevin Neish of Victoria, British Columbia, didn%u2019t know he was a celebrity until he was about to board a flight from Istanbul to Ottawa. This Arab woman wearing a beautiful outfit suddenly ran up to me crying, It's you! From Arab TV! You're famous! he recalls with a laugh. I didn't know what she was talking about, but she told me, I saw you flipping through the Israeli commando's book! It's being aired over and over!
A soft-spoken teacher and former civilian engineer with the Canadian Department of Defense, Neish realized then that a video taken by an Arab TV cameraman in the midst of the Israeli assault on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza of him flipping through a booklet had been transmitted before the Israelis blocked all electronic signals from the flotilla. The booklet had pictures and profiles of all the passengers, and he'd found it in the backpack of an Israeli Defense Force commando.
Neish, 53, was on the second deck of the flotilla's lead ship, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, with a good view of the stern, when the IDF, in the early morning darkness of May 31, began its assault with percussion grenades, tear gas and a hail of bullets. He then moved to the fourth deck in an enclosed stairwell, from which he watched took photographs as casualties were carried down past him to a makeshift medical station. Several IDF commandos, captured by the passengers and crew, were also brought past him.
I saw them carrying this one IDF guy down, he recalls. He looked terrified, like he thought he was going to be killed. But when a big Turkish guy, who had seen seriously injured passengers who had been shot by the IDF, charged over and tried to hit the commando, the Turkish aid workers pushed him off and pinned him to the wall. They protected this Israeli soldier.
That was when he found the backpack which the soldier had dropped. I figured I'd look inside and see what he was carrying, Neish says. And inside was this kind of flip-book. It was full of photos and names in English and Hebrew of who was on all the ships. The booklet also had a detailed diagram of the decks of the Mavi Marmara.
Meanwhile, he says, more and more people were being carried down the stairs from the mayhem above people who'd been shot, and people who were dying or people already dead. I took detailed photos of the dead and wounded with my camera, he says, adding, There were several guys who had two neat bullet holes side by side on the side of their head--clearly they were executed.
Neish smuggled his photos out of Israel to Turkey despite his arrest on the ship and imprisonment in Israel for several days. I pulled out the memory card, tossed my camera and anything I had on me that had anything to do with electronics, and then kept moving the chip around so it wouldn't be found, he says. The Israelis took all the cameras and computers. They were smashing some and keeping others. I put the chip in my mouth under my tongue, between my butt cheeks, in my sock, everywhere, to keep them from finding it, he says. He finally handed it to a Turk who was leaving for a flight home on a Turkish airline. He says the card ended up in the hands of an organization called Free Gaza, and he has seen some of his pictures published, so he knows they made it out successfully.
Neish says that claims that the Israeli commandos were just armed with paint guns and 9 mm pistols are Bullshit--at one point when I was in the stairwell, a commando opened a hatch above, stuck in a machine gun, and started firing. Bullets were bouncing all over the place. If the guy had gotten to look in and see where he was shooting, I'd have been dead, but two Turkish guys in the stairwell, who had short lengths of chain with them that they had taken from the access points to the lifeboats, stood to the side of the hatch and whipped them up at the barrell. I don't know if they were trying to hit the commando or to use them to snatch away the gun, but the Israeli backed off, and they slammed and locked the hatch.
I never saw a single paint gun, or a sign of a fired paint ball! he says.
He also didn't see any guns in the hands of people who were on the ship. In the whole time I was there on the ship, I never saw a single weapon in the hands of the crew or the aid workers, he says. Indeed, Neish, who originally had been on a smaller 70-foot yacht called the Challenger II, had transferred to the Mavi Marmara after a stop in Cyprus, because his boat had been sabatoged by Israeli agents (a claim verified by the Israeli government), making it impossible to steer. When we came aboard the big boat, I was frisked and my bag was inspected for weapons, he says. Being an engineer, I of course had a pocket knife, but they took that and tossed it into the ocean. Nobody was allowed to have any weapons on this voyage. They were very careful about that.
What he did see during the IDF assault was severe bullet wounds. In addition to several people I saw who were killed, I saw several dozen wounded people. There was one older guy who was just propped up against the wall with a huge hole in his chest. He died as I was taking his picture.
Neish says he saw many of the 9 who were known to have been killed, and of the 40 who were wounded, and adds, There were many more who were wounded, too, but less seriously. In the Israeli prison, I saw people with knife wounds and broken bones. Some were hiding their injuries so they wouldn't be taken away from the others. He also says, Initially there were reports that 16 on the boat had been killed. The medical station said 16. There was a suspicion that some bodies may have been thrown overboard. But what people think now is that the the other seven who are missing, since we're not hearing from families, may have been Israeli spies.
Once the Israeli commandos had secured control of the Mavi Marmara, Neish says the ship's passengers and crew were rounded up, with the men put in one area on deck, and the women put below in another area. The men were told to squat, and had their hands bound with plastic cuffs, which Neish says were pulled so tight that his wrists were cut and his hands swelled up and turned purple (he is still suffering nerve damage from the experience, which his doctor in Canada says he hopes will gradually repair on its own).
They told us to be quiet, he says. But at one point this Turkish imam stood up and started singing a call to prayer. Everybody was dead quiet--even the Israelis. But after about ten seconds, this Israeli officer stomped over through the squatting people, pulled out his pistol and pointed at the guy's head, yelling Shut up! in English. The imam looked at him directly and just kept singing! I thought, Jesus Christ, he's gonna kill him! Then I thought, well, this is what I'm here for, I guess, so I stood up. The officer wheeled around and pointed his gun at my head. The imam finished his song and sat down, and then I sat down.
While the commandeered vessels were sailed to the Israeli port of Ashdot, the captives were left without food or water. CAll we were given were some chocolate bars that the Israelis pilfered from the ship's stores, says Neish. You had to grovel to get to go to the bathroom, and many people had to just go in their pants.
Things didn't get much better once the passengers were transferred to an Israeli prison. He and the other prisoners with him, who hadn't eaten for more than half a day, were tossed a frozen block of bread and some cucumbers.
On the second day, someone from the Canadian embassy came around, calling out his name. It turned out he'd been going to every cell looking for me, says Neish. My daughter had been frantically telling the Canadian government I was in the flotilla. Even though the Israelis had my name and knew where I was, they weren't telling the Canadian embassy people. In fact the Canadians--and my daughter--thought I was dead, because people had said I'd been near the initial assault. The good thing is that as they went around calling out for me, they discovered two Arab-born Canadians that they hadn't known were there.
Eventually they got to my cell and I answered them. The embassy official said, You're Kevin? You're supposed to be dead.
After being held for a few days, there was a rush to move everyone to the Ben Gurion airport for a flight to Turkey. It turned out that Israeli lawyers had brought our case to the Supreme Court, challenging the legality of our capture on international waters. There was a chance that the court would order the IDF to put us back on our ships and let us go, so the government wanted to get us out of Israel and moot the case. But two guys were hauled off, probably by Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency). So we all said. We don't go unless you bring them back.
The two men were returned and were allowed to leave with the rest of the group.
I honestly never thought the Israelis would board the ship, says Neish. I thought we'd get into Gaza. I mean, I went as part of the Free Gaza Movement, and they had made prior attempts, with some getting in, and some getting boarded or rammed, but this time it was a big flotilla. I figured we'd be stopped, and maybe searched. My boat, the Challenger II, only had dignitaries on board including three German MPs, and then Lt. Col. Ann Wright and myself.
At one point in the Israeli prison, all the violence finally got to this man who had witnessed more death and mayhem than many active duty US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. I broke down and started crying, he admits. This big Turkish guy came over and asked me, What's wrong? I said, Sixteen people died.
He said to me, No, they died for a wonderful cause. They're happy. You just go out and tell your story.
DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of the new independent collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper ThisCantBeHappening.net
http://www.counterpunch.com/lindorff06162010.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7atCghrAFZ0
Lubna Masarwa writing from Kfor Qara, Live from Palestine, 8 June 2010
Palestinians in Haifa demonstrate in protest of Israel's attacks on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, 1 June 2010. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
During the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara, deep in international waters, I was inside the body of the ship. We were unarmed civilians ranging in age from a one-year-old child to an 88-year-old priest. We were going to Gaza to break the siege that Israel has imposed on a million-and-a-half people for the last four years. We were carrying a cargo of humanitarian and construction aid as well as letters from Turkish children to the children of Gaza. We were full of hope. When the attack began at 4am on 31 May 2010, our ship was transformed into a military target. On the deck, at first there was heavy firing, and then the Israeli occupation's commandos took control of the ship.
Minutes after the attack began, wounded and corpses were being brought inside from the deck. We were then held for several hours with four bodies and dozens of wounded, some in critical condition. Blood was pouring from the bodies of the dead and the injured. We wanted to help them, but we had no medical equipment to treat them. There was nothing we could do. One Turkish woman was crying and saying goodbye to the body of her dead husband, petting his face and reading the Quran over him. Another man had a bullet wound in his head and was dying.
From 5am on, we were begging the Israeli navy to provide medical assistance to the wounded and dying but received no response. We made the request in English and Hebrew through the loudspeaker and also wrote a sign in Hebrew reading, "SOS ... people dying in need of immediate medical attention" and put it on the window in front of them. They ordered the people with the sign to get lost.
At around 7am they ordered us to come to the exit door one by one. I requested in Hebrew that medics be allowed to stay with the wounded; a solider told me to shut my mouth. Later he called me, "You, tell the wounded that if they want to stay alive, they should come out one by one." We tried to bring the injured out individually, but they could not walk and were falling down.
We were transferred to the upper deck. We were searched; our hands were tied, and we were forced to sit or kneel on the deck as a military helicopter hovered within meters above our heads. Heavily-armed soldiers with guns and knives strapped to their arms and legs stood guard over us with dogs. They were standing around us with the blood of their victims on their boots, joking and making lewd sexual suggestions to each other about the female prisoners. Then Israeli personell came and strutted around the ship. We were held this way for hours. I was held here until 1:40am on 1 June 2010.
As soon as the Israeli occupation forces learned that I was a Palestinian Israeli citizen, I was treated more harshly and isolated from the rest of the other imprisoned passengers. I was taken to a prison in Ashkelon where I was held in isolation and subjected to humiliations such as strip searches four times a day. The next day we were brought to court, and I was held in a small metal box inside the police car for eight hours with my hands and legs shackled. We were subjected to various accusations, from attacking soldiers to carrying weapons. The judge gave the police permission to extend our detention for another eight days. After international pressure forced the Israeli authorities to release all the foreign prisoners, all the Palestinian citizens of Israel were taken to court again. This time, the judge ruled that we would be subject house arrest and would be forbidden to leave the country for 45 days.
As an occupier and a colonizer, Israel depends on the principle of "divide and conquer" in order to maintain its control. It is especially threatened by people like the Palestinian delegation from 1948 (what is now referred to as Israel) who sailed to Gaza on the Mavi Marmara, because we defy Israel's attempt to divide us as Palestinians. By struggling with our sisters and brothers under the siege, we also send the message that we are one people and our struggle is one struggle. Israel is threatened by solidarity.
That Israel should murder civilians in international waters is not strange. It is a direct continuation of its policy of targeting civilians with lethal force and deadly policies such as the siege of Gaza, and Israeli policies of occupation and apartheid.
Israel feels entitled to besiege, to kill and to attack civilians in international water. This results from the silence of the world that makes Israel believe it has the right to do so.
This is the time to break the silence and to take action. To say "enough is enough" for Israel. Israel's impunity must end. Israeli war criminals, such as the ones who committed piracy and murder on the Mavi Marmara and their superiors, must be held accountable for their crimes in international courts.
Lubna Masarwa was a Free Gaza Movement representative aboard the Mavi Marmara and wrote this essay from her house arrest in Kfor Qara, Palestine. She can be reached at Lubnna A T gmail D O T com.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11327.shtml 11 jun 2010, 11:11 , Respect Maria http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/opinion/11iht-edkouchner.html 11 jun 2010, 11:16 , Respect Maria June 13, 2010
Footage proves indiscriminate Israeli live fire at Mavi Marmara passengers in Gaza Flotilla
The one hour long raw footage released by the Cultures of Resistance Foundation (CoR) of the 31 May Israeli attack aboard the Mavi Marmara shows clear evidence of indiscriminate Israeli fire aboard the ship. Nine people were killed and dozens injured when Israeli forces boarded and seized what was the largest passenger vessel in the six-ship Gaza Freedom Flotilla in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea about 80 miles west of the coast of Israel.
Starting at about 43 min 29 sec into the footage we begin to see injured people being carried by other passengers. This continues throughout the rest of the footage -- some of the people have gunshot wounds in the neck, shoulders, stomach, legs, or are so covered in blood it is difficult to tell where they have been hit. At 46 min 58 sec, for example, we see a white-haired man with blood pouring from his legs being carried down a main staircase into a lower deck of the ship to an area where other injured people are being treated:
The injured man in the picture above appears to be Çetin Topçuoglu, 54, who coached Turkey's national Taekwondo team, and who subsequently died of his injuries. As he is brought downstairs a woman, who appears from many other published photographs to be his wife Çigdem Topçuoglu, watches:
There are several other disturbing scenes of severely injured and dead people. Israel claims that its soldiers, who invaded and hijacked the Mavi Marmara along with the other five ships and then kidnapped all their passengers and forced them to the Israeli port of Ashdod, fired live ammunition only in self-defense -- when they faced imminent risk of harm. But at least one sequence in the CoR footage disproves this claim.
Starting at about 50 minutes the camera operator walks up the staircase from the area where the injured are being treated on blood covered floors. There are many people on the landing and up the next flight of stairs. Some are holding sticks, others cameras. There is blood on the wall:
At the top of the stairs one man is standing against the wall trying to peer out of a porthole through the door leading to the outside deck. On the wall is a sign that says "5 Bridge Deck." At about 51 min 5 sec there is the sound of a gunshot and the man dives. There is commotion as people apparently prepare to defend the lower deck area in case of an Israeli invasion. Someone shouts "la ilaha illa allah" (There is no God but God) -- a common exclamation in the face of danger. It is apparent that Israelis are shooting through the porthole. At 50 min 52 sec, the red dot from a laser gunsight comes through the porthole and illuminates the internal wall of the ship:
At about 52 min 25 sec one of the passengers pushes open the door with a pole but recoils as there is a loud popping sound and flash, possibly another gunshot. After this the camera operator pans away and goes back down the stairs to the area where injured people are being treated.
Careful analysis of the frames shows that the Israelis had been using live fire. This can be seen by the damage done to the door jamb in the following stills, the first taken at 50 min 31 sec and the second about a minute later at 51 min 47 sec:
This single sequence proves that Israeli hijackers fired live ammunition into crowded spaces when they were not threatened from inside the space and could not have had a clear view of whom they might hit. The cameras and recordings that Israel seized and confiscated may contain many other such sequences. No wonder Israel is so adamant about hiding the evidence and rejecting a truly independent investigation.
See also:
* Video reveals European, American weapons used in Israeli attack on Gaza Flotilla
(video staat bij de gadgets)
http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/ 14 jun 2010, 12:21 , Respect Maria June 13, 2010
12 hours ago
Video reveals European, American weapons used in Israeli attack on Gaza Flotilla
On Friday 11 June, the Cultures of Resistance Foundation (CoR) released a full hour of video taken aboard the Mavi Marmara before and during the Israeli assault on the ship in the early hours of 31 May in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea about 80 miles west of the coast of Israel. At least nine people were killed and dozens injured in the Israeli attack.
CoR director Iara Lee and camera operators from her organization were aboard the ship and managed to smuggle the raw footage out of Israel despite Israel's confiscation of all other recordings and images from journalists and passengers when they were taken against their will to Israel and later expelled from the country.
This video reveals information about some of the weapons used by Israel. In using these weapons to enforce an illegal blockade on Gaza and to carry out an illegal attack on civilian ships in international waters, Israel may have acted in violation of the US Arms Export Control Act of 1976, the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports or other international law or human rights laws of the exporting countries.
Sa'ar class corvette warship
In this still taken from the CoR video at 1hr 26sec, an Israeli warship appears:
By comparison with this publicly available image from Wikipedia, (below) it is clear that the ship in the CoR video is a Sa'ar 5-class corvette built by US company Northrop-Grumman. According to Wikipedia, the Israel navy owns three of these ships which are the most advanced in its fleet.
AS 565 "Panther" Eurocopter
Note that a helicopter is clearly visible on the stern of the ship seen in the CoR image. This is an AS 565 "Panther" combat attack helicopter manufactured by Eurocopter, a subsidiary of the European weapons and aeronautics company, EADS. Below is a publicly available image of an Israel Air Force Eurocopter, which is described by Wikipedia as a "multi-purpose twin-engine helicopter" that "is used for a wide range of military roles, including combat assault, fire support, anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, search & rescue, and MEDEVAC."
Beyond being present and available on a warship that was participating in the attack on the Flotilla, it is unclear what additional role if any the EU-built helicopter played in the Israeli assault.
Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk
Israel used Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters to drop armed commandos onto the top of the Mavi Marmara, as can be seen in these stills taken respectively at 40 min 32 sec and 41 min 10 sec in the CoR video:
By comparing with this publicly available image of an Israeli UH-60 and other images on the internet, it's easy to identify the helicopters used in the attack on the Mavi Marmara by the characteristic landing gear, the shape of the inlet ducts for the engines, the shape of the windows on the sliding side door among other features.
According to Wikipedia, Israel operated 49 military UH-60s as of November 2008.
Morena Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boat (RHIB)
By comparison with images on the Internet, it is possible to identify the speed boats which Israeli commandos used to try to board the Mavi Marmara from the sea as Morena Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boats. These boats can be seen from these stills taken from the CoR video at 36 min 20 sec and 38 min 07 sec:
I have been able to find little information about where these boats are manufactured. If you can find out more, please email me and I'll update this post.
Paintball guns
In addition to the live ammunition which killed 9 passengers and injured dozens of others (as clearly visible in the CoR) video, Israeli forces also used paintball guns. In this image at 36 min 42 sec in the CoR video, an Israeli soldier can be seen firing what appears to be a paintball gun up toward the Mavi Marmara from a Morena RHIB alongside it.
It is impossible to identify exactly what make and model the Israelis are using, but as can be seen from this image taken from Amazon, the Israeli weapon has the characteristic shape of a paintball gun with the large loader on top which drops the paintballs into the barrel for firing.
Israeli propaganda made much of the fact that the Gaza Freedom Flotilla hijackers "only" used paintball guns (that is until they started shooting people with live ammunition), as if this was somehow a "safe" or even a nonviolent thing to do! Paintball is considered by many people a sport where opposing teams hunt each other down and fire projectiles which explode against a target marking them with paint. Everywhere that this activity is legal, it is strictly regulated for safety, because firing paintballs at a person who is not wearing protective gear, especially a face mask, can result in serious injury including loss of eyesight and possibly even death. Firing paintball guns indiscriminately against unprotected civilians is an incredibly reckless and inherently violent and dangerous thing to do.
If anyone went into a public place in any country and started shooting at people with paintball guns, he or she would be subjected to very serious criminal charges. It is unclear where the weapons used by the Israelis originate, but these dangerous weapons should be investigated along with the others in the hijackers' arsenal.
Note: All the stills taken from the CoR video are unaltered and have not been enhanced in any way.
See also:
* Footage proves indiscriminate Israeli live fire at Mavi Marmara passengers in Gaza Flotilla
http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/20299014
What Kevin Neish Saw
Eyewitness to the Israeli Assault on the Mavi Marmara
By DAVE LINDORFF
Kevin Neish of Victoria, British Columbia, didn%u2019t know he was a celebrity until he was about to board a flight from Istanbul to Ottawa. This Arab woman wearing a beautiful outfit suddenly ran up to me crying, It's you! From Arab TV! You're famous! he recalls with a laugh. I didn't know what she was talking about, but she told me, I saw you flipping through the Israeli commando's book! It's being aired over and over!
A soft-spoken teacher and former civilian engineer with the Canadian Department of Defense, Neish realized then that a video taken by an Arab TV cameraman in the midst of the Israeli assault on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza of him flipping through a booklet had been transmitted before the Israelis blocked all electronic signals from the flotilla. The booklet had pictures and profiles of all the passengers, and he'd found it in the backpack of an Israeli Defense Force commando.
Neish, 53, was on the second deck of the flotilla's lead ship, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, with a good view of the stern, when the IDF, in the early morning darkness of May 31, began its assault with percussion grenades, tear gas and a hail of bullets. He then moved to the fourth deck in an enclosed stairwell, from which he watched took photographs as casualties were carried down past him to a makeshift medical station. Several IDF commandos, captured by the passengers and crew, were also brought past him.
I saw them carrying this one IDF guy down, he recalls. He looked terrified, like he thought he was going to be killed. But when a big Turkish guy, who had seen seriously injured passengers who had been shot by the IDF, charged over and tried to hit the commando, the Turkish aid workers pushed him off and pinned him to the wall. They protected this Israeli soldier.
That was when he found the backpack which the soldier had dropped. I figured I'd look inside and see what he was carrying, Neish says. And inside was this kind of flip-book. It was full of photos and names in English and Hebrew of who was on all the ships. The booklet also had a detailed diagram of the decks of the Mavi Marmara.
Meanwhile, he says, more and more people were being carried down the stairs from the mayhem above people who'd been shot, and people who were dying or people already dead. I took detailed photos of the dead and wounded with my camera, he says, adding, There were several guys who had two neat bullet holes side by side on the side of their head--clearly they were executed.
Neish smuggled his photos out of Israel to Turkey despite his arrest on the ship and imprisonment in Israel for several days. I pulled out the memory card, tossed my camera and anything I had on me that had anything to do with electronics, and then kept moving the chip around so it wouldn't be found, he says. The Israelis took all the cameras and computers. They were smashing some and keeping others. I put the chip in my mouth under my tongue, between my butt cheeks, in my sock, everywhere, to keep them from finding it, he says. He finally handed it to a Turk who was leaving for a flight home on a Turkish airline. He says the card ended up in the hands of an organization called Free Gaza, and he has seen some of his pictures published, so he knows they made it out successfully.
Neish says that claims that the Israeli commandos were just armed with paint guns and 9 mm pistols are Bullshit--at one point when I was in the stairwell, a commando opened a hatch above, stuck in a machine gun, and started firing. Bullets were bouncing all over the place. If the guy had gotten to look in and see where he was shooting, I'd have been dead, but two Turkish guys in the stairwell, who had short lengths of chain with them that they had taken from the access points to the lifeboats, stood to the side of the hatch and whipped them up at the barrell. I don't know if they were trying to hit the commando or to use them to snatch away the gun, but the Israeli backed off, and they slammed and locked the hatch.
I never saw a single paint gun, or a sign of a fired paint ball! he says.
He also didn't see any guns in the hands of people who were on the ship. In the whole time I was there on the ship, I never saw a single weapon in the hands of the crew or the aid workers, he says. Indeed, Neish, who originally had been on a smaller 70-foot yacht called the Challenger II, had transferred to the Mavi Marmara after a stop in Cyprus, because his boat had been sabatoged by Israeli agents (a claim verified by the Israeli government), making it impossible to steer. When we came aboard the big boat, I was frisked and my bag was inspected for weapons, he says. Being an engineer, I of course had a pocket knife, but they took that and tossed it into the ocean. Nobody was allowed to have any weapons on this voyage. They were very careful about that.
What he did see during the IDF assault was severe bullet wounds. In addition to several people I saw who were killed, I saw several dozen wounded people. There was one older guy who was just propped up against the wall with a huge hole in his chest. He died as I was taking his picture.
Neish says he saw many of the 9 who were known to have been killed, and of the 40 who were wounded, and adds, There were many more who were wounded, too, but less seriously. In the Israeli prison, I saw people with knife wounds and broken bones. Some were hiding their injuries so they wouldn't be taken away from the others. He also says, Initially there were reports that 16 on the boat had been killed. The medical station said 16. There was a suspicion that some bodies may have been thrown overboard. But what people think now is that the the other seven who are missing, since we're not hearing from families, may have been Israeli spies.
Once the Israeli commandos had secured control of the Mavi Marmara, Neish says the ship's passengers and crew were rounded up, with the men put in one area on deck, and the women put below in another area. The men were told to squat, and had their hands bound with plastic cuffs, which Neish says were pulled so tight that his wrists were cut and his hands swelled up and turned purple (he is still suffering nerve damage from the experience, which his doctor in Canada says he hopes will gradually repair on its own).
They told us to be quiet, he says. But at one point this Turkish imam stood up and started singing a call to prayer. Everybody was dead quiet--even the Israelis. But after about ten seconds, this Israeli officer stomped over through the squatting people, pulled out his pistol and pointed at the guy's head, yelling Shut up! in English. The imam looked at him directly and just kept singing! I thought, Jesus Christ, he's gonna kill him! Then I thought, well, this is what I'm here for, I guess, so I stood up. The officer wheeled around and pointed his gun at my head. The imam finished his song and sat down, and then I sat down.
While the commandeered vessels were sailed to the Israeli port of Ashdot, the captives were left without food or water. CAll we were given were some chocolate bars that the Israelis pilfered from the ship's stores, says Neish. You had to grovel to get to go to the bathroom, and many people had to just go in their pants.
Things didn't get much better once the passengers were transferred to an Israeli prison. He and the other prisoners with him, who hadn't eaten for more than half a day, were tossed a frozen block of bread and some cucumbers.
On the second day, someone from the Canadian embassy came around, calling out his name. It turned out he'd been going to every cell looking for me, says Neish. My daughter had been frantically telling the Canadian government I was in the flotilla. Even though the Israelis had my name and knew where I was, they weren't telling the Canadian embassy people. In fact the Canadians--and my daughter--thought I was dead, because people had said I'd been near the initial assault. The good thing is that as they went around calling out for me, they discovered two Arab-born Canadians that they hadn't known were there.
Eventually they got to my cell and I answered them. The embassy official said, You're Kevin? You're supposed to be dead.
After being held for a few days, there was a rush to move everyone to the Ben Gurion airport for a flight to Turkey. It turned out that Israeli lawyers had brought our case to the Supreme Court, challenging the legality of our capture on international waters. There was a chance that the court would order the IDF to put us back on our ships and let us go, so the government wanted to get us out of Israel and moot the case. But two guys were hauled off, probably by Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency). So we all said. We don't go unless you bring them back.
The two men were returned and were allowed to leave with the rest of the group.
I honestly never thought the Israelis would board the ship, says Neish. I thought we'd get into Gaza. I mean, I went as part of the Free Gaza Movement, and they had made prior attempts, with some getting in, and some getting boarded or rammed, but this time it was a big flotilla. I figured we'd be stopped, and maybe searched. My boat, the Challenger II, only had dignitaries on board including three German MPs, and then Lt. Col. Ann Wright and myself.
At one point in the Israeli prison, all the violence finally got to this man who had witnessed more death and mayhem than many active duty US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. I broke down and started crying, he admits. This big Turkish guy came over and asked me, What's wrong? I said, Sixteen people died.
He said to me, No, they died for a wonderful cause. They're happy. You just go out and tell your story.
DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of the new independent collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper ThisCantBeHappening.net
http://www.counterpunch.com/lindorff06162010.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7atCghrAFZ0