An eyewitness account of the Turkish “activists”

The Jerusalem Post has the account of one of the IDF soldiers from the attack on the Mavi Marmara, whose story contradicts the “peace activists” that are now speaking up. This was the situation he encountered:

The 15th and last naval commando from Flotilla 13 (the Shayetet) to rappel down onto the ship from the helicopter, S. said on Thursday that he was immediately attacked by what the IDF has called “the mob of mercenaries” aboard the vessel, just like the soldiers who had boarded just before him.

Looking to his side, he saw three of his commanders lying wounded – one with a gunshot wound to the stomach and another with a gunshot wound to the knee. A third was lying unconscious; his skull was fractured by a devastating blow with a metal bar.

So he acted like a soldier in a battle—which is what he was.

He pushed the wounded soldiers up against the wall of the upper deck and created a perimeter of soldiers around them to begin treating their wounds, he said. He then arranged his men to form a second perimeter, and pulled out his 9 mm. Glock pistol to stave off the charging attackers and to protect his wounded comrades.

The attackers had already seized two pistols from the commandos, and fired repeatedly at them. Facing more than a dozen of the mercenaries, and convinced their lives were in danger, he and his colleagues opened fire, he said. S. singlehandedly killed six men. His colleagues killed another three.

Now compare the statements of the “peace” activists:

In his telling, activists initially wounded and captured four Israelis from a first wave that boarded the ship. A second wave of troops tried to storm the ship after the four were taken below decks.

“Twenty Turkish men formed a human shield to prevent the Israeli soldiers from scaling the ship. They had slingshots, water pipes and sticks,” he said. “They were banging the pipes on the side of the ship to warn the Israelis not to get closer.”

After a 10-minute standoff the Israelis opened fire.

“One man got a direct hit to the head and another one was shot in the neck,” he said. In all he saw some 40 people wounded, some to the legs, eye, stomach and chest.

That would be a combat situation as well. The world opinion seems to be, well, yes, the “activists” mobbed the soldiers, but why did the soldiers have to fire back with their guns? They were only being beaten with metal rods, attacked with knives, sticks, and slingshots!

One of the organizers on board who returned on Thursday from an Israeli jail, Bulent Yildirim, chairman of the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), said activists had indeed seized weapons, but never fired them.

There are Israelis in hospitals recovering from bullet wounds that say otherwise. And then there is this:

The group was well trained and was split into a number of squads of about 20 mercenaries each distributed throughout the upper deck, the IDF said. All of the mercenaries wore gas masks and ceramic bulletproof vests and were armed with either bats, slingshots, metal bars, knives or stun grenades.

And this:

Nevertheless, the IDF suspects that the group did have some guns of its own. Israeli forensic experts who examined the ship found casings belonging to a weapon that was not used by the commandos, and the Turkish captain of the ship later told the IDF that the “mercenaries” threw their weapons overboard after the commandos took control of the vessel.

One thing that the IDF account does do is verify some accounts that the “activists” heard firing before the soldiers landed. A warning shot, however, does not a wounded “activist” make. This story fits perfectly the narrative that Hamas—and its Iranian masters—wanted. They won’t get the same thing on the Rachel Corrie, which is sailing into Israeli territorial waters.

The latest AP article on the Free Gaza ship includes the latest abomination by the Neturei Karta nutjobs—they’re in Ankara protesting Israel’s actions. Where there is an enemy of Israel, there is the Neturei Karta. That tells you enough about them. The fact that there are three of them and the AP felt it was newsworthy tells you enough about the AP.