The Hijacking of the Truth: Film Evidence
'Destroyed'
Protesters say Israel had an assassination list. Israel says soldiers
fired only in self-defence. So what really happened on 31 May?
By Catrina Stewart
June 06, 2010 "The Independent" -- Jamal
Elshayyal,
a journalist with al-Jazeera, woke with a start to the opening salvos
of an Israeli assault that would transform the decks of the Mavi
Marmara, a Turkish vessel bound for Gaza, into a bloodbath.
>From the ship's position deep in international waters, satellite images
of Israeli speedboats and helicopters approaching the vessel were
beamed across the globe before communications were abruptly cut off,
leaving the events on the Marmara to unfold away from the eyes of the
world.
Six days after the bloody assault that left nine foreign protesters,
mainly Turks, dead, nobody can recount with any conviction precisely
what happened that night. The convoy of ships, whose passengers
included writers, politicians and journalists, had been expected for
weeks, with organisers loudly broadcasting their plans to run Israel's
blockade of the Gaza Strip and draw international attention to the
situation there.
>From the beginning, it was clear that Israeli forces were concentrating
in their largest numbers on the Marmara, a ship carrying some 550 peace
activists. The remaining five boats were much smaller and easily
commandeered. After the Marmara was subdued, the passengers silenced,
and their recording equipment confiscated, Israel disseminated a
carefully choreographed account of the events that night that would
dominate the airwaves for the first 48 hours.
Only as eyewitnesses, traumatised by their experiences, started to
return to their home countries, were serious questions raised about the
veracity of the Israeli version of events. Israeli commandos initiated
the attack on the Marmara with stun grenades, paintballs and
rubber-cased steel bullets. They were met with water hoses as the
ship's passengers tried to form a defensive cordon to prevent soldiers
from reaching the wheelhouse. Next, the helicopters started their
approach, hovering overhead as they tried to disgorge commandos.
>From the other ships, passengers looked on helplessly: "The worst thing
was seeing the helicopter come up because I knew they were going to
invade," said Ewa Jasiewicz, a 32-year-old organiser. "You could hear
the screams when they started shooting ... We wanted to stop and go
back but there wouldn't have been anything we could have done."
>From the moment the helicopters arrived, the sequence of events becomes
confused. The dizzying number of claims and counter-claims serves only
to present an incomplete account of a military operation that went
badly, badly wrong. More than 1.7 million viewers have pored over the
edited YouTube footage posted by the Israeli navy since Wednesday. In
the dramatic clip, commandos rappel down on to the deck from a
helicopter, where they are met by angry activists armed with iron bars
and sticks.
This is a critical point, for Israel has rallied domestic opinion on
the crucial claim that its soldiers dropped into a meticulously planned
riot for which they were completely unprepared. Panicked, they acted in
self-defence after they landed, shooting only those who threatened them.
The video is problematic, though. The images of angry protesters are
striking, but they lack context. What happened before? What happened
next? Had the soldiers started shooting when they descended to the
deck? The only account offered by the Israelis of what happened next is
left to Staff Sergeant S, a commando who claims he shot six of the
protesters.
The last of 15 to arrive on the deck, he said he saw that two of his
colleagues had gunshot wounds. Pushing others into a protective cordon
around the injured soldiers, he shot at the protesters to force them to
fall back. It's a neat account, but several eyewitness accounts tell a
very different story.
Mr Elshayyal, a reporter for the Arab channel al-Jazeera, was standing
to one side of the ship and had a view of the front and back of the
vessel when the fighting started. By his account, soldiers fired down
on the protesters from the helicopters before an Israeli soldier had
even set foot on the ship. A man next to him was shot through the top
of his head, dying instantly.
"What I saw were shots being fired from the helicopter above and
moments later from below - from the ships," Mr Elshayyal said. "As far
as I am concerned, it's a lie to say they only started shooting on
deck."
At least two other eyewitnesses saw soldiers firing from above the
ships before they landed on the Marmara's deck. It is possible that
this is what prompted the fierce resistance to the soldiers when they
dropped down. Several passengers recount how organisers urged their
peers to stop hitting the soldiers, aware of how it would harm their
claim to be peaceful protesters.
Others on the ship claim they raised a white flag, but say that it was
ignored. They also used a loudspeaker to reiterate their message of
surrender and requested that the injured be taken off the ship to get
medical assistance. Again, they were ignored.
At some point early on, the activists dragged three, possibly four,
injured soldiers to a lower deck, either to keep as hostages or for
their own safety. It was then, several passengers say, that the
situation quickly deteriorated. Israel has insisted that the protesters
took two of the soldiers' pistols and used them, but others claim the
pistols were taken away to prove that Israel planned to use live rounds.
Below, the protesters rummaged through captured soldiers' belongings
and claimed to unearth a document that they allege is a list of people
Israel intended to assassinate. The booklet, written in Hebrew and in
English, contained some photographs of passengers on the Marmara,
including the leader of IHH, the Turkish charity that provided two of
the ships, an 88-year-old priest and Ra'ad Salah, head of the Northern
Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Mr Elshayyal said.
A military spokesman, Lt Col Avital Leibowitz, insisted soldiers acted
in self-defence and that she "was not aware" of any list. But one thing
is fast becoming clear - many of the dead were shot multiple times at
point-blank range. One was a journalist taking photographs. "A man was
shot ... between the eyebrows, which indicates that it was not an
attack that took place from self-defence," Hassan Ghani, a passenger,
said in an account posted on YouTube. "The soldier had time to set up
the shot." Mattias Gardell, a Swedish activist, told the TT news
bureau: "The Israelis committed premeditated murder ... Two people were
killed by shots in the forehead, one was shot in the back of the head
and one in the chest."
When Israeli troops had subdued the ship, they rounded up the
passengers, bound their wrists, in some cases forcing activists into
stress positions, and prevented them from using toilets. Mr Elshayyal
said he was given just three sips of water before he was taken off the
ship more than 24 hours later.
Their ordeal, of course, was not yet over. Accused of entering Israel
illegally, the captives were transferred to an Israeli prison, where
many were held in cramped cells and denied phone calls. Furious, Turkey
sent three planes to transport the activists out of Israel, threatening
to sever all diplomatic ties if they were not all released.
Meanwhile, much of the video footage confiscated from Marmara
passengers remains undisclosed, and Israel has sought to undermine some
eyewitness accounts by alleging some of the passengers were terrorist
sympathisers bent on martyrdom.
Questions remain unanswered on both sides. But without a full and
transparent airing of all the evidence, the truth of that dreadful
night on the Marmara may never come to light.
In the meantime, the organisers say they will seek again and again to
breach Israel's defences. Scottish protester Ali El-Awaisi said: "We
sent six ships this time. Next time it will be 30 ships."
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