Soldiers’ Accounts of Mayhem on the Marmara
Firsthand Israeli accounts of the violence on the Mavi Marmara are being published in the Israeli press.
In the Jerusalem Post, we hear of one commando’s experience upon landing on the ship:
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.
In Ha’aretz:
As seen on a video documenting the takeover, the first four commandos to rappel onto the deck were attacked by activists with bars, axes and knives. The fourth commando, K., saw his team leader on the deck, with a Turkish activist holding the pistol he had grabbed from him and pointing it to his head. K. jumped from the rope and managed to shoot the activist holding the gun.
What about the international press, which never hesitates to quote from Ha’aretz when it publishes material critical of Israel? Will they be relaying these accounts? And what of the New York Times blog The Lede, whose main blogger Robert Mackey seems fond of unquestioningly publishing accounts by pro-Palestinian activists (whom he describes as just “activists”) and Al Jazeera journalists, challenging footage released Israel as “less than helpful,” implying it that footage isn’t credible because there’s still “missing” footage, comparing members of the radical ISM and IHH to Holocaust survivors, and slurring as “anti-Palestinian” a pro-Israel group guilty of highlighting footage of passengers’ brutal violence and antisemitic chants. Will it be relaying the soldiers’ account with the same credulity it relayed that of the activists? (Will Mackey, for that matter, ever call ISM and IHH “anti-Israel” in the same way he labels the incomparably more tame Fuel for Truth as “anti-Palestinian”?)
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