What Took Place Aboard the Mavi Marmara

IDF soldiers’ accounts of the near deadly beatings inflicted upon them by the jihadist lynch mob aboard the Mavi Marmara.

Fresno Zionism:

What they faced on the Mavi Marmara



The Turkel Commission — the high-level commission appointed by the Israeli government to investigate the Turkish Flotilla affair — has released its report, which you can read here. The report is almost 300 pages in length and discusses the legal considerations surrounding Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, whether there was a ‘humanitarian crisis’ there, and the actual events that occurred before, during and after the incident.

I’m not going to try to summarize its conclusions except to say that I am impressed by the thoroughness and honesty that surrounded this effort. But I do want to reproduce a bit of testimony that appears in it, the experiences of three of the first naval commandos that landed on the deck of the Mavi Marmara.

I’m certain that very few of you, even those who have been combat soldiers, have ever experienced anything close to what these young men did. Their bravery — after the first one hit the deck, the other 14 team members could see what was happening — and their presence of mind and strength, is remarkable.

The soldiers all testified that they expected to meet ‘peace activists’. One of them said,

During the preparation the message was passed that we were expected to encounter activists who would try to hurt us emotionally by creating provocations on the level of curses, spitting, removing face covering etc. but we did not expect a difficult physical confrontation… (note 518, p.150)

But try to put yourself in the place of the first soldier to rappel from the helicopter to the deck:

When I reached a height of 2 – 2.5 meters from the ship, people grabbed the end of the rope and pushed me to the side. Before I managed to touch my feet to the deck, about ten people jumped onto me and began brutally beating me from every direction, using clubs, metal rods and fists, and whatever they could grab. The blows were over my whole body and were concentrated mainly in the area of my face and head.

It is important to note that at this stage I was not armed – my weapon was fastened behind my back and in my vest pocket I had a taser (electric shocker) which was completely irrelevant in light of the brutal attack on me. At this stage I sensed a real and immediate threat to my life, and I tried to reach the weapon (a mini-Uzi) on my back. I only managed to open the clips that were securing the weapon but I didn’t manage to reach the weapon. At this stage I was occupied with attempts to reach my weapon while trying to protect myself as best I could from a fatal attack from the mob, and I waited for the rest of the soldiers to arrive.

The attackers pushed me toward the side of the ship. Because of the large number of attackers, I did not manage to resist. A number of attackers grabbed me by my legs and my torso and threw me over the side to the deck below, about 3.5 meters. Up until this stage, I did not see any other soldier aboard the ship, and, to my knowledge, I was the only solder who had fast-roped onto the ship.

Upon landing on the middle deck, I fractured my arm, and a mob of dozens of people attacked me and basically lynched me – including pulling off my helmet, strangling me, sticking fingers into my eyes to gouge them out of their sockets, pulling my limbs in every direction, striking me in an extremely harsh manner with clubs and metal rods, mostly on my head. I truly felt that I was about to die, way beyond what we define as life-threatening.

The behavior of the people at this stage was definitely like fighters of an enemy which has come to kill the other side, that is, me. I felt that at any moment I would take a blow to the head which would kill me. At this stage the mob succeeded in tearing my vest off of me (which included the weapon) and the weapon fell out of the vest.

I realized that I would not be able to overcome all of the attackers and in order to save my life I tried to jump into the water but: (a) I was worried that I would not fall into the water but rather onto the deck below me; (b) the mob blocked my access to the side. At a certain stage I managed to reach the weapon, I cocked it, and I shot one of the attackers in his leg. The considerations in shooting were as follows:

1) To distance the attacking mob from me and to minimize the injury to me.

2) To signal my location to the rest of the team on the ship and the fact that I was in distress and my life was in danger.

Immediately after I fired the shot, I took an extremely harsh blow directly to my head from a metal rod. This stunned me briefly, and in this second they grabbed the weapon from me. At this stage, I thought that the mob wanted to take me as a captive and use me as a bargaining chip for entry to Gaza or in general. A lot of blood began streaming down my face from the wounds to my head. The mob continued to hit me and push me forward inside the ship. — (p. 152)

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