‘We had no choice’
By YAAKOV KATZ
riday, June 4, 2010
‘Mavi Marmara’ raid commando: “They had murder in their eyes.”
When St.-Sgt. S. fast-roped down from an air force Black Hawk helicopter onto the Mavi Marmara Turkish passenger ship on Monday morning, he did not expect to be landing in what he called “a battlefield” and facing off against a group of “murderous mercenaries.”
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.
As the next in the chain of command, S., who has been in the Shayetet for three and a half years, immediately took charge.
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.
On Thursday, S. sat down with The Jerusalem Post at the Shayetet’s base in northern Israel for an exclusive interview, during which he described the dramatic events aboard the Mavi Marmara on Monday; he is being considered for a medal of valor.
“When I hit the deck, I was immediately attacked by people with bats, metal pipes and axes,” S. told the Post. “These were without a doubt terrorists. I could see the murderous rage in their eyes and that they were coming to kill us.”
S. does not look like a hero. Well-built, like all commandos in the Shayetet, he is also soft-spoken and stingy with words, but his commander Lt.-Col. T. fills in the blanks.
“S. did a remarkable job,” T. said. “He stabilized the situation and succeeded in hitting six of the terrorists.”
Based on preliminary results of its investigation into the navy’s takeover of the Mavi Marmara, which ended with nine dead passengers and more than 30 wounded, the IDF said on Thursday that the commandos were attacked by a well-trained group ofmercenaries, most of whom were found without IDs but with thousands of dollars in their pockets. [note: The money was in even amounts and presumably was given them to smuggle to Hamas for use in buying weapons.]
The group was well trained and was split into a number of squads of about 20mercenaries each distributed throughout the upper deck, the IDF said. All of themercenaries wore gas masks and ceramic bulletproof vests and were armed with either bats, slingshots, metal bars, knives or stun grenades.
The IDF’s understanding is that the mercenaries mainly chose dual-purpose items of this sort rather than guns, since opening fire would have made it blatantly clear that they were terrorists and not so-called peace activists.
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.
T. said he realized the group they were facing was well-trained and likely ex-military after the commandos threw a number of stun grenades [note: this can be seen on videos] and fired warning shots before rappelling down onto the deck. “They didn’t even flinch,” he said. “Regular people would move.”
Each squad of the “mercenaries” was equipped with a Motorola communication device, the IDF said, so they could pass information to one another. Assessments in the defense establishment are that members of the group were affiliated with international global jihad elements and had undergone training in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.
S. on Thursday downplayed his involvement in the operation. “I did what I was trained to do and now I move on,” he said.
In contrast to earlier reports, the commandos said that they began using their weapons within a minute and a half after boarding the ship, due to the extreme violence they faced. One of the reasons S. pulled out his gun right after landing on the ship was because one of the mercenaries was pointing a pistol, snatched from one of the commandos, at another commando’s head.
Max: Thanks for the link.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177445
(Found it by creative google search)
Do you have a link to this news story that isn’t a yahoo login?
Not possible to spread it around this way.
Gaza blockade: Shalit pretext abandoned
Israel routinely justified our blockade of Gaza by exerting pressure on Hamas to return Shalit.
After the Marmara debacle, Netanyahu changed his position: civilian goods will flow unrestricted into Gaza while Israel will only be checking the cargo for military supplies
Gaza flotilla: the story doesn’t add up
The Jerusalem Post was allowed to interview members of the Sh-13 Navy commando unit which raided the Marmara.
Only 15 Marines took over the ship. Even with the best training, they wouldn’t have been able to prevail against the alleged 100-150 highly motivated, axe-wielding guerrillas—guerrillas who allegedly had military training.
According to S., his comrades formed a wall to protect the wounded. That would leave next to no Jews to take over the Marmara.
S. says that immediately upon landing he spotted two comrades with gunshot wounds. As a commando, he would have no trouble distinguishing gunshot wounds from those inflicted by bats. Yet, the IDF is still uncertain whether the guerrillas used firearms.
T. says he fired warning shots as he descended from the helicopter. In such a scenario, he would have continued shooting upon landing, and the situation would have improved by the time S. reached the ship.
S. says he started shooting because a guerrilla held a pistol to a Jew’s head. Yet he also says that immediately upon landing he was attacked with axes, bats, and pipes. It is unlikely that he could have survived such an attack, let alone looked after his comrade.
If S. saw a guerrilla pointing a firearm at a Jew, he wouldn’t have shot at the feet, as the official story about the first shots goes.
A wall of Marines allegedly faced a crowd of a hundred guerrillas with axes, pipes, and some firearms. The guerrillas wore ceramic vests. Yet the Marines, acting in the open, gunned down dozens, while suffering only a 30% casualty rate themselves. S. is credited with killing six guerrillas, thus the rest of the detachment killed only three.
My preliminary conclusion is this: the guerrillas’ numbers, their military training, and their equipment are greatly exaggerated. The Marines’ leader acted in rage, killing six. Others followed suit with some reluctance. The affair was not exactly a safari hunting of peace activists, but it definitely exceeded the norms of riot control.
Tonight On Larry King The Official The Offical “Obama Throws Israel Under the Bus” Interview
Posted: 03 Jun 2010 05:08 PM PDT
Tonight President Obama appears on the Larry King show to spend one full hour with King and the 14 people in Kings audience. Luckily the transcript of the interview
has already been posted as to spare us from the trauma of having to watch King fall asleep on his own show.
King asked the POTUS questions about the important news of the day, such as Lebron James staying in Cleveland, but he did have time for some of the less important issues such as the Guerrilla Flotilla. The President in his best passive/aggressive style pushed the Jewish State directly under the bus:
OBAMA: The United States, with the other members of the U.N. Security Council said very clearly that we condemned all the acts that led up to this violence. It was a tragic situation. You’ve got loss of life that was unnecessary. So we are calling for an effective investigation of everything that happened. I think the Israelis are going to agree to that an investigation of international standards because they recognize that this can’t be good for Israel’s long-term security.
This is what the President said, we condemned what Israel did, they unnecessarily killed people, OH and we need an investigation because we don’t have any idea what happened.
If that sounds familiar it is because he has done it before, when he said I don’t know not having been there, or knowing all the facts, its fair to say that the Cambridge police acted stupidly.
Our President loves to make judgments about people he doesn’t particularly like, be it a police force in Cambridge, Mass., or a Nation of Jewish people in the Middle East. But he’s not done:
Here’s what we’ve got. You’ve got a situation in which Israel has legitimate security concerns when they’ve got missiles raining down on cities along the Israel/Gaza border. I’ve been to those towns and seen the holes that were made by missiles coming through people’s bedrooms. Israel has a legitimate concern there. On the other hand you’ve got a blockage up that is preventing people in Palestinian Gaza from having job opportunities and being able to create businesses and engage in trade and have opportunity for the future.
What the President neglects to mention is that the easiest way to solve the “on the other hand,” is for Hamas to renounce terrorism. But that would be standing up to terrorism. Since January of 2009 the official position of the United States Government is not to stand up to terror, but to appease terror. It is the perceived weakness of the United States in dealing with terror that caused this Guerrilla Flotilla in the first place. The terrorists know that under the Obama administration the US no longer has Israel’s back.
I think what’s important right now is that we break out of the current impasse, use this tragedy as an opportunity so that we figure out, how can we meet Israel’s security concerns, but at the same time start opening up opportunity for Palestinians, work with all parties concerned — the Palestinian authority, the Israelis, the Egyptians and others — and I think Turkey can have a positive voice in this whole process once we’ve worked through this tragedy. And bring everybody together to figure out how can we get a two-state solution where the Palestinians and Israelis can live side by side in peace and security.
UH OH its Cambridge time again, it sounds like the President wants a beer summit.
KING: Premature then, to condemn Israel?
OBAMA: I think that we need to know what all the facts are. But it’s not premature to say to the Israelis and to say to the Palestinians, and to say to all the parties in the region that the status quo is unsustainable. We have been trying to do this piecemeal for decades now. It just doesn’t work.
You’ve got to have a situation in which the Palestinians have real opportunity and Israel’s neighbors recognize Israel’s legitimate security concerns and are committed to peace
Notice that he doesn’t answer the question. Because to President Obama it is never premature to bash Israel. Peacemeal??? No where does the President mention that twice, once at the end of the Clinton administration and once at the end of the Bush administration, the Palestinians were offered a deal that gave them 98% of what they wanted, twice they walked away. That’s not peacemeal, that is not wanting peace. Mr. President if you want to advance the prospect of peace, stop throwing Israel under the bus, and consider criticizing the party that does not want peace, the Palestinians.
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