Israeli commando who shot six dead on ship may get ‘medal of valour’
Six of the nine activists killed in Monday’s raid on an aid convoy were shot by a single Israeli commando who is now being considered for a medal of valour.
Israeli reports of the likely award for the soldier — credited with saving his injured comrades as passengers attacked them with clubs, knives and even the guns they had captured from the commandos — are expected to inflame the row with Turkey over the attack on the flotilla.
Mustafa Akyol, a prominent political writer, described the move as an “insult and a provocation to Turkey”. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, vented his anger yesterday by quoting from the Bible.
“I am speaking to them in their own language. The sixth commandment says: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Did you not understand …. I say in Hebrew: ‘Lo Tirtzakh’,” Mr Erdogan said.
Fresh details of the raid, which sparked accusations of piracy and state terrorism, and wrecked Israel’s strategic partnership with Turkey, emerged yesterday. Autopsies in Turkey claim to show that most of the victims were shot at close range. Dr Haluk Ince, the director of Istanbul’s Medical Examination Institute, said that five of the victims died of bullet wounds to the head.
Reports suggest that passengers had been dragging three captured commandos into the hold of the ship when the shooting broke out. However, a British passenger who survived the pre-dawn encounter in international waters told The Times that some of the more peaceful activists on board had tried to protect captured Israeli soldiers.
The Israeli commando who killed six of the passengers on Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ferry owned by the IHH charity, told The Jerusalem Post that he had been the last of 15 soldiers to abseil down the rope from a helicopter on to the ship.
Identified for security reasons only as Staff Sergeant S, he said that, contrary to initial Israeli army reports, the shooting had started within minutes as he and his comrades were set upon by a “mob of mercenaries”.
As he landed on the top deck, he said he saw three of his superior officers who had landed ahead of him lying injured, one with a bullet wound to the stomach, another shot in the knee and the third beaten unconscious. He formed his men around the wounded, drew his 9mm Glock pistol and opened fire on passengers who he says had fired at the boarding party with guns captured from the first soldiers to land.
“When I hit the deck, I was immediately attacked by people with bats, metal pipes and axes,” he said. “These were without a doubt terrorists. I could see the murderous rage in their eyes and that they were coming to kill us.” He said he saw one of the passengers holding a seized pistol to another Israeli commando’s head.
British and American activists who were on the ship told a different story, accusing the Israelis of firing live rounds from the boats surrounding the ship, the roof where the Israelis had landed, and the helicopter hovering above. They said women went below deck to help in a medical area set up before the attack, and the captured Israeli soldiers were taken down there.
The Turkish Haberturk newspaper ran pictures yesterday that show them being treated on the boat. “They were treated almost immediately,” said Fatima Mohammadi, an American. “They were then released and went back to Israel in bandages.”
She said she was the only woman on the top deck when the firing began. “They started with rubber bullets and stun grenades and then it switched at some point. The cameraman next to me was shot once with a rubber bullet and once with live fire from one of the boats. Blood was pouring out as I worked on his arm.”
Alexandra Lort-Phillips, a 37-year-old activist from Hackney, East London, described seeing an Israeli soldier taken down into the stairwell below the deck where the soldiers landed.
“I went down the stairwell and there was a massive crowd of people and lots of shouting,” she told The Times. “There was a sense of ‘My god, we’ve got an Israeli soldier’. I don’t think we really knew what we were going to do. I saw a gun being taken. His gun belt was removed and someone ran past me with the weapon and disappeared. They could have shot him but didn’t.”
A wounded Turkish passenger, Muhyittin Yildirim, said: “Some Israeli soldiers were rendered ineffective. Our friends got their weapons. If they had a bad intention, they would have used the weapons against the soldiers but they threw them to the sea.” He said people resisted “as a precaution” because they did not trust the soldiers.
Ms Lort-Phillips said about 25 people gathered around a soldier as he was held by his legs and stripped to his underwear. “The women who were there were shouting ‘Don’t hurt him’.”
She denied he was beaten, but said: “There were obviously some guys there who were extremely agitated by the situation. It is like you’d expect when there’s a fight between men.”
Tauqir Sharif, 23, from East London, said that gunfire was coming from the helicopter overhead. “People were just trying to hide. Everyone was running, screaming and shouting. They were using all different kinds of weapons — rubber bullets, paint-ball bullets,” he said of the Israelis.
A Palestinian-born Briton, Osama Qashoo, described how a photographer standing next to him was shot as he raised his camera. “It was raining with live ammunition,” he said. “I put my hand on the back of his head and tried to lift him. Then I felt my hand was wet. His brain was in my hand. I couldn’t stop it.”
