.... AND HAD YOU SEEN THIS FOOTAGE? QUITE DAMNING FOR THE "PEACEFUL RESISTANCE" of those bloodthirsty killers..... plus... fighting a murderous enemy with paintball guns; whose brilliant idea??

Jack's reaction to the video:

These are called “peace activists” and “humanitarians.” Is this in the tradition of Ghandhi?

And UPDATE JUNE 1st; MORE PEACEFUL ACTIVISM ON THE PART OF THE PEACE FLOTILLA:





And had you seen this video as well?

And this one?

Here below  is an absolutely shocking account of what actually transpired aboard the Mavi Marmara. I am ashamed, just reading this. How could Tsahal be so stupid, betray its own soldiers to such a degree? We know where these orders come from: our DEFENSE MINISTER ( you mean, paintball defense, right?) Ehud Barak, the poison dwarf;  in connivance with the enemies of Israel.

TIME TO TURN THE TABLES, FOLKS; we cannot led defeatist leaders of this nature defend Israel any more: they will get us all killed!

contributed by Jack, thank you:


Below is an article by Israeli journalist Ron Ben Yishai for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot in which he provides a first hand account of the Israeli operation to take control of the Turkish-led flotilla. The Israel Project hopes you find this of interest.
Ben Yishai, Ron, "A Brutal Ambush at Sea," YnetNews, May 31, 2010, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3896796,00.html
For Video Footage of the Gaza Flotilla

A Brutal Ambush at Sea

Ron Ben Yishai recounts bloody clash aboard Gaza-bound vessel: The lacking crowd-dispersal means, the brutal violence of ‘peace activists,’ and the attempt to bring down an IDF helicopter
Our Navy commandoes fell right into the hands of the Gaza mission members. A few minutes before the takeover attempt aboard the Marmara got underway, the operation commander was told that 20 people were waiting on the deck where a helicopter was to deploy the first team of the elite Flotilla 13 unit. The original plan was to disembark on the top deck, and from there rush to the vessel’s bridge and order the Marmara’s captain to stop.
Officials estimated that passengers will show slight resistance, and possibly minor violence; for that reason, the operation’s commander decided to bring the helicopter directly above the top deck. The first rope that soldiers used in order to descend down to the ship was wrested away by activists, most of them Turks, and tied to an antenna with the hopes of bringing the chopper down. However, Flotilla 13 fighters decided to carry on.
Navy commandoes slid down to the vessel one by one, yet then the unexpected occurred: The passengers that awaited them on the deck pulled out bats, clubs, and slingshots with glass marbles, assaulting each soldier as he disembarked. The fighters were nabbed one by one and were beaten up badly, yet they attempted to fight back.
However, to their misfortune, they were only equipped with paintball rifles used to disperse minor protests, such as the ones held in Bilin. The paintballs obviously made no impression on the activists, who kept on beating the troops up and even attempted to wrest away their weapons.
One soldier who came to the aid of a comrade was captured by the rioters and sustained severe blows. The commandoes were equipped with handguns but were told they should only use them in the face of life-threatening situations. When they came down from the chopper, they kept on shouting to each other “don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” even though they sustained numerous blows.
‘I saw the tip of a rifle’
The Navy commandoes were prepared to mostly encounter political activists seeking to hold a protest, rather than trained street fighters. The soldiers were told they were to verbally convince activists who offer resistance to give up, and only then use paintballs. They were permitted to use their handguns only under extreme circumstances.
The planned rush towards the vessel’s bridge became impossible, even when a second chopper was brought in with another crew of soldiers. “Throw stun grenades,” shouted Flotilla 13’s commander who monitored the operation. The Navy chief was not too far, on board a speedboat belonging to Flotilla 13, along with forces who attempted to climb into the back of the ship.
The forces hurled stun grenades, yet the rioters on the top deck, whose number swelled up to 30 by that time, kept on beating up about 30 commandoes who kept gliding their way one by one from the helicopter. At one point, the attackers nabbed one commando, wrested away his handgun, and threw him down from the top deck to the lower deck, 30 feet below. The soldier sustained a serious head wound and lost his consciousness.
Only after this injury did Flotilla 13 troops ask for permission to use live fire. The commander approved it: You can go ahead and fire. The soldiers pulled out their handguns and started shooting at the rioters’ legs, a move that ultimately neutralized them. Meanwhile, the rioters started to fire back at the commandoes.
“I saw the tip of a rifle sticking out of the stairwell,” one commando said. “He fired at us and we fired back. We didn’t see if we hit him. We looked for him later but couldn’t find him.” Two soldiers sustained gunshot wounds to their knee and stomach after rioters apparently fired at them using guns wrested away from troops.
During the commotion, another commando was stabbed with a knife. In a later search aboard the Marmara, soldiers found caches of bats, clubs, knives, and slingshots used by the rioters ahead of the IDF takeover. It appeared the activists were well prepared for a fight.
Some passengers on the ship stood at the back and pounded the soldiers’ hands as they attempted to climb on board. Only after a 30-minute shootout and brutal assaults using clubs and knifes did commandoes manage to reach the bridge and take over the Marmara.
It appears that the error in planning the operation was the estimate that passengers were indeed political activists and members of humanitarian groups who seek a political provocation, but would not resort to brutal violence. The soldiers thought they will encounter Bilin-style violence; instead, they got Bangkok. The forces that disembarked from the helicopters were few; just dozens of troops – not enough to contend with the large group awaiting them.
The second error was that commanders did not address seriously enough the fact that a group of men were expecting the soldiers on the top deck. Had they addressed this more seriously, they may have hurled tear-gas grenades and smoke grenades from the helicopter to create a screen that would have enabled them to carry out their mission, without the fighters falling right into the hands of the rioters, who severely assaulted them.


And here, an update:

Sailor’s First-Hand Report: We Came to Speak; They Came to Fight

Sivan 19, 5770, 01 June 10 11:18

by Israel National News-IDF

(Israelnationalnews.com) One of the Naval Special Forces commandos who sustained a broken arm while under attack by the Mavi Marama ship’s passengers, reports, “Each soldier who descended was taken by three or four men and they simply exploded, beating him up. They lynched us. 

“They had metal clubs, knives, slingshots, glass bottles…At one point there was also live fire.

“I was among the last to descend, and I saw that the group was dispersed, everyone in his own corner surrounded by three or four men. I saw a soldier on the floor with two men beating him. I peeled them off of him and they came at me and began beating me with the clubs.  

“That’s how I broke my arm. At that moment I had no weapon in my hands, like everyone else who descended on the cables empty-handed. My paintball gun was behind me.

“They came and attacked me, I brought them down to the floor, I took a few steps back, I took out my paintball gun, they came at me, and I shot at their legs. One of the clubs destroyed my paint gun and I moved on to my pistol which was the only thing to hold against them. At this point my arm no longer functioned. 

“From the opening of the corridor, they were shooting at us the entire time with live fire”

The naval soldier also described how his unit was shot at from the entrance to the ship’s corridor: “I saw two from my group lying flat on the ground. From the opening of the corridor they were shooting at them the entire time with live fire, bullets. We identified a gun barrel, and one of us shot at the guy holding it. Afterwards we entered and he wasn’t there.  

"[They were] about 30 men; they simply came for war. We came to straighten things out, to speak to those who went downstairs, but each of us who descended was simply attacked.

“There were some from my group that were thrown to the lower floor, and the passengers took their equipment. They jumped to the water as a last resort. We were told that if they didn’t listen, we should shoot at their legs with the paintball gun. 'The pistol is only for if you really feel your life is in danger, which shouldn’t happen. It would be extremely abnormal.' But in the end, that is what happened. 

“We came with the intention of stopping the ship and taking it to Ashdod, and we did not come with the weapons we usually have; we came for something entirely different.”

www.IsraelNationalNews.com

© Copyright IsraelNationalNews.com

 And here is a superb response by our friend Mike Gusowsky, AKA Yekutiel Ben -Yaakov.

Mike, I salute you: you couldn't have said it better. Thank you.

Arabs Try to Lynch Israeli Paint-Gun Commandos – Myths and Facts about the Israeli Naval Operation

If it wasn't so sad it would make great material for a comedy. The Israeli government sends its most elite military unit - its navy seals - to overtake the Turkish terrorist supply ships as they penetrated into Israeli territorial waters with the stated intent of breaking the Israeli naval blockade around the terrorist Hamas entity that controls Gaza. That Israel sees it as a priority to continue blocking the free flow of weapons into Gaza is not the problem. However, the feeble tactics used by the Israeli government  to enforce the blockade needs to be studied and never again duplicated.Did Israel use disproportionate and excessive force? The absolute opposite is true – Israel armed its fighters with toy paint-guns, and gave specific orders to all troops not to open fire with their pistols unless their lives were in danger. In fact, the poor soldiers refrained from shooting back until  some of their commrades were already being lynched,  shot at, firebombed and stabbed.

The Israelis had spent tens of millions of shekels to set up hotel-suite jail cells, cake and coffee, and promised that they would not use unnecessary force to reroute the ships to the Ashdod port, where they would run a security check of all of the items and then transport the cargo, free of charge into Gaza. Israel also announced in advance that they would send all of the Turks and Europeans back to their countries of origin at Israel's expense. The European and Turkish Hamas sympathizers had two goals - to break through the blockade thereby easing present and future restrictions to transport and smuggle weapons freely into Gaza, and to embarrass Israel - knowing just how sensitive and obsessive Israel is about international public opinion. Israel also had two primary goals: To minimize damage to its image and to prevent direct passage into Gaza.  In Israel's suicidal and futile quest to be loved by the Gentiles and to look good in their eyes, Israel once again risked the lives of is finest soldiers and civilians, lowering them onto the boats, one by one, armed primarily with toy paint-guns. This was after having undergone weeks of mental preparation to be "sensitive" to the terrorists who were known to be on board along with their radical supporters who came along for the voyage.

Israel's futile attempt to look pretty was doomed to failure from the onset, as the Voice of Judea predicted and published Friday, three days before the dangerous debacle at sea that resulted in severe injuries to several Israeli soldiers and in the deaths of some 15 Hamas sympathizers on the boat. In the prophetic words of that Judean Voice issue: "Israel lacks the means to offset anti-Israel bias on campuses and in the international press. Whatever Israel does, she will be portrayed as the culprit. It is nothing more than extreme stupidity and a mere exercise in futility to enter that uneven playing-field, where the deck (no pun intended) is stacked against Israel. Whatever Israel does she will be treated like an Apartheid state. Thus Israel should focus on one thing and one thing only – the prevention of the ships entering into Israeli waters, by any and all means necessary. Israel needs to make it clear to any and all that if they penetrate Israeli waters, they will be immediately sunk." We continued in our Friday commentary -  "Nothing will be gained by placing our soldiers unnecessarily at risk by having them physically board the ships, and face off with terrorists and whatever unknown weapons and surprises await them. We have our limits and our borders and whoever penetrates them do so at their own risk. There is not a sane country in the free world that would have operated any differently than the way we have suggested when faced with a terrorist enemy who seeks to destroy them and to smuggle in weapons to annihilate them."

We even predicted the exact outcome: "Unfortunately Bibi lacks the backbone and the faith to do anything else but to play right into the hands of the terrorists, as he already promised to transport all of he ship's loads to Gaza, while on the other hand, he will not be able to avoid the bloody broadcasts of the Israeli commandos overtaking the boats – giving the Hamas the very victory that he is so frightened to deliver to them. This is the true danger of a secular head of state who lacks faith in G-d and the justice of his cause. For one who is scared of the prophetic scenario for Israel to "dwell alone" in separation and in isolation, and one who places his faith in Washington and who sees the Biblical isolation blessing as a dreadful curse, will inevitably lose out on all fronts and in all worlds. And we urge all to watch closely the unfolding of this saga at sea, because it is apparent that we will see yet another rerun of  frightened myopic Jewish leaders, who with all of their insane preparations to greet the enemy boats with kid's gloves  - it will all be to no avail. The same tons of supplies will be brought to Gaza and Israel will lose the media battle regardless."

What should be done? Firstly, we must not leave any doubt in anyone's mind that we will not risk one soldier unnecessarily, and we couldn't care less about international opinion. We must do what needs to be done  to protect the integrity of our borders and the lives of our people. And if you as much as think about entering Israel by sea, land or air, we will blow you to kingdom's come. Bad P.R.? Better to stay alive with bad P.R. that makes the world boil over with anger at us, than to die and "benefit" from the sympathy at Yad Vashem as they come to cry their  crocodile tears and place wreaths of flowers, wreathed with smiles and pity for the helpless Jewish victims. There is no way to buy the love of the Gentiles with misplaced mercy of fools. However, we can achieve respect and fear by taking the necessary steps to secure our borders thereby fulfilling the verse, "And the fear of the Jews has befallen the nations". Indeed the time has come to recover from our Jewish ghetto complex of seeking favor in the eyes of the Gentile, and to replace that with faith in G-d and Jewish power. That is the Jewish way, and the only way to restore Israel's deterrent factor lost at sea and lost when Israel fled Lebanon, surrendered Gaza, froze "settlement" growth, permitted Iran and Syria to pump weapons into Lebanon with impunity and forfeited her sovereignty over the Temple Mount. The situation will continue to deteriorate as long as Israel chooses to fight her battles with toy guns in the futile hope to gain favor in the eyes of her enemies.

The Saga at Sea and the Eaters of Stinking Fish

This latest saga at sea can only remind us of that famous Jewish story where a king sends his servant out to buy him fish. The servant returns with fish that stinks. The enraged king offers his servant to choose one of three punishments: to eat the fish, to pay for the fish, or to take 20 lashes. The servant, not wanting to fork over money, tries to eat the fish, but it is so disgusting, that he stops in the middle, and chooses to suffer the lashes. But the whipping is so painful, that he stops in the middle and finally offers to pay for the fish. And so, the servant ends up paying for the fish anyway, but only after suffering all the other punishments as well. The parable is clear: Israel is so worried about it's world image, that it bends over backward and risks the lives of its soldiers to show they are not aggressors. But in the end, they get condemned anyway, like eaters of stinking fish.


.... And Jack's comment:

I hope this marks the end of Israel playing indifada games, using minimum violence as if we are dealing with civil disorders, riots at most. This is a war and in war, you attack enemy soldiers, you die. We constantly underestimate our enemy and we constantly set our goals too low; stalemate instead of victory, frustrating our enemies instead of vanquishing them. We have always had in mind that, when it ends, there will be minimal ill will so that we will be able to make peace. That is useless because there is no way to make peace with people whose most cherished goal is to destroy us.

But I don’t mean to be entirely negative. Some sort of peace is possible. Here is my peace plan (It’s an adaptation of the Roosevelt-Churchill peace plan): Invade and reoccupy; take down all the terrorist organizations, including the PLO, “de-Nazification of the territories, meaning, kill all the terrorists and their accomplices, abolish the Palestinian Authority, annex the territories and rebuild all the towns destroyed in the expulsion from Gaza and the Northern Shomron; give resident alien status to the “Palestinians;” replace the school books with Israeli textbooks and the radio and TV personnel and programming. Then, the Arab world can have peace right where they stand. No more agreements. This would be a unilateral offer, not an agreement. Don’t make war against us again and we promise not to take any more land from you. If we have to take land in order to repel attack or to prevent tunneling into Israel, we will annex it and keep it forever.

Will Europe boycott us? Europe has decided to surrender and is sinking fast anyway. There is no reason for us to go down with Europe. Will America distance itself from us as well? We have survived 4,000 years without America. We can do it again. Israel has to look eastward mainly, and forge partnerships with other countries that have decided to fight the global jihad-leftist alliance and not to appease it, countries like India, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Colombia and Honduras; maybe even Canada and Poland. And others might come to understand the folly of appeasing the mujahidin and will join us, if it is not too late.

Other Israelis agree with us:




http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137801 ( VIDEO!)

Israelis Protest at Turkish Embassy Following Flotilla Clash

Sivan 18, 5770, 31 May 10 10:42

by Avi Yellin & Yoni Kempinski

(Israelnationalnews.com) Over 500 angry Israeli citizens demonstrated Monday night in front of the Turkish Embassy in Tel Aviv, calling on their government to act firmly against the militants of the Flotilla ships and against the Turkish government who many believe to be responsible for organizing the flotilla and successfully touching off a diplomatic crisis for Israel.
[flash:124793]
The “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” set sail last week for the Hamas-controlled Gaza region, claiming to be carrying humanitarian aid. Israeli Navy ships requested late Sunday night that the activists change course from Gaza to Ashdod, where they would be able to unload their aid material, which would then be transferred over land to Gaza after undergoing security inspections.
The activists refused and IDF troops attempting to board a ship were attacked by activists wielding knives, clubs and guns. Nine militants were killed and several soldiers injured - one from a gunshot wound - during the clashes that ensued, creating a new public relations crisis for the Jewish state.

Roni Bialer, one of the protesters demonstrating in front of the Turkish Embassy, spoke with Israel National News, stressing that the protest is made up completely of private citizens and is not connected with or endorsed by any organizations or political entities.

“We want the Israeli government to act strongly instead of apologizing for the number of militants killed,” said Bialer. “We must blame (Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip) Erdogan. It does not make sense that Turkey sends a ship with [possible] arms and expects Israel to let it in. We want Israel to change its policy towards Turkey.”

Bialer further expressed support for Israel’s government and for the IDF, saying that the behavior of Israeli soldiers was necessary for the country’s defense. Grassroots voices throughout the country and several military analysts have noted that Navy officers did not take proper precautions by sending commandos to board the ships without the necessary back-up or cover. They pointed out that preparations for the operation should have taken into account that not all of the people on the flotilla were unarmed.

Turkey was until recently widely viewed as one of the Middle East’s more moderate regimes, like Jordan, Egypt and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, who enjoy arms and support from the United States while generally limiting their actions against Israel to anti-Zionist propaganda.
But in the last year, Turkey has moved increasingly closer to the more outwardly hostile Iran-Syria-Hizbullah-Hamas axis that opts for a more traditional military approach to destroy Israel. While Israeli government officials have exhausted attempts to reconcile with Turkey, many Israelis – such as the angry demonstrators in Tel Aviv – have called on their government to treat Turkey as an enemy state.

Photo by: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Analysis: The flotilla fiasco By DAVID HOROVITZ 01/06/2010 Why did IDF underestimate terrorists?

Obviously, many of those in the “Freedom Flotilla” were not engaged in a humanitarian mission. Had that been their prime motivation, they would have accepted Israel’s offer to escort them to Ashdod Port and arrange for the delivery of their supplies to Gaza, after security checks, over land. They also would have agreed without hesitation to convey a package from the family of the Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas for almost four years in Gaza, Gilad Schalit. Obviously, too, many of those who sailed toward Gaza were not “peace activists.” While those aboard five of the vessels in the flotilla did not violently oppose the IDF soldiers who came to intercept them, the video footage released by the IDF in the course of Monday confirmed earlier official descriptions by Israel of soldiers being premeditatedly and ruthlessly attacked as they tried to board the largest of the vessels, the Mavi Marmara. Inexplicably, only a small contingent of naval commandos was dispatched to take control of a ship carrying hundreds of activists. And the commandos came on board carrying paintball guns, apparently under the misconception that the takeover of the Mavi Marmara would be, if not a game, then certainly not a confrontation with an enemy. The IDF’s intelligence was clearly deeply flawed. As the footage showed, the outnumbered, under-equipped and incorrectly prepared commandos found themselves not grappling with unruly peace activists or demonstrators, to whom they had been ordered to show “restraint,” but being viciously attacked before they had barely set foot on deck. The clips showed clusters of people swarming around each of the commandos, and beating them over and over with clubs and bars in scenes sickeningly reminiscent of the lynching of IDF reservists in the Ramallah police station 10 years ago. There was footage of one of the “activists” stabbing a soldier, of a petrol bomb being thrown at the troops, a stun grenade. And the troops themselves reported being sprayed with tear gas, attacked with iron bars, knives and sticks, and of efforts, reportedly successful in at least one case, to grab the pistols some were also carrying. There were reports of gunfire directed at the troops, and of soldiers jumping into the sea to escape attack. Soldiers were fighting for their lives, said the IDF spokesman, Avi Benayahu (in Hebrew). “It was a lynch. It was an ambush.” The navy chief, Eliezer Marom, told an early afternoon press conference that the resulting toll of the dead and injured could have been “much worse,” that the confrontation could have ended even more unhappily. But it also could have ended a great deal better. At this writing, Israel is facing a battle to maintain diplomatic relations with the flotilla-sponsoring Turks, condemnation from much of the Arab world, milder expressions of concern and criticism from Western nations, a concerted diplomatic campaign against it at the UN, and exacerbated fears of internal and regional violence. Defense Minister Ehud Barak noted that the Mavi Marmara was under the control of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (the IHH), which he described as “a violent, extremist organization that supports terrorism.” Both he and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon stated with good reason that the entire “Freedom Flotilla” had been a deliberate “provocation.” In such circumstances, facing such hostility, it is hard to fathom why the IDF so underestimated the challenge its soldiers would face, and thus erred so strikingly over both its choice of how to thwart the flotilla, and over the number of soldiers, and the equipment, it sent into the battle at sea. That Israel would lose the “media war” – against what were largely depicted internationally as well-intentioned human rights activists trying to defy the Israeli blockade by bringing supplies to Gaza – was a given. Successive governments refuse to take the “second battlefield” seriously – criminally ignoring the imperative to allocate the appropriate resources so that Israel is equipped to effectively articulate its various challenges ahead of time, and in real time, in international, diplomatic and legal forums. Israel is being further overwhelmed day by day in the newer world of social media: Those aboard the flotilla, and their supporters worldwide, are proving to be expert exponents of Twitter and other instantaneous social media channels (as my colleague Amir Mizroch details in an op-ed elsewhere in these pages). Official Israel, by contrast, could barely manage to depart from Hebrew long enough to manage a statement and an answer in English at its major press conferences during Monday. Israel was also further hampered by the absence of its prime minister overseas. When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was finally heard later Monday, speaking to the press with Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper alongside him, his powerful descriptions of the way IDF soldiers were confronted on the Mavi Marmara – “they were mobbed, clubbed, beaten and stabbed,” he said – showed how effective a carefully articulated narrative can be. But so much for the arenas in which Israel is routinely inept. What was so worrying about Monday’s performance was the military misjudgment and misassessment – and the potential impact on Israel’s deterrent capability of the failure to efficiently overwhelm the forces arrayed against it on what amounted to an enemy vessel. Israel is concerned with eminently good reason about the smuggling of weaponry into Hamas-controlled Gaza. It may have felt it had no choice but to intercept a flotilla carrying it knew not what to the Hamas terror state. Why did it not anticipate that the activists and supporters of “a violent, extremist organization that supports terrorism” would act precisely according to type?

See also related articles:

URGENT UPDATE HERE:

http://israeltruthtimes.blogspot.com/2010/06/we-have-been-had-this-is-so-damning-you.html

http://israeltruthtimes.blogspot.com/2010/06/there-is-only-one-solution-barak-has-to.html

http://israeltruthtimes.blogspot.com/2010/05/updates-on-flotilla-invasion-amazing.html

http://israeltruthtimes.blogspot.com/2010/05/updates-on-flotilla-to-gaza-invasion.html

http://israeltruthtimes.blogspot.com/2010/05/some-swiss-swiss-mp-on-flotilla-born-in.html

ISRAELI SOLDIERS WON'T BE ALLOWED TO TESTIFY IN TH...



UPDATE:

Report: Obama Nixed Anti-Riot Gear on Flotilla

Sivan 29, 5770, 11 June 10 09:49

by Maayana Miskin

(Israelnationalnews.com) Israeli troops avoided the use of non-lethal riot gear against passengers on last week's Gaza-bound flotilla in order to appease United States President Barack Obama, according to the World Tribune. Quoting “diplomatic sources,” the paper said Obama nixed the use of equipment such as tear gas to stop the flotilla and demanded that Israel “exercise extreme caution and restraint.”
The White House has not commented on the report.
The report claimed that Defense Minister Ehud Barak accepted Obama's demand, possibly due to his hopes that America will agree to sell advanced weapons to Israel.
It says that the American demand was made despite Israeli intelligence reports indicating possible danger aboard one ship, the Mavi Marmara, which carried primarily Turkish citizens, many of them members of the pro-terrorist IHH organization. Intelligence agents had found that many of the Turkish passengers were trained in weapons use and hand-to-hand combat; their assessments were relayed to the White House.
Ultimately, soldiers boarded the ships with paintball guns and pistols instead of traditional anti-riot gear such as tear gas and rubber bullets. They were quickly overpowered by passengers on the Mavi Marmara, who were armed with clubs and knives. After two soldiers were critically wounded and dragged below deck, a commando opened fire , killing nine passengers and successfully ending the attack.
Obama did not condemn the IDF response, but since the flotilla incident, he has sought to ease tension with Turkey, and has called on Israel to ease its blockade on Gaza.