Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a government-appointed inquiry that Israeli soldiers acted in self-defense when they opened fire after boarding a ship carrying aid to the Gaza Strip, killing eight Turks and a Turkish American.
“Israeli soldiers on the ship Mavi Marmara demonstrated exceptional courage and acted in their self-defense out of genuine danger for their lives,” Netanyahu told the commission in Jerusalem on Monday.
Netanyahu is the lead-off witness as the five-member panel led by former Supreme Court Justice Yaakov Tirkel — plus two foreign observers — starts hearings some two months after the May 31 incident that provoked widespread international condemnation of Israel. Following him in the witness chair this week will be Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israel military chief of staff.
A separate Israeli military inquiry concluded July 12 that faulty planning and intelligence failures contributed to the incident. The Tirkel commission will examine the interplay of the military and political decision making before the raid, which took place while Netanyahu was on a visit to Canada and forced him to postpone a meeting with President Barack Obama. The commission will also examine the raid’s legality.
Elite commandos
Commandos from the elite “Shayetet 13” unit dropped from helicopters onto the aid ships before dawn, expecting little resistance from passengers aboard the six vessels, according to the military inquiry headed by reserve Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland.
That was how it turned out aboard five of the ships. On the sixth, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, Israeli forces were beaten, stabbed and shot after hitting the deck, according to Eiland’s report.
Israel said it issued numerous warnings in the May incident to the Gaza-bound flotilla to change course for the port of Ashdod and unload there. It said its soldiers were attacked with knives and clubs and seven were wounded, including by gunfire, after people aboard one of the ships managed to grab Israeli firearms.
Threw firearms
Eight Turks and one American of Turkish descent were killed in the incident. Activists said they threw the firearms into the sea and that the Israelis instigated the violence.
The Tirkel commission will hear Netanyahu’s testimony at the Yitzhak Rabin Youth Hostel in Jerusalem, whose dining room has been adapted to provide the trappings of a courtroom for the panel members, witnesses, journalists and security personnel attending the proceedings.
David Trimble, the Nobel Peace Prize winner from Northern Ireland, and Ken Watkin, a former judge advocate general of Canada’s armed forces, are on the commission as non-voting international observers.
The raid and Israel’s initial refusal of an international probe strained diplomatic and military relations with Turkey, once its closest ally in the region. Netanyahu has since reversed his position and agreed to participate in a United Nations commission investigating the flotilla episode.
