The false narrative initially put out by the Israeli government of hapless IDF commandos severely threatened by hardened “terrorists” on the Mavi Marmara has fallen apart, amid revelations of doctored photos, dubbed voices and other deceptions and the patent absurdity of the claim that the commandos had boarded the ship armed only with “paint guns” and low-caliber pistols. Now the Big Lie stands further exposed, thanks to a smuggled-out video showing IDF commandos kicking a prone, helpless victim and then apparently executing him with semi-automatic rifle fire at almost point-blank range.
This smuggled video, showing IDF commandos brutally kicking their captive, who is clearly posing no threat to them, and then firing four shots downward, shows these commandos were on the ship with intent to kill and injure, and that is what they did. They were certainly not kicking and shooting here to protect their lives. This looks more like a Rodney King moment than self-defense.
Update: My colleage Linn Washington, who is knowledgeable about firearms, says that the gun in the video appears to be a pump-action Remington 870 shotgun–a potent and lethal firearm used widely by police for “riot control,” that could cause the types of wounds found in the Turkish autopsies of victims if fired at close range, and one that is in the Israeli arsenal.
There are claims from Turkish sources that this clip depicts the 19-year-old American-born Furkan Dogan being executed. Dogan’s autopsy showed he was shot four times in the face, and at least once in the back.
IDF defenders are claiming that the video doesn’t actually show the victim, but unless you think the first commando is kicking soccer goals on the deck, and the shooter is firing at the deck for sport, there can be no doubt that the target of both acts of violence is being first pummeled with kicks, and then peppered with bullets.
So far, the President Obama and the White House and State Department have made no condemnation of Israel’s illegal and murderous attack in international waters on a civilian ship flying the flag of a NATO ally.
This video is, for me, reminiscent of the video from the Tet Offensive in the 1968 in the Vietnam War, which showed a South Vietnamese officer executing a captured Viet Cong fighter with a pistol shot to the head, and also of the 1979 video of a soldier in the army of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza executing the ABC newsman Bill Stewart (which came across a monitor in a local ABC newsroom I happened to be visiting in rural North Carolina, causing absolute pandemonium and outrage).
Both those earlier videos of military atrocities by soldiers for regimes backed by the US significantly turned American public opinion against the US puppet regimes and the wars they were fighting. Hopefully this latest video of another atrocity by a client regime’s stormtroopers will have the same effect.
To help make sure that happens, send this page link to your local newspaper editor and to your local TV news stations, and demand that they air this video. No more censorship of this story! And by the way, kudos to Counterpunch, to Rense.com, to Smirking Chimp and to Public Record for having the guts to run this story and the link when most other alternative and progressive sites have been afraid to, or have pulled it when attacked.