UN-Truth

Two Turkish-speaking Israelis who were asked to interpret after the Israeli naval assault at sea on the Freedom Flotilla on 31 May, and the subsequent processing of some 700 passengers and crew in Ashdod port and beyond, wrote about their experience and their views of who was on board in a piece published on Zeek.Forward.com.

Medi Nahmiyaz and Nathalie Alyon wrote:

“When the Mavi Marmara was still somewhere in the Mediterranean with its passengers under arrest, we received a request from the Association of Turkish Jews in Israel calling for voluntary translators. In less then an hour, we were on an Ashdod-bound bus. As Turkish Jews living in Israel, we had already felt great distress upon hearing the news. We wanted to see for ourselves who was on those boats.

“Israeli media labeled all those on the boat as Islamist radicals. Turkish and Arab media portrayed them as a group of peace activists massacred by Israeli villains, akin to Nazis. According to what we saw, there were both activists and radicals on board, but the majority of the passengers fell into neither category. They were simply religious people motivated by their consciences to help the Gazan children whose pictures they had been seeing on television for years. Their humanist desire does not make them political activists nor does their faith make them Islamists.

“We discovered from listening to the Turkish passengers that many of them were recruited through local humanitarian and civil society organizations and not the IHH, the Turkish group that organized the flotilla…

The article continues:
“The IHH, Insani Yardim Vakfi or Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms in English, is a Turkish NGO. In international media, some describe the IHH as a humanitarian organization offering services in over 100 countries while others describe it as a charity that funnels money to terrorist organizations. In any case, the IHH organizers understood the politics of the flotilla. Most of the people actually onboard the ship, however, were not affiliated with the IHH, and did not have a political agenda. When we talked with them, most had no idea that an embargo actually bars entrance to Gaza. Many asked us in astonishment: ‘Isn’t Gaza a country of its own? Does Israel control Gaza?’ When asked why they came on this mission, their answer was ‘To bring humanitarian aid’. One seriously injured man we spoke to in the hospital said that he was an orphan and boarded the ship to help Gazan orphans. The people we talked to were fellow Turks familiar to us–they were no radicals …

“When the Israeli engagement began, what devout Turkish Muslim passengers saw were armed Israeli ‘baby-killers’ dropping onto their ship from helicopters. When masked Israeli commandos opened fire, the Turks did not know that the weapons were paint-ball guns; all they saw and heard were ‘non-stop gun shots’. Crucially, many of the passengers’ wives were below the deck. Not only were the men afraid for their own lives, but they also felt the need to protect their wives and honor. In the scenarios familiar to them from Turkish television, vicious Israelis would kill them all, rape their wives and use the humanitarian
aid to celebrate. So the passengers attacked the Israeli soldiers, with the only weapons they had: sticks, kitchen knives, and metal rods that they ‘cut off the ship’. When these people were being processed in Ashdod, we even heard some who refused to drink Israeli water because they truly believed that it had been poisoned …

“Years of misrepresentation of Israel by Turks in the Turkish media, and years of fear of Muslim men instilled in Israelis by Israelis, combined to trap two groups of people who neither wanted nor expected a violent confrontation. Most tragically, when the two sides fought, they increased the power of those on both sides who failed to protect them. The leaders of Turkey and Israel flexed their muscles and did so at the expense of Turkish civilians and Israeli soldiers.
…
“It is unfortunate that our leaders lacked the slightest bit of vision and caused others to suffer the consequences. Most of the passengers of Mavi Marmara did not wish or expect to be involved in a violent clash, let alone find themselves detained in an Israeli prison.
…
“We would like to be able to say that the Turkish and Israeli governments did not want such winds of animosity either. Unfortunately, we are not so sure about that”.

Nathalie Alyon is the coordinator of the Journal of Levantine Studies and Medi Nahmiyaz is the coordinator of the Turkish Forum, both at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

Their article about their impression of the passengers on board the Mavi Marmara is posted here.

Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Gaza, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, International Law, Israel, Sanctions