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August 27, 2010
Inquiry hears from IDF chief
Ashkenazi regrets not using marksmen to clear path for commandos.
ARIEH O’SULLIVAN THE MEDIA LINE
With an eye on more flotillas planning to break the blockade on Gaza, Israel’s army chief warned that it should have used a heavier hand when stopping a six-ship flotilla last May in a commando raid that left nine Turks dead and 55 people injured.
Speaking at a public inquiry into that raid, Lt.-Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi said better intelligence would have only helped prepare the raid, but not prevent the clashes with activists on the Mavi Marmara passenger ship.
Ashkenazi also indicated that there was no alternative plan of action, which could have been implemented once soldiers were injured in the assault.
When asked whether the plan needed to be changed after the first soldier boarded the ship, Ashkenazi stressed that the moment the soldier rappelled from the chopper and was hurt, there was no doubt that the operation needed to continue.
“The moment the first soldier went down, there was no way to change the plan. You can’t leave soldiers on the deck,” Ashkenazi told the panel. “We weren’t dealing with a situation of managing a danger in this case. We couldn’t pull back and then return later. I think we would have met a more violent ship that was better prepared.”
Repeatedly asked by the panel whether other options were considered, Ashkenazi said the only way the military could halt the ship was by taking it over by force.
“We didn’t have any cold system to stop the vessel,” he said, using military jargon for non-explosive devices for shutting down ship engines. “Other methods could have harmed people on the boat.”
On May 31, Israeli naval forces intercepted, boarded and seized six ships carrying 718 people from 37 countries attempting to break the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip by delivering tons of humanitarian aid and building supplies.
Israel had demanded that the ships have their cargo inspected at the Israeli port of Ashdod, offering to deliver permitted items to Gaza by land. The ships refused and, at a pre-dawn raid, Israeli naval commandos seized the ships on the high seas about 80 miles off the Gaza coast.
In the ensuing takeover of the Mavi Marmara ship, activists assaulted the Israeli commandos with knives and clubs. Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish activists and wounded dozens more. Seven Israeli commandos were injured and hundreds of activists were arrested, held for a short period, and then deported.
In the third and final day of testimony by Israeli leaders before a five-person commission led by former Israeli Supreme Court judge Jacob Turkel, Ashkenazi said the main mistake in the raid was faulty assessment of intelligence that did not foresee so-called “peace activists” using deadly force against boarding soldiers.
“The central mistake, including mine, was that we assessed there would be about 10 to 15 people on the upper deck. We thought we’d toss some stun grenades to clear them. They would move away and then we would be able to fast-rope combatants onto the boat in a minute,” he said.
“We should have managed conditions to accumulate power in the quickest way. There was need for accurate marksmen to fire from the side too and neutralize those preventing the rappelling down of soldiers, something that would have decreased the risk of harm to them. That is the central lesson for the next operation,” Ashkenazi said.
The commission was joined by two foreign observers, retired Canadian Brig.-Gen. Ken Watkin and Northern Ireland’s Lord David Trimble. In Israel, the testimonies became focused on who to blame for the diplomatic and military fiasco. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu started it off in his testimony when he dropped the hot potato on Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who subsequently said the military planned the whole thing.
Ashkenazi, a popular chief of general staff in a country where top generals are traditionally more respected than politicians, did not engage in finger pointing, at least not directly.
The army chief repeatedly mentioned in his testimony that he was strongly in favor of a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip in order to strangle Hamas and had repeatedly urged the government to adopt this position. The government finally declared a blockade in January 2009. At the commission, Ashkenazi showed a film, which presented evidence of a letter he sent to the politicians beseeching them to take all diplomatic measures to stop blockade-breaking flotillas and that any assault on them should be a last resort.
According to Ashkenazi, the assault was planned by his office, operations and the navy. Commandos were trained in mock assaults on ships for weeks before the May 31 event. The army chief revealed that they used electronic warfare to try and block any media transmissions from the Mavi Marmara but it was only partially successful. He blamed the long silence of the Israel army spokesman’s office on the need to first notify the families of the seven injured commandos.
Questioned by one of the judges about Turkish claims the dead were shot at point blank range in the head similar to an execution, Ashkenazi became visibly agitated and rejected the notion out of hand.
“The soldiers legitimately opened fire and shot those who they needed to shoot and not those who they didn’t need to shoot,” Ashkenazi said. “Their actions were proportionate and correct.... When someone comes at a soldier with an axe, the soldier will shoot.”
Ashkenazi explained the poor intelligence on the fact that the army was not familiar with IHH, the Turkish group that organized the sail to Gaza.
“We did not investigate the organization. It was not on our list of our priorities because it was not listed as a terror organization and was located in Turkey, which is not an enemy state,” he said.
A ship bearing aid for Gaza is preparing to leave Tripoli in Lebanon in the coming weeks in the latest attempt to defy the Israeli blockade. It reportedly will sail with only women aboard.
Israel says it imposed its blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in order to halt the smuggling of rockets and other weaponry that has been used against its southern communities.
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