Israeli Navy commandos from Shayetet 13, the unit which murdered nine passengers on the Mavi Marmara, attached a bomb to the hull of Gaza’s Ark, a ship hoping to participate in a Freedom Flotilla project to dramatize Israel’s siege against Gaza. The ship was sunk last night in Gaza harbor. My Israeli source confirms this act of state terror was performed by the Navy commandos. It is part of a strategy that stresses deterrence rather than the confrontation which ended in such a humanitarian and PR disaster for Israel after the Marmara massacre.
A military source told my Israeli colleague:
“As part of the lessons we learned from the Marmara operation, we decided to prefer “Sol Phryne“-like operations. In such operations no one is killed, and they are a good training for our fighters to sneak underwater into hostile harbors and sink ships”.
With the noblesse oblige typical of the Israeli military the source sees this as a training “opportunity” rather than an outright act of state terror as an unarmed civilian ship was destroyed outside of Israeli territory. There can be no excuse for such Israeli attacks whose only purpose is to avoid future Israeli embarrassment at the dramatization of its illegal siege against Gaza.
This statement reminds me of Nazi support for Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. The German army similarly used the fighting as training exercises for their pilots as they attacked Spanish civilians targets in places like Guernica.
One of the former commanders of Shayetet 13 and the Israeli Navy, Zeev Almog, was recently accused of committing a war crime by sinking a civilian ship during Israel’s first war in Lebanon. He was also accused of engaging in reckless military actions which got his own personnel killed. A member of the Israeli forum, Fresh, suggested that a submarine fired on a civilian ship during the war and sunk it. Almog has announced in the media that he will sue the man who was a deputy commander under his leadership, Mike Eldar, for making such accusations. Despite repeated attempts, I have not been able to speak with Eldar to confirm this report. It seems Shayetet 13 has a long, honored tradition of killing civilians during peacetime and wartime.
To support the further work of Gaza’s Ark, please donate generously here.
Your ‘source’ isn’t going to remain confidential much longer if he gives you a quote from a military source the same day of the operation.
My source has been cooperating with me for four years & if he worried for his safety he wouldn’t be doing this. Not to mention that he gets a good deal of his info fr military Intel ppl who believe it’s useful to use this blog to relay information. I take this into account in publishing what I do so that I am not a mouthpiece for the security services. But sometimes the information he gets fr these sources records Israeli failures or inadequacies as well.
One Question Mr. Wizard.
i clicked on the press release you linked to. and the site doesn’t come up.
no images could be found nowhere on the web which seems a bit peculiar, An explosion in the heart of a Gaza’s port following the Palestinian unity agreement will be materialized by Hamas who will be all over it like a bear on a honey pot.
so….were you given the wrong information ?
@ Jackdaw: One answer, Mr. Genius: Did you ever stop to think that an Israeli terror attack on their ship might attract a huge number of visitors to their site & that the site might be slow to respond to your page request? The links work fine for me. Or it could be that your ISP is so pro-Israel it censors pro-Palestine websites!
“Kabariti refused to blame any party, saying “it’s still premature”.”
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/04/blast-damages-gaza-anti-siege-boat-2014429124952109693.html
My take on the incident: – especially considering no reports were made by Hamas – an accident.
wouldn’t be the first rodeo.
@ Nonsense: I wasn’t aware anyone asked for your take or cared. You’ve again lived up to your nickname.
An accident ? That’s why someone called the watchman on his phone and asked him to leave the boat just before the explosion ?
@ Deir Yassin: I hadn’t even thought of that. But of course, you’re right. These hasbarists aren’t the brightest bulbs…
The phone call is mentioned in the first line of the Al-Jazeera-article that Nonsense (perfect pen name…) posted, so I think rather than stupidity, we’re dealing with a deliberate liar.
Right, because only hasbarists lie. No chance the guard fabricated the phone call because he was asleep or something.
Aren’t you residing in the US mr. Silverstein ? A place where a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty ? Or maybe in your opinion such applies only to individuals but does not apply to the state of Israel, an entity you convict daily without a shred of evidence in the all the wrongdoings of the world ?
It’s not impossible that the sinking resulted from a simple boating accident.
Boats must be vented of gas fumes before ignition.
http://www.tradeonlytoday.com/2011/06/woman-killed-in-boat-explosion-at-marina/
@Jackdaw: Cut the horseshit. And stop posting nonsense.
I warned you not to post more than 3 comments a day & you’ve ignored me. Don’t. You’re at the tree comment limit. Do not monopolize the comment threads.