By Steve Hynd
The IDF would have it that the commandos who abseilled onto the Gaza Flotilla were at first armed only with paintball guns filled with capiscum rounds. It's a story that's got a lot of mileage with pro-Israel media, blogs and the IDF, but does it hold up?
The evidence seems to come from the IDF's own videos of the assault. Here's a still given to me by my friend Chris Albon as we discussed this on Twitter:
However, footage shot by the UK's Sky News (owned by Rupert Murdoch) clearly shows Israeli commandos abseilling to the decks with very different weapons.
Those look rather more like members of the Galil family: most likely the Galil MAR 5.56mm, an assault carbine developed for the IDF's special forces.
And in any case the standard IDF paintball gun is apparently the same as the US Army's - the FN303. That looks like this:
So, what do you think?
SH asks, "So, what do you think?"
ReplyDeleteI think that I expected to find good coverage and analysis at Newshoggers, and was not disappointed.
I don't think it matters if the Israelis were using slingshots or assault rifles - they were set up and overreacted like they always do. The real story is they weren't set up by the Palestinians but the Turks and that should worry the Israelis and the rest of the world a lot more.
ReplyDeleteYou're a man of conscience, Steve, and a much needed voice of reason amidst the ridiculous pro-Israel propaganda. When the story of the Freedom Flotilla massacre broke out, I wondered how the IOF (aka the IDF) and the Israeli government would justify it. And I have to say that their lies brought ridiculousness to a new level. Their claims are so absurd and illogical you'd think they're joking. But sadly the U.S administration and Righties in both Israel and the US bought it. Of course the response would have been entirely different had, say, Iran attacked an aid flotilla carrying peace activists. The inconsistency and double standards are sickening.
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