- Kevin Neish of Victoria, British Columbia, didn't know
he was a celebrity until he was about to board a flight from Istanbul to
Ottawa. "This Arab woman wearing a beautiful outfit suddenly ran
up to me crying, 'It's you! From Arab TV! You're famous!'" he recalls
with a laugh. "I didn't know what she was talking about, but she told
me, 'I saw you flipping through the Israeli commando's book! It's being
aired over and over!'"
-
- A soft-spoken teacher and former civilian engineer with
the Canadian Department of Defense, Neish realized then that a video taken
by an Arab TV cameraman in the midst of the Israeli assault on the Freedom
Flotilla to Gaza of him flipping through a booklet had been transmitted
before the Israelis blocked all electronic signals from the flotilla. The
booklet had pictures and profiles of all the passengers, and he'd found
it in the backpack of an Israeli Defense Force commando.
-
- Neish, 53, was on the second deck of the flotilla's lead
ship, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, with a good view of the stern, when the
IDF, in the early morning darkness of May 31, began its assault with percussion
grenades, tear gas and a hail of bullets. He then moved to the fourth deck
in an enclosed stairwell, from which he watched took photographs as casualties
were carried down past him to a makeshift medical station. Several IDF
commandos, captured by the passengers and crew, were also brought past
him.
-
- "I saw them carrying this one IDF guy down,"
he recalls. "He looked terrified, like he thought he was going to
be killed. But when a big Turkish guy, who had seen seriously injured passengers
who had been shot by the IDF, charged over and tried to hit the commando,
the Turkish aid workers pushed him off and pinned him to the wall. They
protected this Israeli soldier."
-
- That was when he found the backpack which the soldier
had dropped. "I figured I'd look inside and see what he was carrying,"
Neish says. "And inside was this kind of flip-book. It was full of
photos and names in English and Hebrew of who was on all the ships. The
booklet also had a detailed diagram of the decks of the Mavi Marmara."
-
- Meanwhile, he says, more and more people were being carried
down the stairs from the mayhem above-people who'd been shot, and people
who were dying or people already dead. "I took detailed photos of
the dead and wounded with my camera," he says, adding, "There
were several guys who had two neat bullet holes side by side on the side
of their head--clearly they were executed."...
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- __________
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- For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF, please
go to the new independent collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper
ThisCantBeHappening.net at www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/101
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