Israel's dynamic assault on humanitarian ships last week was destined to turn fatal according to a former special operations officer with over a decade of experience doing ''in extremis'' assaults.
The officer, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak officially, said Israelis problems began when they chose to assault the ships with paint-ball guns as their primary weapons. According to the officer, ''Paint-ball guns could have been used to clear civilians away from the rope on decent, to mark hostile civilians to take into custody, or as a non-lethal method of crowd control - but since it is non-lethal the soldiers would be more likely to fire, to use the weapon for whatever purpose, and whenever someone is shot, by anything, they are going to react."
Explaining the scene on the ships, the officer says it could have been very easy for the civilians on board to mistake the firing of paint balls as the firing of real bullets. "When they finally figured out the painful sting and splash of color was from a paint ball and not a bullet they would naturally want to retaliate with whatever was at hand - pipes, knives, clubs. You have to see it from the victim's eyes,” said the officer, “It is dark, a deafening helicopter rotor wash engulfs you, there is a terrifying sense of shock as heavily armed men in black slide one after another down a fast-rope swarming the ship in seconds, causing a mass of confusion...and then they start shooting - who is going to think the fire is going to be non-lethal, not when it is coming from Israeli commandos.''
When asked what would have been an appropriate response from the Israeli commandos, the officer explained that it is a widely accepted practice when dealing with noncombatants to match their level of violence using the principle of escalating non-lethal force; if they use clubs, you use clubs, or tear gas, or water hoses, or rubber bullets - anything but lethal force. But when the commandos’ only options were paint balls or bullets, their plan was critically flawed to handle only two extremes - a leisure game of cruise ship paint balling...or death. The officer gave as an example, the use of clubs by the elite U.S. Army Rangers when subduing Cuban refugees in Panama in the mid 1990s, the Cubans threw rocks, the Rangers swung clubs - it was a Stone Age version of baseball, but no one died.
Once the firing started it set off a chain of escalating violence that inevitably led to lethal force being used and the death of nine civilians. "In a raid of noncombatants like this, the commandos had every advantage; surprise, training, organization, body armor, night vision, and weapons, they had accepted the risk inherent in their profession - the civilian victims had none of these things and they suffered for it," said the officer.
Meanwhile the international community has called for an end to the punitive blockade and embargo of Gaza. All but the United States has condemned the deadly assault by Israel on humanitarian vessels in international waters. Could it be that the U.S. hesitates in condemning Israel's actions because of the mounting horrific loss of innocent life at the hands of the American military and CIA in Afghanistan and dozens of other Middle Eastern States? Or is it possible the U.S. does not see this act as barbarous at all, like its own killing of a 15-year-old Mexican boy in cold blood by boarder patrol agents this week in El Paso, Texas - it is all in a days work keeping the homeland Secure.
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