First-hand Account of Israeli Assault

By Dennis Bernstein and Jesse Strauss
June 3, 2010
Huwaida Arraf was one of those kidnapped activists, on board a US-flagged vessel called Challenger 1. In the following interview on Wednesday, Arraf recounted her experience during the commando attack, in Israeli detention, and her brutal release:

HA: I was on board the Challenger 1, which was an American flagged vessel, the smallest travelling in the six vessel flotilla. We were supposed to have nine, but we had some problems with a couple of the other ones, and they were held back. We had suspected sabotage, and actually a statement made by the Israelis today confirms that it was sabotage. We weren't saying anything before, but that's not going to hold those vessels back, they will eventually travel to Gaza.

Anyway, that's why we had six vessels instead of three more that we had planned to have. Approximately halfway between Cypress and Gaza, about 100 miles off the coast of Gaza, the Israeli navy started radioing the various vessels on the Flotilla, and we responded providing the information they had asked for as to who we were, what flag we were sailing under, where we came from, where we were going.

Then they started issuing threats and saying that we were navigating into a blockaded area and demanding that we turn around, saying that if we don't turn around they would be prepared to use all necessary means in order to enforce the blockade.

We communicated to them over the VHF radio reiterating who we were, stressing that we were unarmed civilians carrying only humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip. We repeated this over and over again and let them know that we constitute no threat to them whatsoever so they should not use force against us, and they would not be justified in using any kind of force against these unarmed vessels.

A few hours later at about four or four-thirty in the morning their naval ships started approaching us. On our vessel we were planning to defend our ship to the best of our capability just using our bodies. We didn't have any weapons or anything, so that when we heard they were coming we all deployed outside the vessel, at which point I could see the beginnings of the attack on the Turkish ship, the Marmara, because we were traveling almost side by side with it.

I saw the Israeli naval zodiacs approach that ship, I heard explosions which I took to be concussion grenades because they later used them on our ship also. These concussion grenades are sound bombs, and then shooting. I don't know if it was rubber-coated bullets, live ammunition, or what kind, but there definitely was shooting coming from the Israelis toward the ship before they even boarded, and then I saw a helicopter overhead. That's all really all that I was able to see before our vessel took off.

Full interview