Free Gaza spox admits activist initiated fatal 2010 violence aboard Mavi Marmara

ROBERT PHILPOT

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Report on inner-workings of anti-Semitic group reveals that Greta Berlin belatedly acknowledged ‘crazy’ Ken O’Keefe seized IDF commando’s gun, sparking fight in which 10 Turks died

Footage taken from a security camera aboard the Mavi Marmara, showing the activists preparing to resist IDF soldiers about to board the ship. (IDF Spokesperson/Flash90)

LONDON — A leading pro-Palestinian campaigner involved in the flotilla that attempted to enter Gaza in May 2010 has appeared to corroborate Israel’s version of the events which led to the bloody confrontation on board the Mavi Marmara.

Ten Turkish activists died after IDF commandos boarded the ship — the largest in the six-vessel convoy — as it sailed towards the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave in defiance of an Israeli security blockade designed to prevent the terror group importing weapons.

In newly revealed posts from a secret British Facebook group, Greta Berlin, the co-founder and spokesperson of the Free Gaza Movement, states that the Israeli troops did not open fire until after Ken O’Keefe, a former US marine aboard the Mavi Marmara, had seized a gun from one of them.

During a heated online debate, in the safety of a Facebook group of pro-Palestinian activists who had all been approved or invited to join, Berlin repeatedly challenged comments from other members praising O’Keefe.

Greta Berlin, spokesperson and co-founder for Free Gaza Movement. (Engelo, CC-BY-SA, via wikipedia)

 

“He was responsible for some of the deaths on board the Mavi Marmara. Had he not disarmed an Israeli terrorist soldier, they would not have started to fire. That’s enough. Most of you have no idea what you’re talking about,” she wrote.

Berlin’s comments, posted in 2014, were made on the Palestine Live group.

Last week, a report by researcher and blogger David Collier uncovered a raft of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel material on the site, whose members once included the leader of Britain’s Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn.

But Collier’s examination of the Facebook group also seems to throw new light on the events which unfolded in international waters off of the Gazan coast nearly eight years ago, which provoked a fierce diplomatic spat between Turkey and Israel and the severing of ties by Ankara.

Muslim activists hold pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli placards at a rally in Jakarta, Indonesia, in June 2010, days after the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident. (photo credit: AP/Achmad Ibrahim)

Dueling narratives

Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara by descending on ropes…

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