Now Available: Full 60' Raw Footage From The Mavi Marmara Tells Israel's Lies

The whole story is still missing but a core story has emerged that contradicts Israel's spin. Israeli soldiers fired at the ship and wounded activists before boarding illegally the ship. Also, activists had no weapons but only sticks and slingshots.  


The sticks were used when activists were expecting the soldiers to force the cabin door where activists and wounded (some of them probably already dead) retired leaving the deck after the shots were fired by the soldiers.  


They used the slingshots to shoot marbles at the Israeli soldiers who were trying to descend on the ship from the helicopter and that was before the soldiers boarded the deck. 

Slingshots and marbles are elementary and essential items for children in the ME growing in a rural or a poor environment. And it was notably childish to direct slingshots at Israeli soldiers armed to their teeth. Slingshots are very popular children items in the ME, even for girls. As a child you have to be able to use them and even some time to make them. As a girl myself growing in rural Lebanon, making a slingshot was part of my childhood initiation. It is a ritual. You have to find the correct wood part, most of the time from a tree, symmetrical. Then you carve out the part and tie an elastic into it. And to practice, you use stones and you practice under the guidance of other children who acquired the skill. The slingshot is used bychildren to hunt some birds, and then to play...If you are a child in rural Lebanon and other parts of the ME and you don't know about slingshots you risk loosing face. It is the same for marbles, a child doesn't leave the house if he doesn't have his little bag of marbles, he won't be able to play with other children...How many marbles a child possesses and how rare and nice they are is a sign of the child's place and influence among his peers...


Haroon Siddique, The Guardian: Activist releases new footage

On Democracy Now: Interview with Iara Lee who shot the video and later smuggled it from Israel.