What could possibly go wrong?

In case you’re just now checking in on Planet Waves, I’d like to point you to the conversation and information-gathering happening here at an earlier post regarding the Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying humanitarian aid.

We are working hard to find an accurate time for the event, and need some help getting beyond estimates. Once we have a solid time to work with, Eric will post a chart. If you would like to help track down an accurate time as well as the earliest news reports to hit the AP wire for this event, please post in the comments below.

Thank you, Amanda

16 thoughts on “What could possibly go wrong?”

  1. Amanda, are you still seeking information?

    This seems to offer something of a timeline of events:

    http://codepink4peace.org/blog/2010/06/gaza-flotilla-massacre-timeline-of-events/

    Washington Post article says “about 4 am”:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/31/AR2010053101209.html

    Hmmmm… 4:30 am????

    “12.23pm:

    Haneen Zuabi, an Israeli-Arab MP in the Knessett who was on the Mavi Marmara, has accused her country of trying to “cause the largest number of fatalities”.

    She was released today after questioning and has been giving her version of events at a news conference, according to the Israeli news website ynetnews.com she told a conference.

    “I entered the captain’s room. He was asked to stop by the Israeli soldiers. He said, ‘We are a Turkish ship.’ We were 130 miles off. It was 11:30 pm. We saw four Israel vessels, they were at a distance because we were in international waters. At 4:15 am we saw the ships approaching.

    “They were dinghies and choppers. At 4:30 am the forces landed quickly. I did not hear any warning from the ships, because noise was coming from the ships and the choppers. Within 10 minutes there were already three bodies. The entire operation took about an hour.””

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/jun/01/israel-flotilla-raid-fallout-live

  2. hey patricia moonrose —

    i think you’re probably right about starhawk getting the time fro other news sources. according to two female members of germany’s parliament who were on the ship, the women were all locked below deck during the initial attack. it’s hard to say how much, if anything, of the attack they may have seen. they don’t say whether they were sleeping at the time. its here at deutsche welle:

    http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5639990,00.html

    has anyone heard whether the other ships were close enough to see what was going on, or was it too dark?

  3. Adding a little pure speculation to the conversation and knowing nothing of the Israeli military – but an exact time feels more fitting for an attack by such an organization than a time that is not exact. I have the impression the Israeli military is very precise in many ways and therefore a time like 4:30AM sounds more real than say 4:37AM.

    I realize that the initial movement by planes, people and weapons etc would take place over some minutes but just seems to me that a well-trained unit would coordinate a drop like that for a straight up kind of time. And 4:30 seems to crop up more than once.

    Well, that’s just me talking, nothing more concrete to add.

    Looking forward to reading your work on this Eric. Thx.

  4. Actually, further down in the fourth paragraph she says, “I believe and hope that my friends are okay—but I don’t know for sure.” So it would seem she gleaned that information from other web sources and not her pals (who I hope are ok too).

    Just a thought.

    Patricia Moonrose

  5. Oh good, Eric. Glad you got the post.

    I shoulda thought of her earlier – it’s her “terriroty” of a sort.

    -Linda

  7. Has anybody else re-posted Starhawk’s blog here at PW? Didn’t see it.

    http://starhawksblog.org/

    It begins:

    “Early Monday morning, at 4:30 AM local time, commandos from an Israeli military helicopter assaulted the lead ship of the Gaza Freedom flotilla while it was still in international waters. Soldiers droped from the air in full combat mode and fired live ammunition at the unarmed activists—killing somewhere between ten and twenty people and wounding dozens.

    I have at least four friends on that flotilla, all women.”…

  8. Amanda, ladies, gents – thank you.

    Here is what I am proposing. I woke up this morning dreaming of being coached in astrology by one of the Mentors. I don’t know who it was. Big and hulky and I am inclined to say Hermes. He said, “Mercury is a very important planet.”

    The best reports that we have, including a fairly exhaustive search by Carol van Strum, with Amanda working, and Anatoly searching Russian sources, comes out with a time the ships were boarded by the Israelites as about 4:30 am Gaza time.

    That puts Mercury close to the ascendant (AC): Mercury is at 15 degrees 15 minutes and the AC is 18 degrees 47 mins. I am going to rectify the chart to put Mercury in the AC degree, for a time. This leaves the AC as Taurus and the MC as Aquarius, so the angles remain the same. The houses ruled by Mercury — the 2nd and the 5th — remain the same.

    So from a best available stated time of 4:30, my rectified time turns out to be 4:18:33 am local time.

    Mercury is a very important planet. Who has by the way just come out of shadow phase and taken new territory, as of three days before this event.

  11. Not a time of attack, but may be useful info:

    “The Flotilla, with 700 activists, left Cyprus at 3:00PM (1200 GMT) Sunday, on the last leg of their journey, heading for Gaza, hoping to arrive by daylight. Six hours after departure, three Israeli missile boats left Haifa to interdict it, according to reporters on board before being ordered to turn off their cell phones.”

    http://savegaza.eu/eng/index.php?id=429

  12. It’s amazing how elusive this information is.

    A comment on the google map on http://witnessgaza.com/ says:

    Last position
    Last Updated by Freegaza Webmaster yesterday
    Last position before IDF attack. 04:30 GMT, Latitude:32.64113, Longitude:33.56727

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