Wrong intelligence, wrong equipment, wrong tactics. Israel's military acknowledged big mistakes on Tuesday in the bungled boarding of a Gaza-bound aid ship in which elite troops killed nine international activists.
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Marine commandos involved in the attack pointed to a failure of intelligence.
"We did not expect such resistance from the group's activists as we were talking about a humanitarian aid group," the boarding party's commander, an unnamed naval lieutenant who received special permission to be interviewed, told Army Radio.
"The outcome was different to what we thought, but I must say that this was mainly because of the inappropriate behaviour of the adversary we encountered."
Though Israel's police quarantine of activists from the Mavi Marmara prevented the airing of dissenting testimony, a video clip filmed by one of the passengers as the converted cruise ship was stormed showed two marines being clubbed and stabbed.
The Israeli military also released night-vision footage of a half-dozen commandos grappling with as many as 30 activists.
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Some of the troops wielded paintball rifles — non-lethal weapons designed to bruise, beat back and mark suspects for later arrest, but which apparently proved of limited use against activists who had the protection of life-jackets and gas masks.
"It's clear that the equipment for crowd-dispersal with which they were issued was insufficient," Israel's armed forces chief, Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, told reporters.
There was little question of calling off the raid once the first Israelis were in the fight and vulnerable, though the navy said some commandos opted to escape by jumping overboard.
Israel said seven marines were injured, one after activists threw him over a railing and two from gunshot wounds, possibly from sidearms that were wrested from them.
"A number of the fighters who understood the situation, the threat posed to their lives, reoriented themselves and simply worked with live (ammunition) weapons as soon as they came down," the marines lieutenant said.
Some experts questioned whether a police anti-riot unit might have tackled the resistance with less bloodshed.
But an Israeli defence official said only marines were capable of the takeover 120 km (75 miles) in the choppy Mediterranean, timed for darkness to surprise the activists and deprive attendant journalists of spectacular pictures.
Barak's deputy, Matan Vilnai, brushed off the demand in the best-selling Yedioth Ahronoth daily that the defence minister resign. He hinted Israel had exhausted covert means of stalling the Mavi Marmara and five other vessels in a flotilla that sailed for Gaza in defiance of an Israeli campaign to isolate the Hamas movement that controls the territory.
"Everything was considered. I don't want to elaborate beyond that, because the fact is there were not up to 10, or however many ships were (originally) planned," Vilnai told Israel Radio, alluding to rumours that some of the vessels had been sabotaged.
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Alon Ben-David, defence correspondent for Israel's Channel 10 television, noted that video footage appears to show marines thwarted an attempt by activists to tie one of the rappelling ropes to the deck, a major threat to the hovering helicopter.
"The outcome could have been much worse," Ben-David said.
