The United Nations Human Rights Council has voted for an independent investigation of the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla. The debate continues to rage on over who caused the confrontation.

Huwaida Arraf was a passenger on The Challenger ship in the aid flotilla. She described what it was like onboard the night of the raid.

“During the night when we were traveling, at around midnight, we were contacted by Israeli naval forces and they were asking us questions to which we responded. Then they started issuing warnings against us and demanding that we turn back and that if we did not turn back that they would use all necessary means to enforce their blockade of Gaza. To this we responded that the blockade was illegal, we’re only carrying humanitarian aid, we’re unarmed civilians and there’s no reason to use force against us and we kept repeating this and we told them we have journalists and members of parliament on board and people from all different countries and we are unarmed. A few hours later, at approximately 4:00 a.m., while it was still dark, we saw their naval vessels approaching us. We all went outside the boat because we had planned to try and defend our boat as much as possible in terms of using our bodies to try to keep the soldiers from getting on. At this point, I was able to see the beginnings of the attack on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship which is also the largest passenger vessel carrying approximately 560 people. What I saw consisted of Zodiacs from the Israeli navy that had commandos on it. I heard explosions like concussion grenades that we call sound bombs and then also opening of fire. I know that we did not have any weapons on any of our ships,” said Arraf.