Tomorrow (June 18), Kevin Neish is scheduled to speak in Vancouver for the first time since returning to Canada on June 6.

The Victoria resident was onboard the MV Mavi Marmara when it was on its way to the Gaza Strip and intercepted by the Israel Defense Forces. Seven activists and two journalists were killed in the confrontation that ensued.

“This will be the first time that people can really grill me and ask questions and see if they can make me feel uncomfortable,” Neish said by phone from his home in Victoria.

Neish told the Straight that the organizers have asked him to make the event an open question-and-answer session and so that is what he will do.

What people will likely hear is a narrative very different from the one the Israeli government has maintained since the May 31 incident.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the people who died on the flotilla as “violent Turkish terror extremists”. And the IDF has repeatedly stated that its soldiers only fired their weapons after coming under attack.

But Neish said that he believes that the IDF fired on activists before Israeli soldiers were on board the Mavi Marmara.

“Considering what I saw, it was murder,” Neish said. “They killed two journalists right between the eyes. No accident, no mistake, just right between the eyes.”

Neish conceded that he was below deck when the shooting took place. But he said that he trusts the accounts of those who were sailing with him.

The ship’s skipper claims that IDF soldiers were shooting before they were on-deck, Neish said. And Jamal Elshayyal, a reporter for Al Jazeera who was on board the Mavi Marmara, also maintains that the IDF attacked from helicopters with both rubber bullets and then live ammunition before IDF soldiers were on board.

“There is no doubt in my mind,” Neish emphasized, adding that the bodies he saw with his own eyes confirmed for him his companions’ stories.

“It was two aid workers who had torso wounds and then had two neat little bullet holes in the sides of their heads,” Neish said. “Both of them identical. That is execution.”

On June 14, Neish and two other Canadians who were on board the Mavi Marmara, Farooq Burney and Rifat Audeh, drafted an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

It read in part: “We are writing to express our outrage and indignation over our government’s despicable silence on what took place in the Mediterranean Sea on May 31, 2010.”

The letter asked why, “at the very least”, the Canadian government did not demand the release of the three men and attempt to protect Canadian citizens, and notes that the day after the Mavi Marmara was intercepted, Netanyahu actually met with Harper in Ottawa.

Kevin Neish is scheduled to speak at the Vancouver Public Library on Friday (June 18), at 7 p.m. Admission is free but donations will be collected with all proceeds going to the next “freedom flotilla” mission to the Gaza Strip.

Watch one hour of raw footage from onboard the Mavi Marmara. Filmed before and during the Israeli interception on May 31. By Iara Lee for Culture of Resistance.

You can follow Travis Lupick on Twitter at twitter.com/tlupick.