Greek Defense Minister Kammenos Speaks Out Forcefully in Alliance with Israel

On February 18, 2016, the Greek Minister of Defense, Panos Kammenos, addressed an international conference at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies on “Strategic Challenges in the Eastern Mediterranean.” The conference was co-sponsored by B'nai B'rith International. Kammenos offered a comprehensive and very forceful articulation of Greece’s view of the region: Of the dangers of radical Islam, of the problematic behavior of Turkey, and of his country’s new alliance with Israel. It is worth reading the full speech, entitled “Greece and the Southeastern Mediterranean: A Policy for Peace, Stability, and Prosperity.”

BESA Center..
21 February '16..







For a summary, see Greek defense minister slams Turkey’s ‘hegemonic ambitions’ in The Jerusalem Post, 21.2.2016.

Panos Kammenos, Greek Minister of Defense:

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a great privilege for me to be amongst distinguished personalities and have the opportunity to present my Government’s views on our perspectives toward the Mediterranean.

At the outset, I would like to warmly thank the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and B’nai B’rith International, for organizing the international conference; and Professor Efraim Inbar and Bar-Ilan University for hosting this important event as well as for their kind invitation.

If one asks worldwide what kind of people are the Greeks, the most probable answer is: A maritime people. Indeed, this is true! The sea is within our DNA and our relation with the Mediterranean Sea, especially the Eastern, goes back to the Minoan Kingdom and to the Aegean civilisation around Santorini. It is through the Mediterranean Sea that Greeks have travelled “for trade and knowledge and came in touch with the peoples of the south, south-eastern and western shores of the Mediterranean.

Nevertheless, we have never approached it as a “mare nostrum”. We have rather and always seen it as our privileged highway, one of communication, cooperation, commerce, and prosperity; but also, as our privileged milieu in order to stop invaders and defend our freedom.

Today, the Mediterranean is opening to us its depths and offers us many additional possibilities to cooperate. It is interesting to notice that this is not the will of all those who live around the basin. But it is certainly the will of the three democratic states in the region, Greece, Israel and Cyprus.

It is up to these three democratic states, with the assistance of the EU and our Western allies, to make it happen by working for stability.

Greece, which is the only country in the Eastern Mediterranean to be a member of both the European Union and NATO, a country of strategic importance for the free seaborne trade and the energy flow to Europe, with a shipping industry that definitely possesses a global influence , will do its outmost to achieve this goal.

I will try first to identify the threats to stability that appear in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Then, I will present the recently undertaken efforts for bilateral and regional cooperation by Greece.

Finally, I will sketch out some of the basic outlines of our future policies.

Brown - A New Era of Mideast Energy?

Stephen Brown..
frontpagemag.com..
09 January '12..





Finally, a piece of good news from the Middle East after almost a year of mostly bad.

The Middle Eastern energy picture took a turn for the better when Cyprus announced on December 28 that natural gas had been discovered off its southern coast where exploration had been taking place since last September. American-based Noble Energy of Houston, the company conducting the drilling operation for the joint Israeli-Greek Cypriot venture, said the field, named Aphrodite, may contain as much as 5 to 8 million cubic feet. The discovery is said to be large enough to meet Cyprus’s natural gas needs for the next 240 years and, even more encouraging, comes after only the first of 11 offshore areas marked out by the Cypriot government has been explored.

“The gas discovery in the exclusive economic zone of our country creates great prospects for Cyprus and its people, which we shall seriously and effectively exploit to serve public interest,” said Greek Cypriot President Demetrius Christofias, whose foreign minister last month on a visit to the United States received support for its natural gas research project from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This exciting discovery will definitely provide a boost for an envisaged Israel-Cyprus-Greece pipeline to supply Europe with gas. A 185-km pipeline to bring gas from Israeli and Greek Cypriot fields to a planned liquidation plant in Cyprus is already in the works. Such joint projects are bringing the three countries closer together, as they seek to exploit the suspected massive energy deposits lying under the Mediterranean. Noble says a pipeline to Greece could be ready as early as 2014 or 2015. Before Greek Cyprus, Israel had also discovered huge amounts of offshore gas, described as the biggest finds worldwide in the last decade, which it wants to export.

Ceren - Note to Erdogan: Nobody Likes the Turks

Omri Ceren
Commentary/Contentions
15 September '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/09/15/erdogan-turks/

In 1822, the Ottomans dispatched 40,000 Turkish troops to the Greek island of Chios with orders to kill all infants under three-years-old, all males over 12-years-old, and all females over 40-years-old, except those willing to convert to Islam. Some 20,000 Greeks were killed and the island was depopulated, eradicating a 2,000 year culture. Two years later, Ottoman soldiers burned the island of Kasos to the ground and killed 7,000 of its inhabitants. Eventually, Europeans navies dispatched by Britain and France, and a navy dispatched by Russia, intervened to stop the atrocities.

In 1876, 8,000 Turkish troops were dispatched to the Bulgarian town of Batak where, after promising to withdraw in exchange for the Bulgarians disarming, they beheaded or burned alive 5,000 of the city’s now-unprotected civilians. The massacre was part of a broader Turkish campaign in which 15,000 Bulgarians were eventually murdered, and which a British investigator described as “perhaps the most heinous crime” of the 1800s. Eventually, the Russians intervened to stop the atrocities.

I only bring these up because Israel and Greece just signed a military cooperation pact, and Israel and Bulgaria just signed a military cooperation pact, and European Union officials are slamming Turkey for sabre-rattling, and the Russians today committed to patrolling Eastern Mediterranean waters in response to borderline explicit Turkish military threats against Cyprus’s gas drilling.

Erdogan and his neo-Ottoman ilk seem to have forgotten a fairly straightforward regional reality: nobody likes them.

JINSA - Greece is the Hero - and Maybe the Harbinger of Better Days for Israel

Shoshana Bryen
Senior Director for Security Policy
JINSA Report #: 1,104
July 5, 2011

http://www.jinsa.org/node/2351

[Ed. Note: They stopped another one this morning; the Greek Coast Guard and Special Forces boarded a ship leaving northeastern Crete for Gaza and towed it back to port.]

With extraordinary economic problems and its public in a very bad mood, the Government of Greece seemed an unlikely hero in the saga of the Hamas-organized flotillas. But Greece is, indeed, the hero. While several countries - including the United States - denounced the idea of boats breaking legal Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Hamas government in Gaza, and a few - including Turkey - withdrew government support - it was left to Greece to stop the ships.

Several ships had been in Greece, awaiting the results of local inspections to be permitted to sail. The inspections themselves were carried out to the letter of Greek law, delaying the ships for more than a week. On Friday, organizers on "The Audacity of Hope" decided to sail without authorization. The boat was stopped by the Greek Coast Guard, impounded and the captain charged with "disturbing sea traffic and endangering passengers," a felony and with "disobeying an official directive," a misdemeanor.

According to the website Antiwar.com:

The activists... have been forced into a military dockyard surrounded with barbed wire, and report that after expelling the journalists who were on the ship, they have so far not let anyone else leave. The move was quickly followed with an announcement from the Greek government that all ships hoping to deliver aid to Gaza have been banned from leaving port to 'prevent breach of Israel's naval blockade.' This has a number of aid vessels from myriad countries stuck in Greece for the foreseeable future. The Greek Hellenic Coast Guard is also said to be monitoring the sea to track other ships potentially trying to deliver goods to Gaza.

Great! Why?

Greece and Israel have become very much closer recently and some of that surely is the result of Turkey making what appears to be a strategic decision to enhance its ties with Iran and Syria over Israel and the West. Considering an international fact that disturbs them both, Greece and Israel appear to have decided to consider their options. In addition, Israel has escaped the ruinous economic problems of other countries - there is no lack in Greece of appreciation for Prime Minister Netanyahu's economic prowess as Finance Minister and the resulting strong Israeli economy. Israel needs friends in the Mediterranean and a partner for military, search and rescue and other operations that coordinate with NATO - if Turkey can't be the partner, Greece can.

The Greek-Israeli rapprochement is actually the result of only a strategic few people in each country over the past year looking around at the threats and problems, and deciding that Western countries have the most in common and the most to gain from cooperation.

Maybe coincidentally, maybe not, the UN has given copies of its report on the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident of 2010 and it is Turkey - not Israel - that is unhappy with the findings. Israeli government sources say the report criticizes the Turkish government and highlights the relationship between it and the IHH, and while the UN does find that Israeli commandos used "excessive force," it also accepts Israel's contention that they acted in self-defense.

The demise of the 2011 flotilla isn't the end of the diplomatic crises Israel faces - but it is a welcome success engendered by willingness of the Greek government to do the right thing. A few more such successes (including the increasing international understanding that accepting "Palestine" as a UN member outside the normal channels is a bad idea) and Israel may find itself - a Western, liberal, democratic country - in the company of like-minded others, worrying about the future we all face.

During the 2011 JINSA Flag & General Officers Trip, Lieut. Gen. Benny Ganz, IDF Chief of Staff, told the participants, "Don't forget - this is the edge of the Western world; then it becomes the East." We are happy - and not surprised - that Greece has assimilated the message.

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