Is a Certain NATO Member Hosting Hamas Training Camps?

...The idea that Turkey—a NATO member—would allow military training camps on its soil for a group designated by the United States and much the rest of the West as a terrorist organization is not something that can be diplomatically cast aside. Just as states—even allied states—are designated as deficient when it comes to combating human trafficking or money laundering on the logic that they work to rectify their status, so too it is time to designate Turkey a state sponsor of terrorism with whatever sanctions incumbent levied until such a time as Turkey rectifies its behavior.

Michael Rubin..
Commentary Magazine..
27 February '15..

I was on the set of a Turkish news talk show—maybe SkyTürk or CNNTürk—in Istanbul back in 2006 when news broke that the Turkish government would welcome the leader of Hamas in Turkey. Hamas had won Palestinian elections a few weeks previous, but Turkey’s decision to host the unrepentant terrorist group took both Turks and the West by surprise.

After all, in the wake of the Palestinian elections, the European Union, the United States, and other countries had demanded that Hamas first acquiesce to the basis of the Oslo Accords—that is foreswearing terrorism and recognizing Israel—before it would be a welcome player in the international community. This was good diplomacy, after all, because the precondition of the Palestinian Authority’s existence was the Palestinian abandonment of terror and recognition of Israel. It was not an optional aspect to the agreement. Should the Palestinian Authority cease respecting that aspect of the agreement, Israel would be justified legally in returning to the status quo ante.

The reason for the surprise at Turkish actions was that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had personally promised German Chancellor Angela Merkel just days before that Turkey would not invite the Hamas leader. Erdoğan thought he would be too clever by half, however, and explained that the invitation came not at the behest of Turkey but rather by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) which dominated the Turkish government.

NATO forces - A solution to security or a human shield for Palestinian terror?

...Simply put: the most likely outcome of an arrangement based on foreign forces is a serious deterioration of Israel’s security and a dangerous erosion in Israel’s relationship with the countries that sent the force as a result of friction and disputes with the force.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
05 February '14..





Mahmoud Abbas has proposed that NATO forces take responsibility for security for 5 years.

Let’s set aside that a "solution" that's valid for only 60 months is a farce and run through some quick intuitive problems with the concept altogether:

#1. Forces operating in accordance with President Obama's repeatedly stated principle that Palestinian "dignity" is as important as Israel's "security" cannot possibly be effective as many security operations, by their very
nature, impinge on "dignity".

+ Security and inspection arrangements at entry points would sacrifice effectiveness for Palestinian "dignity".

+ Operations would be effectively restricted in sensitive locations such as schools, hospitals, mosques, etc.

#2. The priorities of the force will run counter to Israel's needs.

First priority: Completing the tour of duty with a minimum of casualties.

Second priority: Serving the national interests of the country of the particular soldier in the force.

Third priority: Serving the collective national interests of the group of countries that sent the force.

Fourth priority: Actually fulfilling the mission of the force.

This is anything but theoretical. This has been the ongoing experience over the last twenty years.

History of international troops in our region - Between the farcical and the tragic

...a history highlighted by the panicked withdrawal of U.N. troops from the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza in 1967, by Hezbollah terrorists entrenching themselves in southern Lebanon in contradiction to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, and by the incessant kidnapping of U.N. troops currently stationed on the Golan Heights.

Zalman Shoval..
Israel Hayom..
09 June '13..

The stated task assigned to Gen. John Allen, U.S. President Barack Obama's special envoy on security matters in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, who visited Israel last month, was to formulate an American "security net" for Israel in any future permanent-status agreement with the Palestinians. In other words: to convince Israel to make concessions on the issue of the 1967 borders.

These American attempts, while not contrary to Israel's diplomatic and security interests in and of themselves, are something of a prelude for a future American peace plan that would include the presence of an international military force in the West Bank and Jordan Valley. It should be remembered that Gen. James Jones, who was tasked with a similar mission by former President George W. Bush, suggested an outline based on stationing American and NATO troops, as well as other international soldiers (such as the U.N.) along the borders of the future Palestinian state.

Then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert indeed conceded -- including during his talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas -- Israel's military presence in the Jordan Valley. Current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, rejected such proposals outright, insisting that the security threat such a plan would pose to Israel was too great.

In Israel's view, since signing the Camp David Accords with Egypt in 1978, the most basic condition for any peace agreement with the Palestinians has been the operational freedom of its security forces in the West Bank. While the American security ideas touch primarily on preventing violent acts inside and from the Palestinian territories, for Israel the matter is much more complex and far-reaching, namely that without an Israeli military presence on the ground the Palestinian entity could ally itself, actively or passively, with other countries or terrorist organizations seeking to attack Israel.

Ceren - Obama Rolls Over Again for the Turks

Omri Ceren..
Commentary/Contentions..
21 May '12..

It was only last month when the State Department was acknowledging that Israel is “one of NATO’s partners [and] has participated over the years in many, many, many NATO activities, consultations, exercises, et cetera.” The context was a surreal exchange between the AP’s Matt Lee and State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland regarding how Turkey was vetoing Israel from participating in this week’s Chicago NATO summit. Lee expressed confusion at the bland acquiescence with which the Obama administration was meeting Turkey’s machinations:

QUESTION: Toria, I’m trying to help you out here, because you’re going to get absolutely slammed.
MS. NULAND: I understand. Matt, there is no –
QUESTION: You are. If you can’t come out and say that the United States wants Israel to participate, its main ally in the Middle East and you won’t come out and say that the administration wants them to participate in whatever event is going on in Chicago, that’s – that is going to be seized on.
…
QUESTION: Fair enough. But the Turks wouldn’t be objecting to Israel’s participation if someone hadn’t proposed that Israel participate. And if you have proposed that they participate –
MS. NULAND: Again –
QUESTION: — and you’re not willing to stick up for it, I don’t understand why.

Of course, Israel ended up getting excluded from the summit. The White House and State Department have subsequently scrambled from one excuse to another, lest people settle on the obvious: that the Obama administration is allowing Turkey to drive a wedge between Israel and NATO, thereby damaging NATO’s coordination with allies in the Eastern Mediterranean, undermining America’s ability to project power into the region, eroding the U.S.-Israel alliance, and making the Israelis feel isolated and nervous right as they’re making critical decisions about going it alone on Iran.

Fresnozionism - Turkey’s NATO membership was a mistake

Turkey's Islamist Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdoğan.
Can he climb down?

Fresnozionism.org
07 September '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/09/turkeys-nato-membership-was-a-mistake/

Israel’s enemies often characterize her as warlike, or a ‘bully’. In fact, Israel’s diplomacy is often excessively conciliatory — especially in the Middle East, where attempts at compromise and conciliation are often seen as weakness or surrender, and where the goal of Israel’s enemies is not to solve problems but to create them.

However, the award for the most childish display of belligerence in the region has to go to Turkey. After the publication of the Palmer Report, in which the UN (for once) had the audacity to admit that Israel was actually justified in blockading Gaza and boarding the Mavi Marmara, Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador, ended military and trade cooperation and announced that it would support Palestinian statehood in the UN.

All very nice, but the icing on the cake was Turkey’s threat to escort future flotillas to Gaza:

“The eastern Mediterranean Sea is not a region unfamiliar to us,” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Tuesday in his first public comments on measures that Turkey was taking over Israel’s failure to apologize for killing nine Turks on a Gaza-bound aid ship last year.

Turkish forces stationed at naval bases in Aksaz and İskenderun are capable of patrolling regional waters and escorting civilian ships in the Mediterranean, Erdoğan told reporters.

“Certainly, our ships will show up more frequently in these waters. We will see them [there] very frequently,” he said. “So far, Israel has always played the role of a spoiled boy in the face of U.N. resolutions concerning Israel, thinking that it would carry on with this role.”

On Friday Ankara last said it would take action to ensure the safety of maritime navigation in the East Mediterranean as part of measures against Israel that included also the downgrading of diplomatic ties to the second-secretary level. — Hürriet Daily News (Turkey)

Emanuele Ottolenghi has pointed out that Erdoğan ought to read some of the details of the legal case found in the report (which he demanded that the UN produce in the first place):

Plosker: Libya Coverage Exposes Media Double Standards

Simon Plosker
Honest Reporting
19 June '11

With the turmoil and upheaval in the Middle East, it is always interesting to examine how the media is covering events compared with coverage of Israel. Particularly in a situation where Western nations are involved in a military campaign, as in the case of Libya, it can be enlightening to contrast how the coverage stands up to comparable situations that Israel has found itself in.

A few deliberate changes to this original Associated Press article that cites a NATO spokesperson talking about Libyan human shields, illustrates the point:

“We are saving countless lives every day across the country,” she said. “We are conducting operations with utmost care and precision to avoid civilian casualties. Civilian casualty figures mentioned by the Libyan regime Hamas regime are pure propaganda.”


… government forces Hamas terrorists “have been shelling cities, mining ports and using mosques and children’s parks as shields.”


Lungescu’s The IDF Spokesman’s comments also counter allegations from Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who accused NATO the IDF on Friday of a “new level of aggression” and said the military alliance has intentionally targeted civilian buildings in recent days, including a hotel and a university.


“It has become clear to us that NATO the IDF has moved on to deliberately hitting civilian buildings. … This is a crime against humanity,” he told reporters in the capital.

Sound familiar? Replace references to NATO and Libya in the story with the IDF and Hamas and the story bears remarkable similarity to that of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.

But here’s where the similarity ends. During Operation Cast Lead and the fallout from the Goldstone Report, Israel also made it clear that Hamas was hiding behind the civilian population, while the world media parroted accusations that the IDF was deliberately targeting civilians and carrying out “war crimes”.

Why is it that the media is prepared to accept the concept that an enemy could be so cynical as to store weapons in a house of worship or fire missiles from the vicinity of a school when that enemy is the Libyan regime but not when Hamas is accused of the very same thing by Israel?

(Read full "Libya Coverage Exposes Media Double Standards")

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Medad: There Went Another 'Bright' Idea

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
26 April '11

http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2011/04/there-went-another-bright-idea.html


Every once in a while, some clever person suggests the idea that Israel, if it withdraws from Judea & Samaria, surrenders its natural defense lines and submits to the establishment of an independent second Arab state in the territory of the former Mandate of Palestine could do so without danger if international military forces would be in place to protect Israel if... (and even Iran suspects that)

Well, after reading this poor showing, I don't think that's a good idea:

Libya: Misrata port shelled despite Nato effort


Misrata has come under attack by Libyan government forces attempting to retake the besieged city. Three people were reportedly killed as missiles slammed into the city's port, a lifeline for those seeking to escape to the rebel stronghold Benghazi.


Nato is enforcing a UN resolution to protect civilians in Libya amid a two-month revolt inspired by other uprisings in the Arab world. A Nato air strike earlier damaged Col Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli.


That attack followed big explosions at the Libyan leader's sprawling Bab al-Azizia compound early on Monday, which government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim called "an attempt to assassinate the leader and other political leaders of this country".

If NATO can't beat Gaddafi, they are not going to secure Israel's existence.

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Turkey Co-opts NATO Missile-Defense System to Hurt Israel and Help Iran

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
26 October '10

That Turkey has grown unrelentingly hostile to Israel, and cozy with Iran, is no longer news. But it is news, of the most disturbing kind, that Washington has chosen to actively collaborate in both the hostility and the coziness. Yet that’s what emerges from today’s Haaretz report on NATO’s planned missile-defense system: the U.S., it says, has agreed to Turkey’s demand that no information gathered by the system — whose primary goal is countering threats from Iran — be shared with Israel.

President George W. Bush, who conceived the system, had planned to station it in Eastern Europe. But due to Russia’s vehement opposition, President Barack Obama decided to relocate it to Turkey.

Ankara, reluctant to damage its burgeoning romance with Tehran, said it would agree only if four conditions were met. One, Turkish sources told Haaretz, was that “information gathered by the system not be given to any non-NATO member, and especially not to Israel.”

Moreover, the sources said, Washington has agreed to this demand. In other words, Washington has agreed that potentially vital information about Israel’s greatest enemy, gathered by a NATO facility that America conceived and will doubtless largely finance, won’t be shared with Israel.

(Read full post)

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The Trouble with International Forces

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
14 July '10

The latest argument by Palestinian flacks like Haaretz reporter Akiva Eldar is that with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas having agreed to host an international force such as “UNIFIL or NATO” in the West Bank following an Israeli withdrawal, Israel has no more security worries and therefore no excuse for any delays in reaching an agreement on such a withdrawal.



But anyone who actually believes that Israel can or should rely on “an international force to defend Israel’s well-being” should consider the latest news on UNIFIL’s mission in south Lebanon.

As defined by UN Security Council Resolution 1701, this mission is, inter alia, to “assist the Lebanese armed forces” in making the south of the Litani River “an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL.”

But a few weeks ago, something dreadful happened: a French contingent of UNIFIL actually tried to carry out this mission. It began using sniffer dogs to detect illegal weapons and explosives and insisted on searching homes and yards where it had reason to believe Hezbollah was stockpiling such arms.

The immediate result was a series of clashes apparently either staged or encouraged by Hezbollah between Lebanese villagers and UNIFIL troops. In the most serious incident, villagers hurled stones at the peacekeepers, seized their weapons, and vandalized their vehicle.

The second result was that, at the end of last week, UNIFIL agreed to stop using sniffer dogs and refrain from entering homes and yards – or, in other words, to stop carrying out its mission of detecting illegal Hezbollah weapons. Its commander, Maj. Gen. Alberto Asarta Cuevas, followed that up with a fawning apology for the “mistakes,” published in the Lebanese press as an open letter to the Lebanese people.

(Read full post)

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Turkey, from Ally to Enemy

Michael Rubin
Commentary
July/August '10

Posted before Shabbat

Traveling abroad on his first trip as president, Barack Obama tacked a visit to Turkey onto the tail end of a trip to Europe. “Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul to send a message,” he told the Turkish Parliament. “My answer is simple: Evet [yes]. Turkey is a critical ally.” On the same visit, however, the president showed that he considered Turkey more firmly part of the Islamic world than of Europe. “I want to make sure that we end before the call to prayer, so we have about half an hour,” Obama told a town hall in Istanbul. Obama was not simply demonstrating cultural sensitivity. The fact is that Turkey has changed. Gone, and gone permanently, is secular Turkey, a unique Muslim country that straddled East and West and that even maintained a cooperative relationship with Israel. Today Turkey is an Islamic republic whose government saw fit to facilitate the May 31 flotilla raid on Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Turkey is now more aligned to Iran than to the democracies of Europe. Whereas Iran’s Islamic revolution shocked the world with its suddenness in 1979, Turkey’s Islamic revolution has been so slow and deliberate as to pass almost unnoticed. Nevertheless, the Islamic Republic of Turkey is a reality—and a danger.

The story of Turkey’s Islamic revolution is illuminating. It is the story of a charismatic leader with a methodical plan to unravel a system, a politician cynically using democracy to pursue autocracy, Arab donors understanding the power of the purse, Western political correctness blinding officials to the Islamist agenda, and American diplomats seemingly more concerned with their post-retirement pocketbooks than with U.S. national security. For Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is a dream come true. For the next generation of American presidents, diplomats, and generals, it is a disaster.

_____________

The Middle East is littered with states formed from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I. Most have been failures, but in Anatolia, one has flourished: in 1923, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Republic of Turkey and, soon after, abolished the Ottoman Empire and its standing as a caliphate, a state run according to the dictates of Islamic law. In subsequent years, he imposed a number of reforms to transform Turkey into a Western country. His separation of mosque and state allowed Turkey to thrive, and he charged the army with defending the state from those who would use Islam to subvert democracy. While Middle Eastern states embraced demagogues and ideologies that led to war and incited their peoples to hate the West, Turkey became a frontline Cold War and NATO ally. Turks faced down terrorists, embraced democracy, and dreamed of full inclusion as a nation of Europe. No longer.

(Read full article)

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The Mussolini of the Middle East Stabs America in the Back

Joel J. Sprayregen
American Thinker
24 June '10
Posted before Shabbat


The Middle East has its Hitler wannabe in Iranian President Ahmadinejad. His nuclear weaponization program has accelerated over eighteen months while Obama's "engagement" is being rebuffed with contemptuous defiance from Tehran. Like Hitler in Mein Kampf, Ahmadinejad has made clear his belief that the Jews of Israel should be annihilated.

Every Hitler needs his Mussolini. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan -- a man I know well -- is enthusiastically volunteering for that role.

The Hitler analogy should be viewed in terms of the late 1930s rather than the wartime 1940s. By the time Hitler attacked Poland in September 1939, he had contemptuously resisted limitations on German rearmament and achieved his territorial aims in the infamous delivery of Czechoslovakia at Munich. He accomplished this while England slept -- in John Kennedy's famous phrase -- without firing a shot.

What does this have to do with Ahmadinejad? The Iranians know that once they possess nuclear weapons, they will have achieved hegemony over the Middle East, with all its energy resources, without firing a shot. As the evidence accumulates that Obama lacks the will to take action to stop the Iranian quest, the countries of the Middle East are compelled to come to terms with the reality that the United States will not use its power to defend its own interests and will settle for trying to "contain" a nuclear Iran. In the pitiless sunlight of the Middle East, reality is harshly defined. A nuclear-armed Iran means that the United States is a big loser. And that Iran is a decisive winner.

No Middle Eastern leader grasps this reality with more eager opportunism than the Turkish prime minister. A serious question is emerging as to whether our government understands this dynamic and its grave consequences. My conversations with State Department officials reveal at best only dim understanding. President Obama, delivering his first address to a foreign parliament in Ankara in April 2006, praised Turkey as a "true partner." In the first giddy flush of Obamamania, this may have been understandable hyperbole even though Erdogan had stabbed the U.S. in the back as long ago as 2003 by denying our forces entry into northern Iraq. But self-delusion in the White House as to critical U.S. interests is no longer rational, as increasing numbers of foreign policy experts -- many of them Obama supporters -- recognize that Turkey has decisively exited its alliance with the West.

(Read full article)

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It Is About the United States

JINSA
Report #: 995
08 June '10

Turkey and Honduras, in different ways, highlight the lack of effective leadership the United States currently is able to exercise in the world.

Turkey: Turkish government support for the IHH ship in the Gaza flotilla is now well understood and the anti-Semitic ravings of both official Turks and the Turkish media have made Turkey's intention to split from Israel clear.

But it is a mistake to think this is only about Israel. Support for the flotilla was only the latest in a series of Turkish decisions designed to distance itself from the United States and move toward closer political relations with countries adversarial to us. Immediately after the bloody 2007 Hamas coup against Fatah in Gaza, the United States and the European Union reiterated that Hamas was a terrorist organization to be shunned. Instead, Turkey's prime minister invited Hamas leadership to Ankara. The Hamas-Turkey relationship has grown as the Turkey-Palestinian Authority relationship, the relationship supported by the United States and the EU, has declined. Rapprochement with Russia, Syria and Iran, and the Iran-Brazil-Turkey enriched uranium deal are more of the same.

After his meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters, "Citizens of member states were attacked by a country that is not a member of NATO. I think you can make some conclusions out of this statement." The implication was that Turkey would ask NATO for some satisfaction-or some slap at Israel.

Thank you for the reminder, Mr. Minister.

Turkey, as a member of NATO, is privy to intelligence information having to do with terrorism and with Iran. If Turkey finds its best friends to be Iran, Hamas, Syria and Brazil (look for Venezuela in the future) the security of that information (and Western technology in weapons in Turkey's arsenal) is suspect. The United States should seriously consider suspending military cooperation with Turkey as a prelude to removing it from the organization.

(Read full report)

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Islamist Turkey Overreaches

Ankara’s irresponsible behavior reveals the weaknesses of Islamism 2.0.


Daniel Pipes
National Review Online
08 June '10

As typical Islamist-leftist theater to delegitimize Israel, late May’s Turkish-sponsored “Free Gaza” flotilla was tediously repetitious. As an illustration that Israelis don’t understand the kind of war they now must fight, the outcome was drearily predictable. But as a statement of Turkey’s policies and an augury of the Islamist movement’s future, it bristled with novelty and significance.

Some background: After some 150 years of faltering efforts at modernization, the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed in 1923 and was replaced by the dynamic, Western-oriented Republic of Turkey, founded and dominated by former Ottoman general Kemal Ataturk. Over the next 15 years, until his death in 1938, Ataturk imposed a Westernization program so stringent that at one point he had rugs in mosques replaced by church-like pews. Although Turkey is nearly 100 percent Muslim, he insisted on a purely secular state.

Ataturk never won the entire Turkish population to his vision and, with time, his laic republic increasingly had to accommodate pious Muslim sentiments. Yet Ataturk’s order persisted into the 1990s, guarded over by the military officer corps, which made it a priority to keep his memory alive and secularism entrenched.

Islamists first acquired parliamentary representation in the early 1970s; their leader, Necmettin Erbakan, served three times as his country’s deputy prime minister. As mainstream Turkish political parties frittered away their legitimacy through a disgraceful mix of egoism and corruption, Erbakan went on to become prime minister for a year, 1996–97, until the military asserted itself and threw him out.

Israel, Turkey, and the End of Stability

Mark Steyn
National Review Online
05 June '10

Foreign policy “realists,” back in the saddle since the Texan cowboy left town, are extremely fond of the concept of “stability”: America needs a stable Middle East, so we should learn to live with Mubarak and the mullahs and the House of Saud, etc. You can see the appeal of “stability” to your big-time geopolitical analyst: You don’t have to update your Rolodex too often, never mind rethink your assumptions. “Stability” is a fancy term to upgrade inertia and complacency into strategy. No wonder the fetishization of stability is one of the most stable features of foreign-policy analysis.

Unfortunately, back in what passes for the real world, there is no stability. History is always on the march, and, if it’s not moving in your direction, it’s generally moving in the other fellow’s. Take this “humanitarian” “aid” flotilla. Much of what went on — the dissembling of the Palestinian propagandists, the hysteria of the U.N. and the Euro-ninnies — was just business as usual. But what was most striking was the behavior of the Turks. In the wake of the Israeli raid, Ankara promised to provide Turkish naval protection for the next “aid” convoy to Gaza. This would be, in effect, an act of war — more to the point, an act of war by a NATO member against the State of Israel.

Ten years ago, Turkey’s behavior would have been unthinkable. Ankara was Israel’s best friend in a region where every other neighbor wishes, to one degree or another, the Jewish state’s destruction. Even when Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP was elected to power eight years ago, the experts assured us there was no need to worry. I remember sitting in a plush bar late one night with a former Turkish foreign minister, who told me, in between passing round the cigars and chugging back the Scotch, that, yes, the new crowd weren’t quite so convivial in the wee small hours but, other than that, they knew where their interests lay. Like many Turkish movers and shakers of his generation, my drinking companion loved the Israelis. “They’re tough hombres,” he said admiringly. “You have to be in this part of the world.” If you had suggested to him that in six years’ time the Turkish prime minister would be telling the Israeli president to his face that “I know well how you kill children on beaches,” he would have dismissed it as a fantasy concoction for some alternative universe.

(Read full article)

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A Fine Recipe for War

Mario Loyola
National Review Online
03 June '10
Posted for Shabbat

The government of Turkey seems increasingly bent on a collision course with vital U.S. interests, and the time has come to stop ignoring that fact. Our wayward NATO ally’s recent involvement in the incident of the Gaza flotilla is particularly hurtful to the United States, and demands a particularly sharp response. The U.S. has a vital interest in maintaining the regional stability that is indispensable for the preservation of peace and for any prospect of a two-state solution. Sanctioning an attempt to forcibly breach the Israeli siege of Gaza is among the most destabilizing and dangerous things that Turkey could have done.

The Turkish government knew in advance that a Turkish organization with ties to Hamas was launching a flotilla of activists bearing humanitarian aid for Gaza, and chose not to stop it. Turkey knew that the flotilla would put Israel in an impossible dilemma, and that it would be a direct challenge to the Israeli siege of Gaza. Israel reacted precisely as the Turkish government knew it would, with a military response that resulted in bloodshed and in a public-relations disaster for Israel. Because Israel generally defends its internationally understood legal rights, the Turkish government was able to predict what it would do.

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Where is Goldstone now?

Why is world silent in wake of killing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan?


Eitan Haber
Israel Opinion/Ynet
24 February '10

Here are the dry numbers (after all the tears have dried up): Earlier this week, NATO forces hit several vehicles in Afghanistan and killed 27 innocent Afghanis, including four women and a child.

And a reminder to those who forgot: A short while ago, 13 other innocent Afghanis were killed after a missile mistakenly targeted a residential home instead of a Taliban position.

Let there be no misunderstandings about it: Even though I am writing this thousands of kilometers away from the scene of these incidents, and even though we are talking about anonymous families in a foreign and hostile country, one is pained by the loss of life and by the sudden death of people who wanted to live, love, build a home and plant a tree. In this respect, our tears are real; tears are similar in every corner of the world.

But now, after all of the above had been said, we a have a small question; a tiny question, a minor one, something wholly insignificant: Where are you, Goldstone?

Here is an unintelligent guess: The world that cries out and weeps for every scratch suffered by a Palestinian child (and we are opposed to even such scratch,) the same world that portrays the State of Israel every morning (in newspapers) and every night (on TV) as the killer and butcher of children and as a state that fires into homes only to find bleeding bodies later on, that world will be silent, or at most offer some lip service in respect to the incident described above.

(Read full article)
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El País, Pots And Kettles

Eamonn McDonagh
Z-Word Blog
20 February '10

El Páis of Madrid is a wonderful newspaper. In the lead editorial of today’s edition it fearlessly condemns the supposed assassination by Israel of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

As well as being legally reprehensible and morally unacceptable the policy of selective assassination, or to put it another way, the dirty war only contributes to the illusion that there are alternative solutions to the one that Israel will sooner or later have to face: an end to the occupation and the opening of talks with the Palestinians on the basis of a two state solution.

Stirring stuff. Spain is a member of NATO and has a large contingent of troops in Afghanistan. Those troops regularly kill members of the Taliban and - as do all troops faced with the challenges they are faced with - regularly kill civilians too. No doubt tomorrow’s lead editorial in El País will call for the immediate withdrawal of Spain’s contingent in Afghanistan on the grounds that its activities in that nation are legally reprehensible and morally unacceptable and are doing nothing to address the root causes of violence there.

Spain is an ally of the United States. As I write this post there are American UAVs prowling the skies of Pakistan and Afghanistan looking for leaders of the Taliban to assassinate.

(Read full post)
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NATO Kills Civilians Accidentally; President's Advisor on Terrorism Attacks U.S. Self-Defense on Purpose T

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
14 February '10

The Associated Press reports: "Twelve Afghans died Sunday when two rockets fired at insurgents missed their targets and struck house during the second day of NATO's most ambitious effort yet to break the militants' grip on the country's dangerous south."

Those twelve Afghans are, of course, civilians, a word the report omits in the lead, though it is mentioned further down in the story. Those militants are Taliban who could be called terrorists, though in some ways even that designation would be too generous. They brought a regime to Afghanistan which murdered thousands of people, treated women like cattle, and helped make possible the September 11, 2001, attacks that slaughtered 3,000 Americans.

Later in the article it is mentioned in passing that the "militants" are firing on the U.S. Marines from civilian houses in the town, which is the kind of thing that leads to civilian deaths.

This incident will quickly be forgotten, as have previous similar ones. Indeed, after taking the town NATO commanders reported there was little resistance in Marjah. Two NATO soldiers, twelve civilians, and a reported twenty "militants" were killed in the operation. That's sixteen Afghans per one NATO death.

If the above-mentioned incident happened due to Israeli rockets it would bring massive demonstrations, a UN report claiming that this proved Israel was a war criminal state, calls by many governments for sanctions against Israel, proposals by others for an international investigation, and a rationale for Western intellectuals to say that this country has no right to exist.

(Read full article)
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Andrew Sullivan: It’s Time to Invade Israel

Marine Barracks/Beirut

23 October 83

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
06 January '10

Click here to visit crazy town:

My own view is moving toward supporting a direct American military imposition of a two-state solution, with NATO troops on the borders of the new states of Palestine and Israel. I’m sick of having a great power like the US being dictated to in the conduct of its own foreign policy.

Presumably the direct American military imposition of a two-state solution would involve the Marines going house to house in Gaza City. Talk about American soldiers dying for Israel! For someone who has spent the past few years denouncing the hubris of American military intervention in the Middle East, this is heady stuff.
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Turkey: Racism In, Ataturk Out

Anna Mahjar-Barducci
Hudson New York
05 November 09

The secular spirit of Kamal Ataturk that brought Turkey so close to the Western world is fading away.

But such a change seems to pass unnoticed. Anti-Semitism in Turkey seems to find hardly any room in the Western press.

Last year, when Turkey’s Supreme Court tried to dismantle the AKP for having trespassed Turkey’s secular constitution, EU officials sided with the Islamist government.

This constitutes a major turnabout not only for the stability of the region but also for Europe. Turkey is a NATO member, it aspires to become a EU member, has one of the strongest armies in the region, and is a key country for transporting gas to Europe through pipelines such as Nabucco and Blue Stream.

Recently, Turkey barred Israel from participating in NATO military manoeuvres; Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the move was a result of public concerns over the Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip earlier this year. Erdogan called Israel's operations, launched with the aim of ending Hamas' cross-border rocket attacks, "a crime against humanity," and suggested that Israel be barred from the United Nations.

A study of the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center shows that in recent years there has been a significant growth of anti-Semitic literature published in Turkey. Much of this literature has become best-seller books. Two categories of books can be established: 1) “Classical” anti-Semitic literature in Turkish translation, such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, and The International Jew by Henry Ford; 2) Anti-Semitic books in the Turkish language, set in an internal Turkish context. These books are mostly written by radical Islamic elements in Turkey, which believe that the current Islamic government is not Islamist enough.

In addition to the anti-Semitic books, the Turkish press frequently publishes anti-Semitic articles which combine anti-Israeli incitement and “classical” anti- Semitic motifs. Even more disturbing was a blockbuster film called Valley of the Wolves Iraq, produced in Turkey, and based on a popular television series. Due to its anti-Semitic and anti-American character, the movie was pulled from theatres in the US, and triggered harsh criticism in Germany, where it was shown to the Turkish community. So far, the Turkish government has refused to take any action to prevent the distribution of such anti-Semitic agitprop.

“Separation,” a TV series aired on Turkey’s state-run TRT channel for the first time last week, contains several controversial scenes. In one, a Palestinian father holds his new-born baby above his head in front of Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint. A few moments later, one of the soldiers shoots the baby dead. In another scene, Israeli soldiers kick and beat elderly Palestinians on the streets and one soldier shoots a teenage Palestinian girl on her chest.

The drama outraged Israel. Israel summoned a Turkish diplomat to protest at what it called "state-sponsored incitement.” “Such a drama series, which doesn’t even have the slightest link to reality and which presents Israeli soldiers as murderers of innocent children, isn’t worthy of being broadcast even by enemy states and certainly not in a state which has full diplomatic relations with Israel,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a statement.

A TV channel official responded that none of the scenes in the show was “imaginary” “and that photographs of what Israelis are doing to Palestinians are freely available on the Internet, whereas Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that the Turkish government “has no right to comment on the quality of broadcasts or the opinions expressed in them.” Freedom of Expression is not what Turkey is most famous for in any event.
This is only one of the last incidents that are marring the relations between the two countries. Israel and Turkey, once stern allies, have been on a collision course ever since the AKP party took power; it looks as if the Turkish government is trying its best to enlarge the rift, casting a shadow over the future of the Middle East.

Some 24,000 Jews live in Turkey, making them one of the world's largest Jewish communities in a Muslim country; their relations with the state are becoming more and more strained. "I feel worried, sad and scared for myself and for my country's future, which is leaning towards racism," Turkish-Jewish academic Leyla Navaro wrote in a local newspaper. Many Jews are thinking of leaving the country.

An Islamist Turkey, winking at the Islamist regimes of the region and joining their anti-Israeli policies is bad news for the free world.
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