What does it take to prove you're an enemy?

Lurker
The Muqata
12 August '10

Yesterday, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi testified before the Turkel commission investigating the Gaza flotilla incident. Judge Turkel asked him why the IDF was so completely unprepared for the murderous attacks against our soldiers by members of the IHH, the Turkish radical Islamist group that organized the flotilla. (The soldiers, who were "armed" with paintball guns, were obviously not told to expect any serious opposition.) Here is Ashkenazi's answer:

"The level of knowledge we had on the [IHH] was not like the level of information we have on Hamas. We did not investigate the organization. It was not on our list of our priorities, because it was not listed as a terrorist organization and was located in Turkey, which is not an enemy state -- and I hope it never will be."
[Sources: JPost, Haaretz]

Incredibly, even after hearing all the rabid, extremist diatribes against Israel spewed forth on an almost daily basis by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and even after watching Turkey openly forge alliances with Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah, Ashkenazi -- and the Israeli government -- still have not grasped the simple and obvious fact that Turkey has become our enemy.



As for the IHH, if the folks at IDF Intelligence had bothered to do even a couple minutes of googling, whey would have quicky discovered ample material clearly showing the organization's fanatical jihadist nature, such as this 2009 speech in Gaza by the head of the IHH, in which he called for martyrdom through attacks on Israel:

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Israel Needs to Face Facts About Turkey

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
05 August '10
Posted before Shabbat

Israel’s effort to adjust to the new reality of a hostile Islamist Turkey often seems like “one step forward, two steps back.” This week was a giant step back. Yet even so, progress has been made.

This week’s setback was Israel’s decision to participate in a UN probe of May’s raid on a Turkish-sponsored flotilla to Gaza. Several leading Israeli ministers said the decision was made partly “to restore ties with Turkey.” As one senior official put it, “Hopefully the combination of lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip and establishing an international investigation will meet the Turkish demands and lead to a restoration of ties.”

This is appeasement of the worst kind. In order to “restore ties” with a government that has made its hostility crystal-clear, Israel for the first time gave its imprimatur to an investigation by one of the world’s most anti-Israel bodies, which has never sought to probe similar incidents in other countries. That sets a dangerous precedent.

Even worse, this decision comes just days after Defense Minister Ehud Barak voiced concern over the new Turkish intelligence chief’s close ties with Iran. Noting that years of military cooperation had left many Israeli secrets in Turkish hands, he worried that Hakan Fidan might pass them to Tehran. What normal country seeks a closer relationship with a government it suspects of sharing its secrets with its worst enemy?

(Read full post)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

What David Cameron Doesn't Know About Turkey

Turkey is sponsoring the jihadists, not guarding against them.


Michael Weiss
The Weekly Standard
29 July '10
Posted before Shabbat

Who said this?

Hamas are resistance fighters who are struggling to defend their land. They have won an election. I have told this to U.S. officials ... I do not accept Hamas as a terrorist organization. I think the same today. They are defending their land.

That would be Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking before an exultant crowd a few weeks ago in the city of Konya as a newly decorated defender of regional Islamism. This is the man whom David Cameron was out to please the other day when, in a speech delivered in Ankara, he referred to Gaza as a “prison camp,” assailed Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara as “completely unacceptable,” and insisted that despite the aura of hopelessness now clinging to Turkey’s agonized bid to join the European Union, it must join it whatever the grumblings from Germany and France. Brutal occupation of Cyprus, subjugation of a Kurdish minority in everything from politics to linguistics, and ongoing denial of the Armenian genocide are evidently Maastricht-compatible initiatives to the new British prime minister, considered even by his support base not to “do” foreign policy so terribly well.

That didn’t stop a fellow Conservative, MP Daniel Hannan, from encouraging Cameron’s Obama-like overture to an increasingly hostile and subversive ally: “Cameron's reasons for backing Ankara's bid for EU membership are solidly Tory: Turkey guarded Europe's flank against the Bolshevists for three generations, and may one day be called on to do the same against the jihadis.”

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.