Turkish Support For Gaza Flotilla--And Plans For Resistance--Found On Confiscated Computer

Daled Amos
21 October '10

Of course, as Haaretz reports, Turkey denies offering assistance to Gaza flotilla organizers

Records of the meeting between the heads of the flotilla two weeks prior to embarkation and other similar documents were found on laptop computers confiscated by the Israel Defense Forces.

Data found on a laptop of a passenger of last May’s Gaza bound flotilla indicates that the flotilla’s organizers received assistance from the highest levels of the Turkish government, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Edogan and other senior government officials.

Records of the meeting between the heads of the six groups behind the flotilla, in Istanbul, two weeks prior to embarkation and other similar documents were found on laptop computers confiscated by the Israel Defense Forces following the takeover of the flotilla.

The documents suggest long-term and detailed preparations by the organizers, months in advance, including readying for various scenarios, including the landing of commandos on the ships using ropes from helicopters.

The Turkish government denies offering any assistance to the flotilla’s organizers.

This naturally raises the question that if indeed the members of the Mavi Marmara were "readying for various scenarios,"--including the landing of commandos--shouldn't they have issued a memo not to bring the plans along?

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New Book By Eyewitness Turkish Journalist: Mavi Marmara Militants Planned Attack on Israeli Soldiers to Force Confrontation

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
23 September '10

We now have the definitive source on the Mavi Marmara affair and it proves Israel was right. The ship was controlled by radical Jihadists who planned to attack Israeli forces and provoke confrontation. The source is a book, including photos, by a Turkish journalist named Şefik Dinç who was on the ship.

Dinç is sympathetic to the militants but also points to the responsibility of the Turkish government and the IHH, the sponsoring Islamist group, for the crisis. His text and pictures show the Jihadists taking out iron bars and clubs, preparing for battle, beating Israeli soldiers, and trying to throw one of them into the sea. Dinç also reports that Israeli soldiers opened fire only trying to rescue soldiers taken hostage. His account corresponds in almost every detail with that given by Israel.

He writes: “When everyone who had been assigned a task reported to their stations, clubs were taken out of a hiding place….In addition to the wooden clubs I’d seen earlier, there were now iron bars as well.” Those passengers not choosing to participate in the attack went down to lower decks. The first three soldiers who landed were beaten and dragged to the upper deck. When they tried to throw a soldier overboard, some non-Jihadi passengers intervened and stopped them; others sought to stop the beatings.

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The Turkel Committee: Who was responsible for the violence?

Just Journalism
10 August '10

Following the incident on the Mavi Marmara, where nine Turkish activists were killed during violence clashes with the Israel Defence Force, Israel commissioned several inquiries to investigate what had happened. Following an internal military inquiry, which found that the IDF soldiers acted in a professional manner but were remiss in not anticipating a confrontation, the Turkel Committee is now investigating whether both the military operation to prevent the Mavi Marmara and five other ships from breaking the Gaza blockade, and the Gaza blockade itself, are legal under international law.

Headed by a retired judge from the Israeli Supreme Court, Jacob Turkel, and monitored by two international delegates, the Committee yesterday took evidence from Benyamin Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister’s appearance was covered in all five of the broadsheets, with notable differences in emphasis in all the outlets. In particular, there were varying accounts given of the violence that occurred on the ship, and who was responsible for instigating it.



How was the violence described?

Israel has always maintained that its soldiers only resorted to lethal fire after being assaulted by armed activists who had planned a violent confrontation. Video footage was released that supports its claim that its soldiers were attacked as soon as they descended onto the Mavi Marmara, and shows passengers stating that they wished to become ‘martyrs.’

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Bibi May Have Gotten More than He Bargained for with UN Panel

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
10 August '10

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assented last week to Israeli participation in a United Nations panel investigating the May 31 Gaza flotilla incident, he said that his country had “nothing to hide” and that he had been assured that the group would only review the results of previous investigations — including Israel’s — and that it would not conduct its own inquiry. But at the same time that Netanyahu spoke as though he had gotten the better of his country’s foes at the world body, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gave a mandate to the panel that was vague enough to also convince Turkey — whose goal at this point is to brand Israel as the criminal in the affair — that the UN effort serves its interests as well.

Unsurprisingly, one week later, it appears as though the Turks had better cause to be pleased by the UN than does Israel. At a news conference yesterday in New York, the AP reports that Ban denied that the UN panel would refrain from calling its own witnesses about the incident, including Israeli army soldiers who had taken part in the seizure of the Turkish ships that sought to break the blockade of Hamas-run Gaza. Israeli officials had previously said that their participation had been conditional on the promise that their soldiers would not be hauled in front of a UN star chamber. In response to Ban’s backtracking on that promise, Netanyahu’s office issued a statement saying that “Israel will not cooperate with and will not take part in any panel that seeks to interrogate Israeli soldiers.”

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Susan Rice Is Doing Something at the UN: Targeting Israel

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
02 August '10

It turns out Susan Rice is doing something as America’s UN ambassador after all. As Jennifer noted on Friday, she isn’t attending vital negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program or protesting bizarre appointments, like Libya’s to the Human Rights Council and Iran’s to the Commission on the Status of Women.

But Haaretz reported yesterday that she has found time to do one crucial thing: lobby Barack Obama to put heavy pressure on Israel to agree to a UN probe of its May raid on a Turkish-sponsored flotilla. And today the Jerusalem Post reported that Israel has indeed capitulated: Defense Minister Ehud Barak informed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week that “in principle,” it’s willing to participate in the probe he is organizing.

One can only hope the Post is wrong, because this would be an atrocious precedent. As Haaretz noted, it would be the first time Israel has ever agreed to a UN probe of an Israel Defense Forces operation. As such, it would legitimize the UN’s insane obsession with Israel.

After all, I haven’t noticed Ban suggesting UN probes of any other country’s military operations — say, Turkish operations against the Kurds, Iran’s attacks on its own citizens, coalition operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, or African Union forces in Somalia, to name just a few of the dozens of armies engaged in combat worldwide every single day. Many of these operations result in far more civilian casualties than Israel’s flotilla raid did — even if you deny the evidence provided by video footage of the raid and assume these casualties actually were civilians rather than combatants.

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Reuters Reports False Claims, But Ignores Flotilla Facts

Gilead Ini
CAMERA Media Analysis
30 July '10

Aug. 1 Update: Reuters continues to stand by their biased and misleading language. A senior editor responsible for standards indicated that the media giant would not be amending their wording since, he insists, what happened on the Mavi Marmara is a matter of "considerable controversy." Yet aside from possible denials by some extreme activists, there is no controversy whatsoever on the question of whether the Israeli soldiers were attacked when they landed on the ship, especially in light of the video footage of the incident.


July 30 – The role of a news organization is to uncover and report the facts, not to hide them once they have already come to light. Yet Reuters inexcusably does the latter in its July 30 report, "U.N. rights body tells Israel to end Gaza blockade." The article tells readers that the attack by activists on Israeli troops boarding the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara is nothing more than an Israeli claim denied by activists, in effect suggesting that Israeli soldiers might not have actually been attacked on the ship.

"Israel admitted errors in planning the raid but justified the use of lethal force saying its marines came under attack from activists wielding knives and clubs. Activists deny this," the report notes. (Emphasis added.)

This language, which casts the attack as an unsettled matter of dispute, is highly misleading, as it fails to inform readers that the Israeli troops were indeed, unequivocally and clearly, attacked, a fact corroborated by video evidence. In other words, activists who deny that Israeli soldiers were attacked are lying, and demonstrably so.

In an April 2009 blog post, media critic Jay Rosen, of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, faulted what he called "he said, she said" journalism. In such journalism, he explained, "no real attempt is made to assess clashing truth claims" in a story, even though "the means for assessment do exist, so it’s possible to exert a factual check on some of the claims."

This is precisely what Reuters does in its July 30 story.

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Cameron's Despicable Toadying to Turkey

Daniel Friedman
Sultan Knish
28 July '10

It is sadly unsurprising that Prime Minister Cameron's highly publicized trip to Turkey went with no mention of that country's continued denial of the Armenian Genocide, and its suppression of Kurdish and Armenian minorities. Indeed when Turkish leader Erdogan discussed his threats of ethnically cleansing Armenians in the UK, Gordon Brown made no more comment on the matter than if Erdogan had been discussing his favorite television programs.

It is in keeping with that conspiracy of silence, that Cameron made no mention of the thousands of political prisoners in Turkish jails, there often for merely expressing an opinion at odds with the state, for singing a folk song, or delivering an official speech in Kurdish. Naturally Cameron did not think to raise the issue of Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish woman elected to the Turkish parliament and a winner of the Sakharov Prize, who is still in jail today. Cameron could have at least raised the subject of Aysel Tuğluk, a member of the Turkish Human Rights Association, who was illegally stripped of her parliamentary immunity and sent to jail for handing out leaflets in the Kurdish language, and is now due to be sent to jail yet again.

But rather than standing up for human rights, Cameron instead pandered to the radical Islamists who were his hosts, by feeding their appetite for hate directed at Israel. And it did not begin or end with Israel.

Instead Cameron sold out the rest of Europe, declaring that he was "angry" at how long the negotiations to bring Turkey into the EU were taking, and declaring himself the "strongest possible advocate for EU membership". He slammed France and implicitly Germany, for refusing to rush forward to support bringing Turkey into the EU. Cameron sided with Turkey, over France and Germany, betraying allies for enemies. And worse was yet to come.

Not only did Cameron ignore Turkey's ongoing occupation of Cyprus, but he signed a strategic agreement with Turkey that calls for ending the "isolation" of the Turkish Cypriots by upholding their "right to representation" in the European Parliament, and promoting political and cultural contacts with the Turkish Cypriots. What that means is that Cameron committed himself to supporting Dervis Eroglu from the radical National Unity Party, which calls for Turkish annexation of occupied Cyprus. The strategic agreement signed by Cameron, moves the UK closer to recognizing the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, which currently only Turkey itself recognizes.

Again Cameron makes no criticism whatsoever of Turkey's illegal occupation of Cyprus. He does not mention the fact that he signed an agreement promoting the flow of goods from occupied Cyprus to the UK, while Turkey refuses to accept goods from Greek Cyprus. Of course not. No more than his predecessor was willing to.

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Weep for Britain: 1940 this is not

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
27 July '10

When David Cameron became Britain’s Prime Minister, I warned that he would turn out to be even worse than Labour on the related issues of Israel and the global threat from Islamism to Britain and the west. This was because Cameron had no knowledge of or interest in foreign affairs, and so was always likely merely to reflect the most politically expedient views he encountered – which, given the current poisonous attitude within the British establishment and intelligentsia, were likely to push him into appeasing Britain’s mortal enemies in the Islamic world and dumping on Israel, Britain’s strategic ally in that great struggle.

But even I did not foresee just how cynical Cameron would turn out to be -- and how dangerous therefore to the British national interest. Today’s truly shocking and quite astoundingly stupid speech in Turkey has now laid bare the fathomless shallowness and frightening ignorance and idiocy of Britain’s new Prime Minister.

Declaring himself a fervent supporter of Turkey’s bid to join the EU, Cameron declared that those who opposed this bid fell into one of three categories: protectionists; those who believed wrongly in a ‘clash of civilisations’ between east and west, whereas in fact

Turkey can be a great unifier, because instead of choosing between East and West, Turkey has chosen both;

or

those who wilfully misunderstand Islam

because they

... see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version peddled by the extremists.

Astonishingly, Cameron thus totally ignored the fact that Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan, is no secular Ataturk but an Islamic extremist; and as a result Turkey is changing from a secular state and strategic ally of the west into an Islamist tyranny and a new strategic enemy of the west.

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Hizbullah's troublesome Turkish embrace

The Daily Star (Beirut)
Michael Young
01 July '10

Hizbullah has been terribly excitable in recent weeks. It has threatened, condemned, demanded, and warned, all suggesting the party is not quite relaxed about the prevailing political situation.

First it was the party’s ambiguities about the ships to be sent from Beirut to Gaza; then its tough position on the offshore oil dispute with Israel. Then it was Hizbullah MP Kamel al-Rifai promising that the party would soon “confront American defamation campaigns” and prepare a list of individuals, parties and clubs collaborating with the US. And this week villagers in the south, in actions very likely orchestrated by Hizbullah, blocked roads and attacked UNIFIL vehicles. This came after an Alfa employee was arrested allegedly for being a Mossad spy, allowing Hizbullah to caution that Israel controls the Lebanese telecoms sector.

Hizbullah’s message is clear: the enemy is everywhere. For a party that needs enemies to survive, this is understandable. However, there is something deeper at play, a malaise with the fact that the situation in Lebanon and the Middle East is not to the party’s liking.

Hizbullah appears to have been put out by the Turkish reaction to the Gaza flotilla incident a few weeks ago. While many in the West saw only Ankara’s hostility against Israel, the perspective from the region was different, and played itself out against a backdrop of Arab fears of Iran’s rising power; or less subtly, Sunni Arab fears of Shiite Iran.

The Palestinian issue is at the heart of the so-called “resistance agenda,” which Hizbullah claims to embody best. Since 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has used the Palestinians as a battering ram to enhance Iran’s legitimacy among the Arabs, while delegitimizing the Arab’s own passive regimes. But now Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stepped in and the Arabs, their sectarian impulses kicking in, have elected Turkey as their foremost champion.

Turkey’s push on the Palestinian front may lead in several directions that Hizbullah finds worrisome. For starters, Erdogan has arrogated the right to speak in the name of Hamas, recently declaring that the movement is not a terrorist organization. Given Turkish influence over Syria, which hosts Hamas’ leader Khaled Meshaal, this throws a new variable into Hizbullah’s relation with the Palestinian Islamist movement.

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Syria and Turkey Sink Another Obama Initiative

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
24 June '10
Posted before Shabbat

One of the keys to President Obama’s ill-fated attempt to engage the Islamic world has been the effort to convince Syria to abandon its alliance with Iran and to join the West. But like his vaunted outreach to Iran, this too fell flat — though some in the administration continued to try getting Israel to pay for this initiative with concessions on the Golan Heights and the standoff with Hezbollah, an ally of both Iran and Syria, along the border with Lebanon. But the final nail in the coffin of the Syria gambit appears to have come not from Israeli intransigence but rather from the intervention of a country that once feared the Syrians: Turkey.

Writing in Le Monde Diplomatique, Stephen Starr reports that Turkey has become “Syria’s new best friend.” Though not so long ago the Turks looked to cultivate an alliance with Israel as a counter-balance to the threat they perceived from the Assad regime, they have now embarked on their own outreach campaign to Damascus. Trade between the two countries has grown from a trickle to a flood. More importantly, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to become an apologist and diplomatic partner for Iran and to attempt to become the leader of the Islamic world’s anti-Israel diplomatic front has the potential to change the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean. By sponsoring the Gaza flotilla provocation and then engaging in what even Starr concedes was a “disproportionate response” to Israel’s efforts to maintain the blockade on the Hamas regime, Turkey has “improved Syria’s political clout significantly.”

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Isolating Gaza

Elliot Jager
jewishideasdaily.com
22 June '10

A week ago, in the aftermath of the failed attempt by a Turkish flotilla to defy Israel's maritime quarantine of the Gaza Strip and the ensuing deaths of nine Turkish mercenaries on board, foreign ministers of the 27-nation European Union agreed that Israel's blockade of the Hamas-governed enclave was "unsustainable" and "politically counterproductive." Meeting in Luxembourg, they heard Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign-policy czar, proclaim that Gaza's "dangerous isolation" had to end.

Since then, in the face of withering pressure to abandon the blockade altogether, Jerusalem has acceded to demands for a published list of goods (weapons, war materiel, and "dual-use" items) not permitted into Gaza, with all others allowed.

The arguments advanced by the EU ministers, and by the many in the West who think like them, assume different forms. Some, even while stipulating the absence of any humanitarian crisis in Gaza, assert a need for life there to return to "normalcy." Others go farther, declaring categorically that the policy of isolating Gaza has backfired—that, instead of leading to the collapse of Hamas and its replacement by something better, it has strengthened the group's autocratic stranglehold and hardened its belligerence toward Israel. In this conception, "engaging" the rulers of Gaza will create an opening to persuade them to moderate their harsh policies. A final plank in the argument is that dealing with Hamas will advance the cause of, in the words of the EU ministers, "Palestinian reconciliation behind President Mahmoud Abbas," the leader of the comparatively more moderate Fatah government in the West Bank.

What reason exists to believe any of this is true?

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The last 10 days

The last 10 days have surprised me.


Fresnozionism.org
11 June '10

I thought I was cynical about the way humans are capable of believing things that are contradicted by what they see with their own eyes, but apparently I was naive.

I realized that the phenomenon of ideologues only hearing the voices of their own side was much more extensive than I’d thought.

I saw that the amount of ignorance, stupidity and viciousness in the world, especially the supposedly better-educated part of it, was far, far greater than than I had imagined in my worst nightmares.

I saw that a form of atavistic hatred that I had thought was dying out in ‘civilized’ society was alive and breathing heavily.

I saw some ‘critics of Israeli policy’ drop their masks, because it has now become acceptable to admit that the real problem, in the words of Charles Krauthammer, is “Those Troublesome Jews“.

When Helen Thomas dropped hers (OK, maybe it had been slipping for some time), she was greeted with some official condemnation and massive grass-roots support. Rabbi David Nesenoff, who taped her telling Israeli Jews to “go home, to Poland and Germany,” has received over 25,000 hate mails, some of which can be seen on his website.

There’s a Security Council “Presidential Statement,” a vicious Human Rights Council resolution, demonstrations and rallies against Israel all over the world — even in Fresno, California — a surge of antisemitic incidents in France and other places, threats from Turkey, Iran and Syria, and suggestions from Barack Obama that Israel’s policies are ‘unsustainable’ and must change in the direction of concessions to Hamas.

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