We Con The World
http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=XdaG8zIr4zSuicide Activists on the Gaza Flotilla
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV6DVk04HkMIt’s Not About the Flotilla: Turkey Changed Sides Years Ago
Israel-Turkey relations have gone from alliance to the verge of war because the West pretended an Islamist government could be benign.
by Barry Rubin
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/its-not-about-the-flotilla-turkey-changed-sides-years-ago/?singlepage=true The foolish think the breakdown is due to the recent Gaza flotilla; the naïve, who pass for the sophisticated experts, attribute the collapse to the December 2008-January 2009 Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
Such conclusions are totally misleading. The relationship breakdown was already clear — and in private every Israeli expert dealing seriously with Turkey said so — well over two years ago: the cause was the election in Turkey of an Islamist government.
Turkey’s AK Party government has not permitted a single new military contract with Israel since it took office. The special relationship was over then.
Turkey needed Israel as an ally when a secular government in Ankara regarded Iran, Syria, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as its main threats. Once there was a government which regarded Iran and Syria as its closest allies, Israel became a perceived enemy.
When the Turkish armed forces were an important part of the regime, they saw Israel as a good source for military equipment and an ally against Islamists and radical Arab regimes. But once the army was to be suppressed, its wishes were a matter of no concern. Depriving it of foreign allies was a goal of the AK Party government.
When Turkey thought it needed Israel as a way to maintain good relations with the United States, the alliance was valuable. But once it was clear that U.S. policy would accept the AK — and was none too fond of Israel — that reason for the alliance also dissolved. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced:
It’s Israel that is the principal threat to regional peace.
At first, this outcome was not so obvious. The AK Party won its first election by only a narrow margin. To keep the United States and EU happy, to keep the Turkish army happy, and to cover up its Islamist sympathies, the new regime was cautious over relations with Israel. Keeping them going served as “proof” of Turkey’s moderation.
Yet as the AK majorities in elections rose, the government became more confident. No longer did it stress that it was a center-right party with family values. The regime steadily weakened the army, using EU demands for civilian power. As it repressed opposition and arrested hundreds of critics, bought up 40 percent of the media, and installed its people in the bureaucracy, the AK’s arrogance and its willingness to throw off its mask grew steadily.
And then, on top of that, the regime saw that the United States would not criticize it, not press it, not even notice what the Turkish government was doing. President Barack Obama came to Turkey and praised the regime as a model of moderate Muslim democracy. Former President Bill Clinton appeared in Istanbul, and in response to questions asked by an AK Party supporter, was manipulated into virtually endorsing the regime’s program without realizing it.
Earlier this year, the situation became even more absurd as Turkey moved ever closer to becoming the third state to join the Iran-Syria bloc. Syria’s state-controlled newspaper and Iranian President Ahmadinejad openly referred to Turkey’s membership in their alliance, and no one in Washington even noticed what was happening. Even when, in May, Turkish policy stabbed the United States in the back by helping Iran launch a sanctions-avoidance plan, the Obama administration barely stirred.
A few weeks ago, the Turkish prime minister said that Iran isn’t developing nuclear weapons, that he regards President Ahmadinejad as a friend, and that even if Iran were building nuclear bombs it has a right to do so. And still no one in Washington noticed.
Turkey was not only what the Obama administration wanted in a Muslim-majority country, it was also one of the “responsible powers,” to quote the administration’s national security strategy document, that the White House saw as necessary attendants to shore up a weak America at the Home for Aging Senile Superpowers.
The current Turkish government hates Israel because it is an Islamist regime.
Note who its friends are: It cares nothing for the Lebanese people; it only backs Hezbollah. It never has a kind word for the Palestinian Authority or Fatah; the Turkish government’s friend is Hamas.
Lately for the first time, the AK government began to run into domestic problems. The poor status of the economy, the growing discontent of many Turks with creeping Islamism in the society, and the election — for the first time — of a popular leader for the opposition party began to give hope that next year’s elections might bring down the regime. Indeed, polls showed the AK sinking into or very close to second place. With the army neutered, elections are the only hope of getting Turkey off the road to Islamism.
A Turkish colleague gave an explanation of this situation some time ago, an analogy most ironic given the Gaza flotilla issue. It was very important, he explained, that the Turkish people not become the enemy for the West and Israel. They were merely the passengers: the regime — the captain and the crew — was the problem.
But then the Gaza flotilla sailed in. Many oppositionist Turks see this as close to a conspiracy, and one can hardly blame them for doing so. A radical Islamist group close to the government organized this whole affair, which while nominally independent, enjoyed the Turkish government’s patronage.
What has now happened is the regime’s manipulation of the two powerful symbols in Turkey that motivate people: nationalism and Islam. This is an anti-nationalist government, dismantling the traditional traditions of the Ataturkist republic. But it has managed to wrap iself in the Turkish flag.
The way it has been presented is that Israel has attacked Turkey and its honor. Any hint that the demonstrators had attacked the soldiers, held extremist views, and refused to send in the aid through Israel or Egypt was omitted.
A national hysteria has been whipped up. In huge demonstrations, Palestinian flags were waved and slogans chanted: “Stop military collaboration with the Israeli army,” “Kill all the Israelis,” “Allah akbar,” “Death to the Jews,” and “Attack Israel.”
Even the opposition parties shouted their outrage. The government had three demands: all Turks be released immediately (something Israel had already announced would happen, but the regime pretended this only came about due to its tough stance), there be an international investigation, and Israel pay compensation. Turkey’s top leaders spoke of Israel as committing “piracy” and “terrorism,” the latter term one never applies to Hamas or Hezbollah.
Is this the magic weapon the AK will use to gain reelection next year? Many Turks think so, and are angry at Israel for, in their eyes, helping the survival of the regime they hate.
But for the AK government to succeed in benefiting politically, it’s going to have to create several more crises to keep nationalist fervor stoked.
Any idea of saving Israel-Turkey relations is an illusion. Any thought that Turkey can be an acceptable mediator for an Israel that the regime loathes is ridiculous. But that is only the beginning.
The question now becomes: how much can Turkey sabotage U.S. interests before U.S.-Turkish relations go the same way? The defection of Turkey to the other side would be the biggest strategic shift in the Middle East since the Iranian revolution three decades ago.
Pretending that this isn’t happening will not change it.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition, Viking-Penguin), the paperback edition of The Truth about Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).
Erdogan and the Decline of the Turks
When I asked the prime minister about stories alleging a U.S.-Israeli murder and organ selling scheme in Iraq, he could not bring himself to condemn them.
by Robert L. Pollock
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704875604575281392195250402.htmlIsraeli special forces and their commanders were apparently shocked to find their boarding attempt on the Mavi ("Blue") Marmara met with violence. They should not have been. I have no doubt that the Turkish "peace activists" aboard the ship regarded Israeli troops as something akin to the second coming of Hitler's SS.
To follow Turkish discourse in recent years has been to follow a national decline into madness. Imagine 80 million or so people sitting at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. They don't speak an Indo-European language and perhaps hundreds of thousands of them have meaningful access to any outside media. What information most of them get is filtered through a secular press that makes Italian communists look right wing by comparison and an increasing number of state (i.e., Islamist) influenced outfits. Topics A and B (or B and A, it doesn't really matter) have been the malign influence on the world of Israel and the United States.
For example, while there was much hand-wringing in our own media about "Who lost Turkey?" when U.S. forces were denied entry to Iraq from the north in 2003, no such introspection was evident in Ankara and Istanbul. Instead, Turks were fed a steady diet of imagined atrocities perpetrated by U.S. forces in Iraq, often with the implication that they were acting as muscle for the Jews. The newspaper Yeni Safak, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's daily read, claimed that Americans were tossing so many Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates that local mullahs had issued a fatwa ordering residents not to eat the fish. The same paper repeatedly claimed that the U.S. used chemical weapons in Fallujah. And it reported that Israeli soldiers had been deployed alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and that U.S. forces were harvesting the innards of dead Iraqis for sale on the U.S. "organ market.
The secular Hurriyet newspaper, meanwhile, accused Israeli soldiers of assassinating Turkish security personnel in Mosul and said the U.S. was starting an occupation of (Muslim) Indonesia under the guise of humanitarian assistance. Then U.S. ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman actually felt the need to organize a conference call to explain to the Turkish media that secret U.S. nuclear testing did not cause the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. One of the craziest theories circulating in Ankara was that the U.S. was colonizing the Middle East because its scientists were aware of an impending asteroid strike on North America.
The Mosul and organ harvesting stories were soon brought together in a hit Turkish movie called "Valley of the Wolves," which I saw in 2006 at a mall in Ankara. My poor Turkish was little barrier to understanding. The body parts of dead Iraqis could be clearly seen being placed into crates marked New York and Tel Aviv. It is no exaggeration to say that such anti-Semitic fare had not been played to mass audiences in Europe since the Third Reich.
When I interviewed Prime Minister Erdogan (one of several encounters) in 2006, he was unabashed about the narrative.
Erdogan: "I believe the people who made this movie took media reports as their basis . . . for example, Abu Ghraib prison—we have seen this on TV, and now we are watching Guantanamo Bay in the world media, and of course it could be that this movie was prepared under these influences."
Me: "But do you believe that many Turks have such a view of America, that we're the kind of people who'd go to Iraq and kill people to take their organs?"
Erdogan: "These kind of things happen in the world. If it's not happening in Iraq, then its happening in other countries."
Me: "Which kind of things? Killing people to take their organs?"
Erdogan: "I'm not saying they are being killed. . . . There are people in poverty who use this as a means to get money."
I was somewhat taken aback that the prime minister could not bring himself to condemn a fictional blood libel. I should not have been. He and his party have traded on America and Israel hatred ever since. There can be little doubt the Turkish flotilla that challenged the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza was organized with his approval, if not encouragement. Mr. Erodogan's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, is a proponent of a philosophy which calls on Turkey to loosen Western ties to the U.S., NATO and the European Union and seek its own sphere of influence to the east. Turkey's recent deal to help Iran enrich uranium should come as no surprise.
Sadly, Turkey has had no credible opposition since its corrupt secular parties lost to Mr. Erdogan in 2002. The Ataturk-inspired People's Republican Party has just thrown off one leader who was constantly railing about CIA plots for another who wants to expand state spending as government coffers collapse everywhere else in the word. What's more, Turks remain blind to their manifest hypocrisies. Ask how they would feel if other countries arranged an "aid" convoy (akin to the Gaza flotilla) for their own Kurdish minority and you'll be met with dumb stares.
Turkey's blind spot on the Kurdish issue is especially striking when you recall that Turkey nearly invaded Syria in 1998 for sponsoring Kurdish terrorism. Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan then bounced around the capitals of Europe, only to be captured in Kenya and handed over to the Turks by the CIA. Turkey's antiterror alliance with Israel and the U.S. couldn't have been more natural.
Yet Prime Minister Erdogan was one of the first world leaders to recognize the legitimacy of the Hamas government in Gaza. And now he is upping the rhetoric after provoking Israel on Hamas's behalf. It is Israel, he says, that has shocked "the conscience of humanity." Foreign Minister Davutoglu is challenging the U.S: "We expect full solidarity with us. It should not seem like a choice between Turkey and Israel. It should be a choice between right and wrong."
Please. Good leaders work to defuse tensions in situations like this, not to escalate them. No American should be deceived as to the true motives of these men: They are demagogues appealing to the worst elements in their own country and the broader Middle East.
The obvious answer to the question of "Who lost Turkey?"—the Western-oriented Turkey, that is—is the Turks did. The outstanding question is how much damage they'll do to regional peace going forward.
'We Had No Choice'
'Mavi Marmara' raid commando: "They had murder in their eyes."
By YAAKOV KATZ
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177445When St.-Sgt. S. fast-roped down from an air force Black Hawk helicopter onto the Mavi Marmara Turkish passenger ship on Monday morning, he did not expect to be landing in what he called “a battlefield” and facing off against a group of “murderous mercenaries.”
The 15th and last naval commando from Flotilla 13 (the Shayetet) to rappel down onto the ship from the helicopter, S. said on Thursday that he was immediately attacked by what the IDF has called “the mob of mercenaries” aboard the vessel, just like the soldiers who had boarded just before him.
Looking to his side, he saw three of his commanders lying wounded – one with a gunshot wound to the stomach and another with a gunshot wound to the knee. A third was lying unconscious; his skull was fractured by a devastating blow with a metal bar.
As the next in the chain of command, S., who has been in the Shayetet for three and a half years, immediately took charge.
He pushed the wounded soldiers up against the wall of the upper deck and created a perimeter of soldiers around them to begin treating their wounds, he said. He then arranged his men to form a second perimeter, and pulled out his 9 mm. Glock pistol to stave off the charging attackers and to protect his wounded comrades.
The attackers had already seized two pistols from the commandos, and fired repeatedly at them. Facing more than a dozen of the mercenaries, and convinced their lives were in danger, he and his colleagues opened fire, he said. S. singlehandedly killed six men. His colleagues killed another three.
On Thursday, S. sat down with The Jerusalem Post at the Shayetet’s base in northern Israel for an exclusive interview, during which he described the dramatic events aboard the Mavi Marmara on Monday; he is being considered for a medal of valor.
“When I hit the deck, I was immediately attacked by people with bats, metal pipes and axes,” S. told the Post. “These were without a doubt terrorists. I could see the murderous rage in their eyes and that they were coming to kill us.”
S. does not look like a hero. Well-built, like all commandos in the Shayetet, he is also soft-spoken and stingy with words, but his commander Lt.-Col. T. fills in the blanks.
“S. did a remarkable job,” T. said. “He stabilized the situation and succeeded in hitting six of the terrorists.”
Based on preliminary results of its investigation into the navy’s takeover of the Mavi Marmara, which ended with nine dead passengers and more than 30 wounded, the IDF said on Thursday that the commandos were attacked by a well-trained group of mercenaries, most of whom were found without IDs but with thousands of dollars in their pockets.
The group was well trained and was split into a number of squads of about 20 mercenaries each distributed throughout the upper deck, the IDF said. All of the mercenaries wore gas masks and ceramic bulletproof vests and were armed with either bats, slingshots, metal bars, knives or stun grenades.
The IDF’s understanding is that the mercenaries mainly chose dual-purpose items of this sort rather than guns, since opening fire would have made it blatantly clear that they were terrorists and not so-called peace activists.
Nevertheless, the IDF suspects that the group did have some guns of its own. Israeli forensic experts who examined the ship found casings belonging to a weapon that was not used by the commandos, and the Turkish captain of the ship later told the IDF that the “mercenaries” threw their weapons overboard after the commandos took control of the vessel.
T. said he realized the group they were facing was well-trained and likely ex-military after the commandos threw a number of stun grenades and fired warning shots before rappelling down onto the deck. “They didn’t even flinch,” he said. “Regular people would move.”
Each squad of the “mercenaries” was equipped with a Motorola communication device, the IDF said, so they could pass information to one another. Assessments in the defense establishment are that members of the group were affiliated with international global jihad elements and had undergone training in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.
S. on Thursday downplayed his involvement in the operation. “I did what I was trained to do and now I move on,” he said.
In contrast to earlier reports, the commandos said that they began using their weapons within a minute and a half after boarding the ship, due to the extreme violence they faced. One of the reasons S. pulled out his gun right after landing on the ship was because one of the mercenaries was pointing a pistol, snatched from one of the commandos, at another commando’s head.
Those Troublesome Jews
Charles Krauthammer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304287.htmlThe world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.
But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel -- a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.
In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded ("quarantined") Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.
Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.
Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.
Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?
But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself -- forward and active defense.
(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense -- fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.
Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don't have to fight them here.
But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies -- and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.
Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land -- evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.
(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense -- military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.
The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli -- the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war -- effectively de-legitimized any active Israeli defense against its self-declared terror enemies.
(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses -- a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.
But, if none of these is permissible, what's left?
Ah, but that's the point. It's the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who've had quite enough of the Jewish problem.
What's left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel's possession of nuclear weapons -- thus de-legitimizing Israel's very last line of defense: deterrence.
The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.
Israelis Agree With Bibi
In the wake of the flotilla controversy, Israelis resoundingly back their government's stance on Gaza.
by David Pollock
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/11/israelis_agree_with_bibiA reliable new poll of Israeli public opinion shows that attitudes on the Gaza blockade are heavily hawkish -- in diametric opposition not only to most international reactions, but also much of the Israeli media's own commentary. This finding is the first detailed measurement of Israeli views following the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) violent boarding of the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara, which resulted in the deaths of nine people. The poll surveyed Israeli Jewish opinion and was conducted by telephone interviews on June 7 by Pechter Middle East Polls, a young, Princeton, N.J.-based survey research and analysis firm working with pollsters throughout the region.
In the aftermath of the recent ship-boarding incident, three-quarters of Jewish Israelis say Israel should not open the Gaza Strip to international aid shipments. Narrower, yet still solid, majorities also say Israel should not accept an international investigation, nor adjust its tactics to win favorable international consideration.
Even more surprising, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's job-approval rating has now climbed into positive territory: 53 percent of respondents were satisfied with his performance, while 40 percent were dissatisfied. By contrast, 71 percent voiced dissatisfaction with U.S. President Barack Obama, and a clear majority, 63 percent, are also dissatisfied with the overall U.S. reaction to the Gaza flotilla controversy so far.
To put this reaction in context, it helps to first look at popular assessments of the deadly ship-boarding operation itself. The sole previously reported survey on this point, from a June 4 Maariv newspaper poll, concluded that a majority of Israelis thought that the operation should have been conducted "in a different way." However, in the subsequent Pechter poll, Israelis Jews were asked to consider how they think IDF soldiers should have acted once confronted with violent activists aboard the ship. A plurality, 46 percent, thought Israel used the "right amount of force" aboard the Mavi Marmara, and nearly as many, 39 percent, said Israel used "not enough force" in boarding the Turkish ship. Only 8 percent thought that the IDF used too much force.
The Israeli public appears even more inclined to hawkish solutions when it comes to future attempts to breach the Gaza blockade. The poll noted media reports about Iran's purported plan to send Red Crescent vessels to Gaza, asking respondents if Israel should "let them in quietly" or "stop them whatever it takes." The results are strikingly lopsided: 84 percent would stop them, whatever it takes, while just 7 percent would let them in quietly. Similarly, when asked what Israel should do if the Turkish navy and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan personally attempt to break the Gaza blockade, as some reports have suggested might happen, three-quarters said Israel should stop them at any cost.
Alternative policies garner only minority support from the Israeli public. Just one-fifth (22 percent) of respondents advocate opening Gaza to international humanitarian shipments. More incremental shifts elicit a slightly more sympathetic popular response, but fall well short of gaining majority support. Two-fifths (37 percent) of those surveyed would support "an international inquiry committee that will investigate the recent ship incident." Almost as many (35 percent) agree with the general proposition that Israel should "adjust its tactics to elicit a more favorable international reaction."
This data carries a number of important political implications, both for Israeli domestic politics and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Of most immediate importance, Netanyahu's job is not in jeopardy as a result of this latest international imbroglio. If the Israeli public were to blame any of its elected officials for this diplomatic setback, it would be Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who represents the Labor Party. The new Pechter poll shows that Barak's approval rating, unlike Netanyahu's, is now in negative territory: Just 41 percent are satisfied with his job performance, against 52 percent dissatisfied. Even so, around 75 percent of Israelis reject the notion that Barak should resign his post, according to last week's Maariv poll.
The Israeli public's hawkish stance also constrains Netanyahu's ability to substantially alter Israel's Gaza policy in the wake of the Mavi Marmara incident. In moving toward acceptance of some kind of international presence on an investigative commission and toward some increase in Israel's allowance of humanitarian aid to Gaza, Netanyahu is reaching the outer limits of what the Israeli electorate could realistically be persuaded to accept.
The survey also found extremely high levels of intensity among respondents, a fact that makes it particularly difficult for the Israeli government to move against the tide of public opinion. In my 30 years of professionally analyzing Israeli and Arab polls, I have rarely seen such a passionate response from those surveyed. For example, among the very large majorities who said Israel should do whatever it takes to block Iranian or Turkish vessels from reaching Gaza, extraordinarily high percentages said they feel "strongly" about the issue: 68 percent for Turkish boats, and an even higher proportion, 78 percent, regarding Iranian blockade-runners.
The one methodological caveat to this conclusion concerns Israel's Arab citizens, who constitute approximately 18 percent of its adult population and vote freely in its elections, but are usually considered separately in survey analysis. Had they been included in this latest poll, previous research suggests that the overall numbers would have shifted modestly in a more dovish direction. However, Arab Israeli opinion will almost certainly not be a major factor considered by the current Israeli government, which relies on the support of Jewish Zionist parties to maintain power.
These findings, however, do not spell doom for hopes of a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Crucially, the Israeli public's stance on Gaza coexists with relatively dovish views on other key Palestinian issues. For nearly a decade now, even during wars or major surges in terrorist attacks, a solid majority of Israeli Jews have consistently supported a two-state solution to the dispute. This fundamental fact was again attested as recently as March, in the latest Hebrew University/Truman Institute poll, which showed 68 percent in favor of that option. Moreover, that poll showed a narrow majority explicitly willing to accept "dismantling most of the settlements" in the West Bank as the price for peace.
Netanyahu's challenge is to translate these opinions into a policy that can bring both long-term security and peace to his people. Given the Israeli public's hawkish views toward Hamas-ruled Gaza, but their willingness to explore concessions in the West Bank under Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the most realistic way forward is surprisingly straightforward: Keep pushing Israel and the Palestinian Authority toward new, practical, political agreements. Find better ways to help the people of Gaza, but not their Hamas rulers -- whom Israelis rightly view as a threat, not only to their own security, but also to any prospect of Palestinian-Israeli peace. In other words, work with Abbas, against Hamas.
David Pollock, co-founder and principal advisor to Pechter Middle East Polls, is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. From 1987 to 1996, he was chief of Near East/South Asia/Africa research at the U.S. Information Agency, supervising polling in those regions.
Media, Academia Destroying Themselves Over Israel
Institutions are crumbling as the lies needed to uphold the Israel narrative become too much to bear
by Barry Rubin
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/media-academia-destroying-themselves-over-israel/?singlepage=trueThe irrational slander and hatred of Israel is not destroying Israel. It is destroying the institutions — media and academic, especially — being driven to madness by this obsessive irrationality and decline from their own proper standards.
Like an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, the number of lies, logical fallacies, concealments, and strategic misconceptions necessary to make Israel look bad has grown so large that it threatens the health of the media and intelligentsia.
For in their assaults on Israel, these particular news media — of course, not in all they do nor in the work of all who report for them — have left behind professional ethics, rationality, and their own credibility. Political correctness has eclipsed factual correctness, and the purpose of some newspapers has been redefined from reporting the news to merely reporting the news that furthers the political agenda of editors and journalists.
The above, of course, is strenuously denied by those who embody such behavior, though it is of no surprise to those who are reading these words. And in this growing gap, the former lose credibility and the latter lose respect for what should be one of the main pillars of Western democracy and defense against the ideologies of dictatorship.
There is no institution that is more clearly typical of this malady than the once-respected and now justly often-ridiculed New York Times. Only the Times could donate a huge space to Tony Judt, a man without qualification to discuss the Middle East, claiming that the idea Israel is being delegitimized was a propaganda myth created by the Netanyahu government … while Judt daily delegitimizes Israel.
The Times apparently views any statement made by Israel or its supporters to be false until proven true beyond its ability to think up some excuse for not accepting it. After Israel released several videos showing Israeli soldiers arriving on the deck of the Mavi Marmara and being beaten by a large mob, it dismissed the footage as … “lacking context. Were they [the images] shot before or after the boarding party started using force?”
Yet one can clearly see on the video that the militants on the ship’s deck are calmly standing there, obviously not being fired upon, and the soldiers are holding onto the rope, with their guns slung over their shoulders.
Forced to retreat a bit — but never acknowledging its error — the Times editorialized: “The Israelis claim that Insani Yardim Vakfi is a dangerous organization with terrorist links. They have yet to offer any evidence to support that charge.”
But, of course, a vast amount of evidence had been released, including: documents showing the organization had been declared to have such links by, among other entities, the Danish government, France’s leading counterterrorism magistrate, a previous Turkish government, and the U.S. government.
All documents are easily available on the internet, but beyond the reach of the Times, apparently.
There is, of course, one obvious point that proves the group has terrorist links: its open support for Hamas, a terrorist organization, in terms of financing, supplying, strategy (trying to break the blockade against it), and political aims. On virtually any other topic, this would have been sufficient to prove the point.
While governments of Israel, like all governments, have told lies, what is amazing is how good that government’s record is — especially compared to other Western democracies. Israel and its supporters know that their every word will be scrutinized and must be backed up by facts and documentation. Yet the Times and other mass media often treat Israel as less credible than dictatorships and terrorists whose record for veracity is minimal.
Meanwhile, the International Herald Tribune runs an op-ed by Alistair Crooke, who has also been warmly received by the Times and other media. Crooke is openly a lobbyist for Hamas and Hezbollah.
The Los Angeles Times, whose record is just as bad, ran an op-ed by a UCLA professor and anti-Israel activist named Saree Makdisi entitled: “Don’t single out Helen Thomas.” Makdisi used long-discredited false quotes from Alan Dershowitz and Israeli leaders to claim they are also racist purveyors of hate speech.
Yet while the Los Angeles Times permits the publication of false quotations — as the New York Times did a few months ago with a Rashid Khalidi misquote — such media almost never quote the documented daily incitement and hate preached throughout the Middle East in mosques, government speeches, and mass media.
Media reactions to the latest revelations about Reuters’ use of doctored photographs (removing a knife from a flotilla jihadi’s hand, so it can be argued the Islamists were merely victims) have been a yawn.
When Rosie O’Donnell defended Helen Thomas and argued that the Jews should go back to Germany and Poland because there were no more death camps in those countries, it brought no criticism.
Yet what of all the things we aren’t hearing about? I know from an impeccable source that when a book of mine was discussed at an editorial board meeting of the Harvard University Press, it was rejected after someone said: “We can’t have an Israeli writing about Arab politics.” And Princeton University Press, considered the absolute best for academic publishing on the Middle East, put out a book by a leading British anti-Israel activist — without notable academic argumentation in it — claiming that Zionism is a mental illness.
The reasons why such things happen are complex. They include the identification of Israel as evil and aggressive, which then permits it to be treated as inevitably dishonest and in the wrong. But this is only possible because it is accompanied by the ideological corruption of academia, media, publishing, and intellectual life in general.
Many journalists believe that the highest priority for media is to further their own causes and to tell the public what is “good” for it to hear. If, for example, negative things are reported about Muslims, third-world countries, or enemies of the United States — the reasoning goes — Americans might go into the streets and massacre Muslims or advocate wars.
Thus, censoring out large aspects of the news and distorting others has become virtuous. And there are many other manifestations: Christian groups come to the defense of those who expel Christians and won’t let churches be built; gay groups support those who murder gays; feminist groups endorse those who repress women.
It is no accident that there are so many sayings warning against the dangers when perceived wisdom becomes nonsense. And they all agree that this mistake leads to the destruction of those who refuse to see reality accurately.
Sophocles, the ancient Greek playwright, noted: “Evil sometimes seems good to a man whose mind a god leads to destruction.”
The Jewish Bible warns: “For the waywardness of the thoughtless shall slay them, and the confidence of fools shall destroy them.”
And what form does that madness take? The German Socialist leader, August Bebel, explained it: “Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools.” But, claim those who purvey its most modern form, we are against anti-Semitism.
Such arguments are merely propaganda for Israel. What is happening at most, however, is that all the traditional anti-Semitic themes are being introduced with merely the change of one word: “Jew” becomes “Israeli.” The implications often leak into “Jew” anyway.
Rather than teaching democracy to the Arab or Muslim-majority world, the “teaching” has been in the opposite direction.
The leading Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports that in the city of Anne Frank, those who appear to be Jews are spat on and harassed in the streets. In one neighborhood a secret synagogue exists, since if the mostly Muslim population found out it would come under violent attack.
When a single Palestinian, who was not even known to reporters, claimed that there had been an Israeli massacre in Jenin, the world media trumpeted that fact, despite the lack of any evidence whatsoever.
It is not merely that Israel is presumed guilty until proven innocent. The problem is that many institutions are making it impossible for Israel to be proven innocent, and will ignore that verdict if at all possible. How else can one explain how a planned violent assault on soldiers by a radical jihadist group — that included their kidnapping (bragged about by the participants) — for the purpose of making the world hate Israel, did in fact lead to worldwide condemnation of Israel?
Even when the truth was documented on video?
“Can the whole world be wrong?” asked Kofi Annan in April 2002, talking about Israel. Annan has no idea that a century earlier the Jewish essayist and Zionist Ahad ha-Am asked that question in precisely the same words. Yes, answered Ahad Ha-Am, the whole world can be wrong, because we know that we don’t use the blood of little Christian children to make matzos.
Only when the “best and brightest,” including many Jews among them, recognize that they are perpetrating the modern version of such historical arguments and reclaim their own professional ethics and Enlightenment methods of reasoning will there be hope for them to do better.
Israel Must Continue Gaza Blockade, Says … Mahmoud Abbas?
The Palestinian Authority leader doesn't want the world doing Hamas any favors, and reportedly said so to Obama
by Allison Kaplan Sommer
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/israel-must-continue-gaza-blockade-says-mahmoud-abbas/?singlepage=trueThere couldn’t be much more pressure on Israel at the moment to end the blockade on Gaza.
Following the traumatic flotilla raid, the international community has determined that Israel deserves to do penance for the events on the Marmara by lifting its “siege” on Gaza. The pressure is coming from all sides, though most heavily from Europe. Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero has decided that the European Union has to “exert strong diplomatic pressure” on Israel to stop blockading Gaza. Egypt’s Amr Moussa, the current head of the Arab League, made a rare visit to Gaza and declared that the League would go to the UN to demand Israel lift the blockade. Even the Obama administration has joined in, calling the blockade “unsustainable.” Internally, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says the Gazan economy is “collapsing under the siege.”
Israel has serious reasons to oppose opening the Gaza borders. On a security level, it does not want materials to enter Gaza that it has good reason to believe will be used by Hamas as weaponry to attack Israel. But on a political and moral level, there is Gilad Shalit. The central role that Shalit’s captivity plays in Israeli public opposition to ending or easing the blockade on Gaza is not fully communicated overseas, but domestically, it dominates. No Israeli government can be seen as handing over important bargaining chips as long as the Israeli soldier remains in enemy hands, as he has for four years in conditions that are in complete violation of international regulations regarding the treatment of prisoners. The Israeli public isn’t in the mood to ease up on Hamas as Shalit’s human rights are deprived.
And yet, the force of the international pressure is difficult to resist. The Netanyahu government has made moves to “revamp” the restrictions on goods and movement in and out of Gaza, while at the same time declaring the restrictions will not be lifted completely.
On the surface, it seems as if the Arab world is united in its call to “Free Gaza.” However, while leaders of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank publicly chastise Israel for maintaining the “Gaza prison,” some sources whisper a different story.
According to a report in Ha’aretz, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has let it be known that he isn’t very happy about the prospect of a “Free Gaza,” and he even let President Obama know it at their meeting last week:
"European diplomats updated by the White House on the talks said that Abbas had stressed to Obama the need of opening the border crossings into the Gaza Strip and the easing of the siege, but only in ways that do not bolster Hamas."
"One of the points that Abbas raised is that the naval blockade imposed by Israel on the Strip should not be lifted at this stage. The European diplomats said Egypt has made it clear to Israel, the U.S, and the European Union that it is also opposes the lifting of the naval blockade because of the difficulty in inspecting the ships that would enter and leave the Gaza port."
"Abbas told Obama that actions easing the blockage should be done with care and undertaken gradually so it will not be construed as a victory for Hamas. The Palestinian leader also stressed that the population in the Gaza Strip must be supported, and that pressure should be brought to bear on Israel to allow more goods, humanitarian assistance, and building materials for reconstruction. Abbas, however, said this added aid can be done by opening land crossings and other steps that do not include the lifting of the naval blockade."
The Palestinians immediately slapped a denial on the report, calling it “baseless.” But the story has a ring of truth to it.
After all, much of the justification for the blockade policy had been based in it strengthening the PA as opposed to Hamas, following Hamas’ violent ouster of the PA in 2007. While it may not be politically correct on the Palestinian street to admit it out loud, what is good for Hamas is bad for Fatah and the PA. The international support for Hamas post-flotilla hurts their position.
It also puts Egypt in a more precarious position. The Egyptian authorities, like their West Bank counterparts, affect an outward solidarity with their suffering Arab brothers. Yet they are far from enthusiastic about having open borders with a Hamas-controlled Gaza. Israel has not exactly had to twist their arm to get them to keep a close watch on the Rafah crossing on the Gaza-Egyptian border.
The pressure following the flotilla incident forced Egypt to open the Rafah border, albeit in a limited manner. But the press reports that, behind closed diplomatic doors, Egypt has made it clear that it does not want boats freely sailing in and out of Gaza’s port any more than Israel does:
"Egypt has told the U.S. and European countries that the maritime blockade should not be lifted because it would be too difficult to inspect ships entering Gaza to ensure they do not carry weaponry. Egypt regards Hamas as a dangerous neighbor, and fears the Islamic group’s contacts with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood inside Egypt."
Hamas was clearly feeling its suddenly powerful position vis-a-vis the PA and Egypt on Sunday, when it boldly rebuffed attempts to revive an Egyptian-led reconciliation effort with Fatah — which many believe is essential to end the blockade. The Jerusalem Post reports:
"Hamas has rejected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s offer to dispatch a Fatah delegation to the Gaza Strip to discuss ways of ending the power struggle between the two parties, Fatah officials in Ramallah said over the weekend."
"Hamas’s refusal to receive the delegation comes as the two sides face growing pressure from several Arab and Islamic countries to patch up their differences so as to pave the way for the lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip."
Presumably, in the current atmosphere, Hamas is confident that it can get the blockade lifted without making any concessions, so it is not quite as desperate as the rest of the world to ease the conditions in Gaza.
So what are those conditions exactly?
One interesting consequence of the Gaza flotilla crisis is the way it has brought mainstream media into Gaza to report the situation on the ground more extensively than they have done in a long time. The Los Angeles Times writes:
"The stores are stocked with food, electronics, furniture, and clothing, much of it smuggled from Egypt through illegal tunnels. Cafes offer espresso and croissants. A shipment of 2010 Hyundai sedans recently arrived. Now that school is out for the summer, families are flocking to the beach to eat ice cream and barbecue."
To be sure, the description is given together with a description of undersupplied hospitals and children suffering and dying because they are not permitted out of the Strip to reach hospitals that can offer them surgery they cannot obtain locally.
Even Taghreed al-Khodary — a Gaza resident herself who served for years as the New York Times correspondent there, and is now living abroad as a fellow at the Carnegie Institute — admits that the political and symbolic value of the flotilla efforts far outweigh anything they contribute to Gaza on a practical level:
"The people in Gaza are not in need of humanitarian aid. They need the Israeli blockade to end, access and exposure to the outside world, a formal economy, and freedom."
Despite the international demonization of their intentions towards the people of Gaza, the vast majority of Israelis would be more than happy to make all of this available to them. But they need to believe that such a move wouldn’t be construed as an invitation to once again rain rockets on southern Israel.
Most importantly, they insist Gilad Shalit be given the opportunity to enjoy “access and exposure to the outside world” and freedom, as well.
Extensive Ties Between Erdogan Government, Gaza Flotilla Organizers
New York Times quotes Turkish government officials as saying as many as 10 parliament members considered boarding Mavi Marmara. 'Mission to Gaza served both IHH and government by making both heroes at home and in Arab world,' terror expert says
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3920791,00.html
Turkish diplomats and government officials told the New York Times that the Turkish organization that led the Gaza-bound flotilla in late May has extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite, and the group’s efforts to challenge Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-run territory received support at the top levels of the governing party.
A senior Turkish official close to the government was quoted by NYT as saying that as many as 10 Parliament members from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's governing Justice and Development Party were considering boarding the Mavi Marmara, the ship which was raided by Israeli commandos, but were warned off at the last minute by senior Foreign Ministry officials concerned that their presence might escalate tensions too much.
Nine Turkish nationals were killed during the raid.
According to the report, the organization in question, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, often called IHH, has come under attack in Israel and the West for offering financial support to groups accused of terrorism. But in Turkey the group has helped Erdogan "shore up support from conservative Muslims ahead of critical elections next year and improve Turkey’s standing and influence in the Arab world."
Ercan Citlioglu, a terrorism expert at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, told NYT that the government “could have stopped the ship if it wanted to, but the mission to Gaza served both the IHH and the government by making both heroes at home and in the Arab world.”
The Turkish government, for its part, said the group acted independently and that its leadership had refused to drop plans to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, despite requests from the government. Government officials told NYT they had no legal authority to stop the work of a private charity.
Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s minister for European affairs, was quoted by NYT as saying that the organization and the Justice and Development Party, called the AK Party, had no substantive ties. “The IHH has nothing to do with the AK Party, and we have no hidden agenda,” Bagis said.
However, the NYT report said many of the 21 people listed on the organization's board have or had close links to the AK Party. In January, Murat Mercan, chairman of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a senior party official, joined an overland aid convoy to Gaza organized by the organization that tried to force its way through the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza, according to the report.
Semih Idiz, a columnist for the Hurriyet Daily News in Turkey, wrote, "How can such a large country as Turkey, with interests in four continents, and with an export- and investment-driven economy requiring extra caution all around the globe, be dragged to the brink of war by a nongovernmental organization?” The answer, he added, is that the IHH is a “GNGO” — a “governmental-nongovernmental-organization.”
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