Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

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Blog Wars

20/08/2010 / / 3 Comments

A couple of months ago I decided to start posting on the Jewish Chronicle (JC) Blogs.

I didn’t realise what I was about to discover; what I did discover was something of a revelation.

I don’t just post articles, I participate in the discussions which arise out of the majority of posts.

When I first arrived I landed in the middle of what I call the Blog Wars. Despite this being the JC, the blogs are open to anyone provided that they stick to some obvious rules. The blogs and their comments are moderated and it is not unknown for comments to be removed or even for bloggers or commenters to be banned.

What most surprised me was that I soon found there are two main camps: pro-Israel/Zionist and anti-Israel/Zionist. There are also one or two neutrals.

Almost every blog post can be the catalyst for some right old ding-dongs between these two camps. It’s a sort of Jewish version of the Guardian’s CiF (Comment is Free).

I actually found this very interesting, not only could I see how the ‘other side’ thinks, I could also challenge them,  be challenged by them, argue with them, but never, of course, persuade them. This is an excellent training and test ground to hone your own arguments, to make sure of your facts and sharpen your own polemics.

It is also, at least for me, as a bit of an old lefty, an opportunity to question your own views and convictions in the light of the counter arguments. But, I can honestly say, this self-examination has not fundamentally changed my views, but it has reinforced my commitment to balance and to avoid dogmatism.

Both sides in these Blog Wars tend to be unyielding, entrenched and assured of their own righteousness. Little quarter is given. Israel is rarely criticised by the Zios and the anti-Zios will continue to sympathise with Hamas and Hizbollah.

By far the most revealing of the anti-Zios is a certain representative of Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfjfP). I am not going to name names here; go and read the blogs; it’s unfair to mention any individual here who is unlikely to respond in person and I’m not going to discuss or reproduce the comments that have appeared in the JC. I’ll simply summarise what these discussions ‘below the line’ reveal.

The JfjfP representative is polite and seems to try very hard to be poised and restrained. JfjfP are part of the left wing bloc that organises demonstrations for Palestinians and Palestine and against Israel and Zionism.

This particular JfjfP member claims she is not anti-Israel and recognises Israel’s right to exist (well thanks).  She is, however, of the opinion that Israel is a colonialist experiment, that the Occupation is illegal and cruelly prosecuted, that Hamas are understandable freedom fighters, that it is Israel and Israel alone and its policies which are the cause of the conflict; if only Israel would seek peace, negotiate with Hamas and the PA, this peace would magically materialise and 100 years of strife would dissipate into thin air, no-one would attack Jews anymore and her ideal, presumably Marxist, certainly Socialist, state would rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of Israel.

In other words, socialist ideology colours her opinion of Israel which is demonised in her mind to the extent that it can never be right, can never be lawful, because it is an illegitimate state in the first place. And because of this ideological blindness she, like so many others on the far left, be it George Galloway, Alexei Sayle, Tony Benn, Gerald Kaufman and, indeed, a number of post-Zionist Israelis who take the same stance, she is prepared to overlook the anti-Semitism, the homophobia, the misogyny, the Islamofascist death culture of Hamas and its fellow travellers; for her, their charters are just pieces of paper and they can be persuaded to make peace and forswear their previous acts and deeds and policies and bigotry.

Thus the far left supports representatives of the most dangerous, religio-political movement of our times: fundamentalist Islam. They do this in the name of their own socialist vision of the world and history.

The level of self-delusion, double-think and self-deception involved in this world view is astonishing and frightening. It is anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-Enlightenment and it makes a pact with the real devil by demonising an imperfect state – Israel.

I am not saying that we Zionists and pro-Israel supporters never take an ‘Israel can do no wrong’ position. It does happen and it happens more when Israel is under mortal threat. What room is there for any self-criticism when your opponents are relentless in theirs. Yet I can never ever find the ‘other side’ critical of the Palestinians and their supporters. It’s as if they are perfect, blameless, beyond criticism because if they do anything wrong the Zionists forced them to do it. At the same time, I do find a very lively debate in the Israeli press and the Jewish World.

There is a big difference between fair criticism and an agenda of demonisation and delegitimisation.

It is very sad indeed to encounter Jews who see history only through a socialist or Marxist prism, even if it means contributing to the efforts of those who would destroy Israel and kill all Jews and, therefore, the very Jews who now support them.

I wonder why some Jews who claim to uphold true Jewish values through sympathy and justice for Palestinians must also simultaneously join in with the chorus of the demonisers of their own people.

Why do they have to create a soi-disant ‘Jewish’ group?
What is it that is so important for them about Jewish values that they have to group together as not-in-my-namers?
What is Jewish about denying the right to Jewish self-determination?
What is Jewish about sympathy, even tacitly, for those who would commit genocide of the Jews given half a chance.
What is it that is Jewish about demonising fellow-Jews?

I’m currently reading Howard Jacobson’s latest novel, The Finkler Question, I found a very apt and devastating paragraph which amusingly describes Jews who give succour to their would-be destroyers. In the book there is a group not too dissimilar from JfjfP called ASHamed Jews:

To be an ASHamed Jew did not require that you had been knowingly Jewish all your life. Indeed, one among them only found out he was Jewish at all in the course of making a television programme in which he was confronted on camera with who he really was. In the final frame of the film he was disclosed weeping before a memorial in Auschwitz to dead ancestors who until that moment he had never known he’d had. ‘It could explain where I get my comic genius from,’ he told an interviewer for a newspaper, though by then he had renegotiated his new allegiance. Born a Jew on Monday, he had signed up to be an ASHamed Jew by Wednesday and was seen chanting ‘We are all Hezbollah’ outside the Israeli Embassy on the following Sunday.*

*Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question, Bloomsbury 2010, pp 138-9

On the wing and a prayer – Itay Shecheter scores for Hapoel Tel Aviv

19/08/2010 / / 3 Comments

Hapoel Tel Aviv player Itay Shecheter’s goal celebration seems to have upset the Portuguese referee.

Having scored  after running almost from the half-way line, he produced a Hapoel kippa from inside his sock.

Having donned said head-covering he proceeded to go down on his knees, cover his eyes and appeared to offer a prayer to the Almighty.

Why was he booked? Here’s the YouTube video of this event:

The manager said that when Christian players cross themselves when they score no-one makes a fuss. Muslim player also seem to acknowledge Allah.

Maybe there’s some FIFA rule about wearing items of clothing or something. Maybe he thought he was advertising.

Maybe he was just advertising his religion.

Salzburg slaughtered by Shecheter*!

*if you don’t get this joke, check a Yiddish dictionary.

BBC – well it couldn’t last

19/08/2010 / / 0 Comments

Hurray for Panorama!!

Boo!! to Paul Wood, BBC News reporting on Eden Aberjil’s disgusting Facebook images of her posing with Palestinian prisoners.

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10997011)

Here’s why:

A great many young Israeli soldiers have photograph albums quite similar to Eden Aberjil’s ‘The army: the best days of my life’.

The only difference is that they do not post them on Facebook.

That explains her remark that she still did not “understand what was wrong” and the comment of Dr Ishai Menuchin of the Committee Against Torture in Israel that “she is a bad apple, but all the box are bad apples”.

The IDF likes to think of itself as the most ethical army in the world and so condemned the photographs in strident terms. (They are also no fools when it comes to public relations).

For most young conscripts, and young Israelis who have completed their military service, I suspect the reaction will not be outrage but a simple shrug of the shoulders.

Ouch!!

“No fools when it comes to public relations!? you gotta be kidding. But suppose they didn’t condemn it? Can’t win if you are an Israeli.

I’d like to see some of the UK soldiers’ picture albums.

Of course Dr Ishai Menuchim is a totally dispassionate observer. Where’s the evidence for all these sweeping statements? Did they do a survey?

“I suspect”, he says. I suspect that you are an extremely bad journalist, but at least I now have evidence to prove it.

Panorama – Death in the Med – credit where credit is due

16/08/2010 / / 10 Comments

When I saw that Panorama, one of the BBC’s longest running investigative programmes, was being fronted by Jane Corbin, I was not sure that Israel would get a fair hearing. The last time I saw Ms Corbin in action on this programme was to report on evictions and demolitions in Jerusalem which ultimately failed to deliver a lot of context.

This time Corbin managed to tell the Israeli side for a change and also interviewed key players on the IHH side. The IHH being a Turkish humanitarian organisation that behaved in anything but a humanitarian way and has links to Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda. There are calls for its being proscribed in the USA and Europe.

The programme did an excellent job of piecing together video into a timeline. This was interspersed with interviews of IDF soldiers who actually took part, received injuries and fired on their attackers.

Interviews with the IHH were predictably disingenuous, representing their actions as defensive and claiming the IDF fired first.

The accusation of firing first was, perhaps, the only disappointing feature in this documentary. Jane Corbin said there were conflicting accounts. In other words, she sat journalistically on the fence. She did say, however, the the IDF could not have fired a weapon and rappelled on to the deck at the same time. The IHH claimed that the IDF shot first so their attack with knives, iron bars, captured pistols and, according the the Israelis, another firearm not used in the IDF, was purely defensive.

This claim is demonstrably nonsense. Firstly, if you are standing on a deck waiting for soldiers to come down a rope and they are somehow managing to fire at you, and you are so defenceless, wouldn’t you get the hell out of the way? If you do not have firearms and someone is shooting at you, would you just wait to attack with iron bars and knives? It’s ludicrous.

The IDF admitted that once they had seen there was strong resistance they should have regrouped and considered more carefully their next move. Instead, they decided to land on the deck even though they had already seen that this would meet with violence. This was a blunder and the current enquiry in Israel will surely further reinforce that fact, already admitted by the military. Israeli intelligence as to the nature of the threat failed miserably. The Mavi Marmara was hijacked by about 40 IHH activists and their plans to attack the IDF, clearly shown from their own videos, were unknown to the majority of activists on the ship who were completely innocent of any intentions other than, perhaps, passive resistance; and this was what happened on all the other boats.

The conclusions any sensible person would draw are these: you may not agree with the boarding of the Mavi Marmara, but it was clearly demonstrated that the Israelis were using paintball guns before they landed on deck and that this was their ‘weapon’ of choice as a non-lethal crowd controller. Handguns were only used when the attack on them became lethal.

It is also clear there was considerable confusion and fear amongst the soldiers, some of whom were taken below and one reported that he believed he would be killed. One of the Turkish activists protected him and probably saved his life. In this respect, his actions are praiseworthy. Other activists seem to have tried to treat the injured Israelis.

There was still no explanation of how and when and where the 9 activists were killed. The fact that 50 were also injured demonstrated, to me, that the soldiers, in fear of their lives, with good reason (some had already been bludgeoned, thrown off deck rails, stabbed and even shot) did what any soldier would do, namely use enough force to stop the immediate threat and discourage further attack. One IDF soldier, when asked if he killed anyone, said he shot at his assailants’ legs and this was then reinforced with video of an injured activist with leg wounds.

I believe that the soldiers went for non-lethal shots, but as they feared being overwhelmed and being killed they used lethal force. Maj Gen (Ret) Giora Eiland, who carried out the IDF investigation, made the remark that, under the circumstances, casualties were low. He didn’t elaborate why, and such remarks don’t play well with international audiences. This was not a well-judged remark, but at least it was honest.

Jane Corbin herself concluded, having seen the remnants of the aid, that the whole flotilla was a political provocation, not a humanitarian one. The Mavi Marmara carried no aid whatsoever (a point not made in the film) and other items were of such little importance to Hamas that they either did not let them through as a form of protest, or they were out-of-date medicines. You can see details of the aid carried by the other boats and what the Israelis did with it on a previous post of mine here.

No doubt apologists from the Free Gaza Movement will simply say that the whole incident would not have happened had it not been for the blockade, the Israelis are liars etc. But I ask you, if the Beeb can’t find anything with which to beat Israel up then maybe the IDF did indeed enter a trap and protected itself from lethal force with lethal force.

Move along the bus – Israeli style

08/08/2010 / / 2 Comments

Here’s a little story I was told this shabbat which in a small but significant says a lot about the morality of Israelis.

This person was on a bus where passengers were entering through the front and back doors. The people at the back could not reach the driver to pay their fare as it was so crowded. As a result, those at the back passed their fare money down the bus, hand to hand until it reached the driver. The driver then passed back the tickets and the change along the same route.

A lone, very English voice could be heard to say, “You would never see this in England. Only in Israel”.

This scrupulous morality and honesty, although, of course not universal in Israel is, nevertheless, the norm. It comes from a shared national project, Jewish ethics, and a sense that everyone in this small nation is part of the Israeli family. And when you come as a tourist, then you too are, for a few days or weeks, part of that family.

The bus example, for me, shows the real face of the majority of Israelis; honest, generous, welcoming, and at their best where a community spirit and teamwork is required.

Without this spirit there would be no Israel.

Who Do You Think You Are? Echoes of Bathurst-Norman in Edwardian Ireland

03/08/2010 / / 4 Comments

The BBC genealogical series ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ has always been a favourite of mine.

As someone interested in my own family history and the many twists and turns it can take and also being fascinated in the detective work that discovers surprising facts about celebrities’ roots, I am a devoted fan of this programme.

Yesterday the celebrity in question was Dublin-born actress, Dervla Kirwan.

Looking at her (which is a pleasant task) and listening to her, you would suspect a long line of Catholic Irish ancestry.

And this is what we got – almost.

Having discovered she is the great-niece of Michael Collins, Irish patriot, founder of the original IRA, Dervla’s search moved to her father’s side of the family and the casual revelation that she had a Jewish ancestor.

In fact, it was her paternal great-grandfather, one Henry Kahn, a Polish Jew who fled the Russian Empire in the late 19th century and set himself up as a tobacconist and a sometime illegal bookmaker.

He also happened to marry a Catholic in a Church of Ireland (Protestant) church, which was some going for the 1890’s.

In 1902, we discovered, he was arrested for breaking the shop window of one Esther Marks and destroying in the process some ‘china ornaments’ and ‘assorted bric-a-brac’.

It appears that Henry was a bit of a character and possibly a somewhat unsavoury one at that.

But what happened next was very instructive; he was tried by a jury in Dublin and found guilty and sentenced to one year’s hard labour, which, for a man in his mid forties, was a terrible sentence.

Our attention was drawn to a newspaper article of 1902 which reports the sentencing and which makes sure we all know that the man in the dock was a Jew.

The judge, or Recorder, was Sir Frederick Falkiner, who had this to say in his summing up after stating that Henry deserved a whipping for one of the worst offences he had seen, or words to that effect. He broke a window and some china, if you recall:

You are a specimen of your nation and your race that cause you to be hunted out of every country.

On reading this, Dervla’s jaw dropped and subsequent enquiry revealed that Falkiner was then 71 years old, had wrongfully instructed the jury as to the verdict and also denied Henry the right to speak before sentencing.

Apparently, this patent anti-Semitism was a little out-of-date even in 1902, and the Jewish Chronicle took up the case and eventually Falkiner was shamed in the House of Commons by the MP for Stepney.

Marvellous to relate, James Joyce echoed this case in Ulysses (which happens to be my favourite book) in Leopold Bloom’s dream which takes place in front of the very same judge.

Genealogy certainly has the power to link disparate elements of our culture.

But don’t you see the echo of the Bathurst-Norman case where an elderly judge was brought out of retirement and dismissed the case against activists who trashed an arms factory in Brighton during Operation Cast Lead because it was supplying armaments to Israel.

In his summing up Bathurst-Norman directed the jury to acquit the accused on the grounds that although they were self-confessed criminals, they did what they did to prevent even more Israeli ‘war crimes’.

So over 100 years later English (Ireland was subject to English law at the time, let’s leave the Scots out of this, they have a different legal system) justice finds that Jews are a special case to be made an example of or to be subject to vilification in an English court of law.

In 1902, a petty crime committed by a Jew receives a heavy sentence (albeit he was reprieved after 6 months), in 2010 those with an animus against Jews defending themselves from murderous anti-Semites (Hamas) get off scot-free because jew-baiting is now a sanctioned pastime once again in England.

All this and the debate, today, about what President Peres of Israel said or didn’t say, meant or didn’t mean, in an interview with Benny Morris, where he may or may not have said that the English (read British) are anti-Semitic.

For a taste of the Peres controversy see No-win journalism and its comments in Melanie Phillips’ blog in the Spectator.

It appears that British anti-Semitism runs deep in certain sections of the English Establishment; so deep, that even after 100 years or more it can still resurface like a recessive gene to produce horrible mutations like Bathurst-Norman.

This is not to say that I believe Britain to be anti-Semitic in the 21st century, but it is certainly there lurking and mutating into different forms like anti-Zionism or anti-Israelism which often, but by no means always, are mere fig-leaves for anti-Semitism.

And poor Henry Kahn? He ended up in a lunatic asylum where he died four years after his release from prison. Isn’t it instructive how, in 1902, a judge could tell the court that Jews had been hunted out of every country they had ever been in.

Who do we think we are? Where do you think we should go? Well, in 1902, the Jews were buying land in Ottoman Palestine and laying the foundations for a Jewish homeland where they would be free of Falkiners and Bathurst-Normans and where they would not be ‘hunted out’ ever again.

They called themselves Zionists.

Israel will co-operate with UN Flotilla Enquiry

02/08/2010 / / 5 Comments

At last!! The Israeli government has seen sense and decided to show that it has nothing to fear from a UN enquiry which appears to be unbiased – for a change.

Israel Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, released the following today:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today (Monday), 2.8.10, informed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that Israel would participate in the panel that he is establishing in the wake of the 31.5.10 events regarding the flotilla.

The announcement to the UN Secy.-Gen. was delivered following consultations with the seven-member ministerial forum earlier this morning and in the wake of diplomatic contacts that have been held in recent weeks in order to ensure that this was indeed a panel with a balanced and fair written mandate.

The panel will receive reports on the Israeli investigation by the Independent Public Commission to Examine the Maritime Incident of 31.5.10 chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said today, after speaking with the UN Secy.-Gen., that, “Israel has nothing to hide. The opposite is true. It is in the national interest of the State of Israel to ensure that the factual truth of the overall flotilla events comes to light throughout the world and this is exactly the principle that we are advancing.”

Having initially refused to co-operate, Israel set up its own internal enquiry which concentrated on exposing a group of Turkish activists with links to the IHH who led a flotilla intent on breaking the Israeli maritime blockade of Gaza.

This ‘humanitarian’ organisation has been shown to have links with terrorist groups, even Al Qaeda. 8 of 9 activists killed had links with dubious IHH activities and most had left evidence that they were determined to reach Gaza or become martyrs. Such an attitude itself reveals a hatred for Israel that is so great that they were prepared to die, and kill, for it.

Despite much documentary evidence taken by the Israelis and by many people on board the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship of the flotilla, there has not yet been a clear and detailed account of how and under what circumstances the 9 men were killed. All we know from the Israeli account and video evidence is that the commandos who landed on the Mavi Marmara were met with lethal force and a mob of about 50 men attacked a much smaller number of commandos whose main ‘weapon’ was a paint gun.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a web page dedicated to the events of 21 May 2010 here.

The terms of the Israeli commission are detailed here.

The main objectives were as follows:

1) Consideration of the security circumstances for imposing a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip and the conformity of the naval blockade with the rules of international law;
2) Conformity of the actions taken by Israel to enforce the naval blockade on 31 May 2010 to the principles of international law;
3) Consideration of the actions taken by those who organized – and participated in – the flotilla, and their identities.
The Commission will also consider the question of whether the inquiry and investigation mechanisms vis-à-vis complaints and claims regarding violations of the laws of armed conflict, as followed by Israel in general and as implemented with regard to the event in question, conform with the State of Israel’s obligations under the rules of international law.
Following the international outcry against Israel and its virtual pariah status, it’s about time Israel engaged at an international level to show that, indeed, it has nothing to hide.
Whether the UN panel will give Israel its first fair hearing at the UN for some considerable time remains to be seen.
Perhaps the UN might also want to consider Turkey’s role in aiding and abetting an organisation, the IHH, which may well be proscribed in the United States and which members of the Italian parliament are seeking to have proscribed in Europe.

Yes, it’s about time that Israel fought more pugnaciously to restore its reputation in the UN and find a platform to expose the hypocrisy of its enemies and critics.

Israel has already admitted operational errors. That doesn’t excuse those who would commit murder because they oppose an ideology. The would-be murderers were those killed who were intent on killing Jews/Zionists/Israelis – it was all the same to them.

Let’s see what the UN comes up with this time.

Update: Anne Bayevsky clearly does not agree with me and her opinion is too valuable to be ignored, so, for balance, here is a link. http://opinion.foxnews.mobi/quickPage.html?page=23976&external=394248.proteus.fma&pageNum=-1

Cameron: A turkey on Turkey, ga-ga on Gaza

27/07/2010 / / 9 Comments

British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has completely lost it. He is campaigning for Turkey’s entry into the European Union and thus for placing a growing Islamist country, that has strong ties with the enemies of the West, at the heart of Europe.

All this might have been acceptable in the past when Turkey was recognised as a secular Muslim country sitting between the West and the Islamic world, a democracy with a mixed Western and Eastern culture and an honest broker between the West and Islam.

But Cameron seems to have overlooked completely Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist program.

At the same time that he shows little understanding of the threat posed to Europe by the regime of Erdogan, he attacks in an unwarranted, ill-informed and just plain ignorant way the EU’s only real friend in the Middle East, and its only democracy, Israel, by declaring Gaza to be a ‘Prison Camp’.

His speech in Turkey mirrored President Obama’s in Cairo with its cringing agenda of appeasement instead of confronting Turkey with the manifold reasons as to not only why it should currently be shunned by the EU but also suspended from NATO, as I wrote earlier this year after the Turkish flotilla incident.

As the BBC reports:

Mr Cameron said he wanted to “pave the road” for Turkey to join the EU.

Maybe this road should be called the Islamic fundamentalist highway.

“When I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a Nato ally, and what Turkey is doing today in Afghanistan, alongside our European allies, it makes me angry that your progress towards EU membership can be frustrated in the way it has been.

Yes, the old Turkey, the secular Muslim state with democratic values, not THIS Turkey.

“So we need Turkey’s help now in making it clear to Iran just how serious we are about engaging fully with the international community,”

Cameron recognises that Erdogan has the ear of Iran’s president Ahmadinejad, but for what purpose?

What has happened to the secular, democratic, Muslim state created by Kemal Attaturk and so lauded for decades as a blueprint of what a modern Islamic nation should look like, (despite many issues of human rights)?

A telling analysis by Andre Mozes reveals:

Before entering Turkish national politics, Erdogan served as Istanbul’s mayor. In this colorful city… one learns to speak the languages of all; of moderate Muslims, of cosmopolitan and of Islamist Turks alike.  Erdogan learned them well, but in his deeds he always belonged to the third group.  In earlier Turkish elections fundamentalist Islamic parties were banned, according to the secular laws and tradition of Turkey, preserved successfully since Ataturk turned Turkey from a backward Muslim monarchy, into a progressive secular modern nation.

In the elections of 2002, however, Erdogan’s Islamic party succeeded in changing its appearance – including by its beautiful name: Justice and Development Party (AKP) –  sufficiently to circumvent the ban. They won a convincing election victory, primarily in the less developed rural regions, where most votes were controlled by the local imams.  The army – the traditional watchdog of Ataturk’s legacy – decided, after difficult arguments only, not to veto the election results, and so Recep Erdogan came to power.

Mr Cameron appears blissfully unaware of this history; the erosion of Attaturk’s values by craft and deceit.

While praising Turkey’s secular and democratic traditions, Mr Cameron stressed that Turkey must continue to push forward “aggressively” with economic and political reform to maintain momentum towards EU membership.

The only thing that Erdogan is aggressively pursuing is an alliance with radical left-wing regimes (Chavez in Venezuela), Islamists (Ahmadinejad in Iran) and dictators (Assad in Syria).

As the Guardian* reported in October last year with the headline “‘Iran is our friend’, says Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan”:

Erdogan’s partiality towards Ahmadinejad may surprise some in the west who see Turkey as a western-oriented democracy firmly grounded inside Nato. It has been a member of the alliance since 1952. It will be less surprising to Erdogan’s secular domestic critics, who believe the prime minister’s heart lies in the east and have long suspected his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development party (AKP) government of plotting to transform Turkey into a religious state resembling Iran.

Erdogan vigorously denies the latter charge, but to his critics he and Ahmadinejad are birds of a feather: devout religious conservatives from humble backgrounds who court popular support by talking the language of the street.

But all this came to a head in May with the infamous Freedom Flotilla incident in which the Israeli navy intercepted a flotilla attempting to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and, when boarding the lead ship, ‘Mavi Marmara’, were attacked. In the ensuing melee 9 ‘activists’ were killed. An outraged Erdogan condemned Israel, demanded an apology, threatened to break relations, demanded a UN enquiry and made huge political capital of the incident.

This led to Erdogan’s being lionised across the Islamic world; Israel’ s best friend in the Near East, and the only Muslim country which had good relations with Israel, was distancing itself from the Zionists. The dictators and the terror groups were jubilant. Erdogan’s star was in the ascendant in the Muslim world. He appeared to be bidding for leadership of that same world. But some believed he was over-reaching. Had he revealed his Islamist hand too soon?

It was only a little later that the facts came to light about the nature of the IHH, which organised the Freedom Flotilla, a humanitarian organisation with links to terror, including Al Qaeda.

A decidedly anti-Western and virulently anti-Israeli group took over the Mavi Marmara and announced that their aim was to reach Gaza or to die as martyrs. They then meticulously prepared a  reception for the Israeli commandos who rappelled on to the ship’s decks to be met by lethal force. Subsequent Israeli investigations have revealed that all but one of the fatalities had ‘form’ which linked them to Hamas and Islamic terror groups. The IHH is an organisation formerly recognised and supported by the Turkish government. This links Erdogan’s regime indirectly to anti-Western, and that includes anti-European groups. But nice Mr Cameron doesn’t see that. All he can muster is, and I repeat:

Turkey must continue to push forward “aggressively” with economic and political reform

Mr Cameron has thus joined the legions of the politically blind. Blind to the fundamentalist threat which he responds to with:

“Those who wilfully misunderstand Islam, they see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists. They think the problem is Islam itself. And they think the values of Islam can just never be compatible with the values of other religions, societies or cultures.”

But it is Erdogan who is cavorting with these extremists and who is leading his country down the same path.

The Italians certainly know what the IHH is all about as MP Fiamma Nirenstein is seeking to outlaw the group in the very EU that Mr Cameron wants Turkey to join:

Dear friends,

I just presented a parliamentary question to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs requiring to evaluate the possibility to insert the Turkish organization IHH (“Insani Yardim Vafki”), one of the main promoters of the Mavi Marmara and responsible for its violent implications, in the list of terrorist organizations of the European Union.

Several investigations and reports testify the involvement of IHH in global terrorism and many videos and documents attest its jihadist attitude finalized at “martyrdom in the name of Allah”. Because of its connection to Hamas and the “Union of Good” (an Islamic umbrella organization affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood that was put in the US’ terror list in 2008), Germany has recently banned IHH and in the USA, a bipartisan group of Senators appealed to President Obama with a request to enter the IHH in the US’ list of terrorist organizations.

You can read below the entire interrogation.

And here’s the link http://fiammanirenstein.com/articoli.asp?Categoria=5&Id=2412

Is this the group we want a member country of the EU to be supporting, Mr Cameron?

But it is on the situation in Gaza that Cameron was at his egregious worst.

“Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza can not and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp,” he said.

As Stephen Pollard of the Jewish Chronicle amusingly points out:

What exactly are the humanitarian goods that will flow from Gaza to Israel and Egypt?

Will Cameron lobby President Mubarak of Egypt to open the Rafah crossing?

What humanitarian aid is NOT getting into Gaza?

All humanitarian aid has always been allowed through into Gaza; only the Egyptians have actually blocked aid both from Viva Palestina and, more recently, Jordan.

And Gaza doesn’t need humanitarian aid any more. The shops are full. What it needs is rebuilding and jobs. But what is holding it back is the Islamist, anti-Semitic, Hamas regime which Erdogan actually supports. On the 6th April this year Mr Erdogan declared that Hamas is not a terrorist group. Mr Cameron should remember that the EU has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation. So why does Mr Cameron want to support a country which condones terror?

The Jerusalem Post reported Erdogan as saying:

“I do not think that Hamas is a terrorist organization. … They are Palestinians in resistance, fighting for their own land.”

And that ‘land’ is, of course Israel which Hamas wants to call Palestine, from the river to the sea.

Is this Mr Cameron’s idea of the type of leader Europe, and particularly Mr Cameron, should be embracing?

In his address Friday, he said the Ten Commandments should have deterred the soldiers from killing the nine passengers who died on board the ship. “If you do not understand it in Turkish I will say it in English: You shall not kill,” he reportedly said – repeating the phrase in Hebrew.

But Mr Erdogan’s forces kill Kurds almost daily in their fight for their own independent state. On June 20th 2010 the BBC reported :

Turkey has vowed to fight Kurdish rebels until they are “annihilated”, after attacks killed 11 soldiers.

PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday’s “cowardly” assaults would not end Turkey’s determination to fight the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) “to the end”.

Is this the sort of hypocrite that Mr Cameron wants to fast-track into Europe? Imagine if Israel said this about Hamas.

Cameron seems to be stuck with the idea that Erdogan is an important link between Europe and the Islamic world, so he conveniently glosses over the Kurds, Northern Cyprus – which Turkey has occupied and populated with its nationals against International Law since 1974; he conveniently glides effortlessly over Erdogan’s support for Hamas and, therefore, implicitly, the destruction of Israel.

Is this the Turkey which, as Mr Cameron says, is “vital for our economy, vital for our security and vital for our diplomacy”?

Mr Cameron’s characterisation of Gaza as a prison-camp uses the overblown rhetoric of Israel’s enemies not because Cameron believes it, but because it is politic and ‘even-handed’ just to throw it in there as a sop to his audience. He also forgets that the only real prisoner in Gaza is kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit, who has been in captivity, without access to the Red Cross, for four years, contrary to the Geneva Convention and the laws of conflict.

He is therefore willing to lie and twist the truth for diplomatic reasons. He really believes that risking an Islamist state in Europe, as well as NATO, is good for the UK’s, the EU’s and the West’s security. He really believes that giving Israel a good kicking will, Obama-like, make the Islamic countries see him as fair and rush towards his outstretched hand?

They must be be rolling about in uncontrollable glee and laughter.

How is it that Conservative Cameron has caught the Obama appeasement bug without realising it. Too much kissy-kissy in the White House, perhaps.

Like the previous government, Cameron is strong on diplomacy and weak on statesmanship; like those who have gone before him he is prepared to be Abraham to Israel’s Isaac and hope that someone shows up with a ram before he has to do the dirty deed.

And what of the euro-sceptics in the Conservative Party? Indeed, what of Cameron’s own scepticism on Europe? The same David Cameron who wants a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Why should his party europhobes agree to an expansion of the EU they wish to dismantle?

Or is this Con-Dem Frankenstein’s monster of a government just lurching about calling out “Friend, friend” in the desperate hope it can find one, even if he’s an Islamist in a sharp suit with an even sharper knife tucked behind his back?

*http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/26/turkey-iran1

First Israeli Arab female paratrooper

26/07/2010 / / 3 Comments

The State of Israel has begun its own blog.

It will run a ‘Faces of the IDF’ feature.

First up is Corporal Eleanor Joseph, or Elinor Yosef, a female Arab Israeli from near Haifa who is following in the boot-steps of her father. She strikes a very winsome pose on the website. But behind the obvious PR exercise of having attractive Arabs serving in the IDF, (she also happens to be Christian) lie some contradictions and issues of being an Arab in a Jewish state.

The eye2israel website tells us:

Eleanor Joseph is a true Israeli Patriot, she sings the Israeli national anthem Hatikvah, and feels proud and excited to see the Israeli flag fluttering in the wind – “it’s always windy during military ceremonies,” she says with a smile. “I don’t have any other country” is a line from the well known Israeli song written by one of the most esteemed poets, Ehud Manor and is also Eleanor’s motto. This line was written for her by her commander and she keeps it in her pocketbook – it’s always with her. Eleanor doesn’t have any other country; she is a true and a proud Arab Christian Israeli.

But  ElderofZiyon reveals that:

Al Arabiya has a lengthy and flabbergasted Arabic article on Jozef. When asked if she would kill Arabs if necessary, she answered that she would hardly be the first Arab to kill other Arabs.

She also said that while she doesn’t celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut, she doesn’t sit and cry either.

Isn’t there a contradiction between singing HaTikvah which speaks of the hope of 2000 years that Jews return to Zion and yet not celebrating Israeli Independence.  Logically, it should be the other way round, no?

Such are the contradictions and issues of loyalty or nationhood if you are an Arab Israeli.  The sub-text of “I don’t have any other country” is, surely, one of resignation and making the best of it. This further implies that she doesn’t feel that, ultimately, this is her country or at least, her choice of country.

Or maybe it’s just that her enthusiasm for Israel and the IDF has to be tempered in the context of her ethnicity and the history of Israel with its contradictory narratives of expulsion and redemption.

But compare with the UK. Muslims serving in Afghanistan are proud to be British and serving their country whilst some of their co-religionists consider them to be sell-out pariahs.

Is there really much difference?

Let’s hope Elinor is the first of many Israeli-Arab women to show their pride in their country by serving as paratroopers.

Patten, dupe of Hamas

21/07/2010 / / 0 Comments

Tom Gross, as brilliant as ever, reported this week on how he believes Hamas are:
deliberately leaving some Gazans in plastic tents, in order to fool gullible Western journalists and politicians who are brought to Gaza to witness a staged “humanitarian crisis.

This has been a suspicion of mine for some time. Commenting on a JC blog post I wrote:

There is a big question over the ongoing issue with rebuilding. Hamas and its supporters worldwide and, it seems Patten and Ashton, like to point out Gazans living in the rubble of their homes. Yet shopping malls, swimming pools and restaurants are being built. It couldn’t be, could it, that those lovely Hamas peeople DELIBERATELY leave the rubble to bring pressure on Israel? Wouldn’t that be obscene? After all, if you can get a 4 x 4 through a tunnel you can get concrete and steel. Noone ever asks that question. Just like the ‘refugee camps’ after 62 years are maintained as an ongoing weapon against Israel, house rubble in Gaza may well be being used for the same purpose.

We appear to have come to the same conclusion.

The Tom Gross article shows us the new Gaza Shopping mall with the comment:

If there “are no building materials allowed into Gaza” how did they build this shopping center, or the new Olympic-size swimming pool pictured below?

Good question and the same one as mine.

Yet in a Guardian article (I don’t give links to the Guardian on principle any more, so you’ll have to believe me or find it yourself) Chris Patten, former Tory MP, former Governor of Hong Kong and now Chancellor of Oxford University and President of Medical Aid for Palestinians, doesn’t seem to have noticed the mall, the food stores filled to the brim, the Israeli white goods filling Gazan shops, instead:

Israel’s policy of blockading Gaza has been a “terrible failure – immoral, illegal and ineffective”, he said, which had “deliberately triggered an economic and social crisis which has many humanitarian consequences”

And:

On earlier visits, he said, he had observed “a community that was poor, but at least economic activity was taking place”. Since the blockade, “economic and commercial life has been squeezed out of Gaza in what looks and feels and is like a medieval siege”.

The old medieval siege canard again. Israel provides most of the electricity needs of Gaza and did so throughout Cast Lead. Israel provides Gaza’s fuel needs. Israel lets in hundreds of trucks through its crossing points daily. Can someone tell me of any medieval siege where the besieger provided for the daily sustenance of the besieged?

A week ago the Jerusalem Post reported :

The Defense Ministry’s coordinator of government activities in the territories (COGAT) has given initial approval to international organizations for 31 construction projects in the Gaza Strip, constituting a 300 percent increase in the number of projects approved by Israel in the past month.

The 31 projects were submitted to COGAT since the cabinet decided in June to ease the blockade on the Gaza Strip.

COGAT had already approved nine projects before the government’s decision, including the renovation of a sewage treatment plant in northern Gaza, the construction of 151 housing units in Khan Yunis in the south, and the repair of a flour mill that was damaged during Operation Cast Lead a year and a half ago.

Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

The embargo has been criticized for its effects on food, clean water, medicine, and other economic needs of the Cuban population. The Cuban population is in dire need of most of these items.

Criticism has come from both Fidel Castro and Raul Castro, citizens and groups from within Cuba, and international organizations and leaders including Barack Obama.

Some academic critics, outside Cuba, have also linked the embargo to shortages of medical supplies and soap which have resulted in a series of medical crises and heightened levels of infectious diseases. It has also been linked to epidemics of specific diseases, including neurological disorders caused by poor nutrition and blindness.

Travel restrictions embedded in the embargo have also been shown to limit the amount of medical information that flows into Cuba from the United States. Malnutrition and disease resulting from increased food and medicine prices have affected men and the elderly, in particular, due to Cuba’s rationing system which gives preferential treatment to women and children.

Yes, this is the United States’ embargo on Cuba. Yet no-one is sending flotillas to Havana, the Guardian is not banging on about Cuba almost every day, the UN has lost interest and the EU is shtum.

At least Patten is anti Boycott (and I don’t mean Sir Geoffrey for cricket aficionados):

“I don’t think a boycott would help,” he said. “It could have the reverse consequences to those intended.”

On the same page as pictures of the new Gaza mall Gross tells us:

Two days ago the EU pledged tens of millions of EU taxpayers’ euros to add to the hundreds of millions already donated to Gaza this year, much of which has been misused to procure arms.

Meanwhile Barry Shaw has begin a Facebook cause entitled: Palestinian funding. Obscene. Insane. Immoral. and tells us:

We are having an effect. A crack has appeared in the stonewall of Palestinian lies. Our evidence is starting to get through. The photos, videos, statistics are beginning to be seen by those who have been in a state of denial.

Slowly, the actual living conditions in Gaza is being seen by a wider public. They are hearing about the new Gaza Shopping Mall (we have the actual promotion material), the fine dining at Roots Club and Greens, they can see the luxurious mansions and new apartment blocks, fully stocked stores, swimming in the Olympic pool, horse riding at the Gaza academy, and much much more.

The lies that Gaza is hell is being exposed. We need you to help us tear down this wall of lies and deceit.
The lies, paid for with your tax dollars, is keeping the Islamic terror regime of Hamas in power. Your money is helping them gain influence in the rest of the Palestinian territories.

If you care for peace, if you care for those in genuine distress, leanr the facts, spread the message, and demand that your tax money is diverted to those in desparate need.

And on his website:

An investigative report by Israel National News published on Thursday revealed that whenever the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza requests an influx of US dollars to pay its staff, the Hamas Islamic terror regime end up making a killing.

It is curious that UNRWA requests the transfer of US dollars, as it did this week when it called for $12.5 million for staff salaries. The bulk of that money is provided by US taxpayers.

The fact is that all financial transactions in Gaza take place in Israeli shekels, the official currency of the territory.
In order for the UNRWA staff to be paid in shekels, the dollars are deposited in the Gaza Postal Bank, which is controlled by Hamas. The bank changes the dollars to shekels, charging a hefty fee to do so. The dollars are then reportedly sold again on the Egyptian black market where they command a much higher price.

Hamas makes huge amounts of money both on the initial exchange, and by reselling the dollars.

A senior economic researcher cited in the story said further evidence of this is the fact that Hamas always complains of a lack of money. But every time UNRWA receives money, Hamas is suddenly able to pay its own salaries.

Under US law, it is illegal to put taxpayers’ dollars towards any organization or movement that may result in that money reaching the hands of terrorists. These laws have been consistently ignored when it comes to the ‘Palestinians’.

Hence, US taxpayers are financing the Hamas terror organisation that controls the Gaza Strip.

Confusing, isn’t it. Is there a humanitarian crisis or not?

Tom Gross again (MAYBE THE TURKISH FLOTILLAS ARE GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION?):

In Turkey, life expectancy is 72.23 and infant mortality is 24.84 per 1,000 births.

In Gaza, life expectancy is 73.68 and infant mortality is 17.71 per 1,000 births.

Turkey has a literacy rate of 88.7% while in Gaza it is 91.9%. (It is much lower in Egypt and other Arab countries where Israel did not establish colleges and universities in the 1970s and 1980s.)

Gaza’s GDP is almost as high as Turkey’s and much, much higher than most of Africa that gets 1,000th of the aid per capita that Gaza gets from the West.

(Source for above info: CIA World Factbook)

So the question is, even if there are problems in Gaza who is now responsible? Surely Hamas assisted by the EU the UN and the United States can build housing required? Israel approves and assists with projects where there is no chance of Hamas using materials for military purposes. So what’s holding them back. If they can build a mall and a restaurant, why not an apartment block?

The EU, as represented by Baroness Ashton, seems unwilling to make the connection between Hamas and the plight of Gazans living in tents.

I do not say that there are no problems in Gaza, but the main cause of humanitarian suffering is Hamas with its repressive Islamist policies, its persecution of Fatah, its attitude to women and its commitment to destroy Israel and murder Jews.

And why is there such a disproportionate obsession with Gaza when there are so many more critical causes. Cuba for instance. Sudan anyone? Congo?

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