WarSclerotic

Rachel Patron reacts to the Israel\’s Flotilla flap.\By Rachel Patron

Editor’s Note: Rachel Patron writes for the Sun-Sentinel.

It’s Iran — 1; America — 0

The pertinent question in the case of the intercepted flotilla is — who benefits? The answer: Iran.

It’s not about Jews behaving badly. Today, as during the ancient Jewish Kingdom, centrally-located Israel is a convenient battleground for mightier nations fighting over hegemony in the Middle East. Again it’s a pawn in a high-stakes international game.

For over a week no one has mentioned Iranian nukes, or the need for tough sanctions. At this moment, as Iranians are working on their bomb, world politicians and the media are preoccupied with bashing Israel over the tragic death of nine people on a ship attempting to run Israel’s blockade of Gaza. In fact, the world is hysterical about “terrorist” Israel. In London they’re dumping Israeli-made gefilte fish and cold creams into the gutter; Scandinavian countries have outlawed kosher slaughter of animals; and in Malaysia a Palestinian man slit himself with box cutters in front of the American Embassy.

But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinedjad must be happy for successfully forging a political realignment of Middle East forces. Look at the map: Iran, once the Persian Empire, is wooing Turkey, until 1918 — and for 500 years before — the Ottoman Empire whose rule extended from Asia Minor to the Suez Canal. As Turkey sees it, Iran is on a roll, and it has boldly decided to abandon the West and join in. Turkish leadership of the flotilla — 400 of the participants as well as the boarded ship were Turkish — was an initiation into this fraternity.

Among the dead, eight were Turks, and one was American.
Sadly, anyone can initiate violence against Israel by claiming to rescue the world’s permanent victims, the Palestinians, who have indeed been oppressed both by Israel and by their own brethren, the Arab states. But the worst oppressors were their hypocritical and corrupt leaders.

The U.S. should have used its influence to prevent Turkey from this recklessness. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 states that the integrity of Greece and Turkey is vital to America’s interests, since they control access to the Mediterranean. Since 1922 Turkey has been the only secular Muslim state, a bridgehead between East and West, and an Israeli ally.

No more. Today Islamic rule prevails, more women wear the veil, and religious rhetoric soars. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has publicly embraced Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmedinedjad, voicing support for Islamic values. We can soon expect cries in the United States Congress: Who lost Turkey?

The Obama Administration is in a barrel of pickles. We must somehow keep faith with Israel, without antagonizing the “Muslim World,” in whom the White has exaggerated faith. We must also support our friends, the moderate Arab regimes of Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — next on Iran’s hit list.

For Iran the target is not Israel, but Saudi Arabia, with its two big prizes: Mecca and the oil fields. The Saudi royal family owes its rule to American support; and these days they’re a frightened bunch. Iran considers them traitors to Islam for supporting the Peace Process and facilitating America’s involvement in the Middle East.

It’s amazing how successful that little guy from Tehran has been! If we don’t stop him, he might soon consolidate an Empire of Terror. Back to the map: The southern stretch of the Arabian Peninsula is occupied by Yemen; and across the Red Sea, in Africa, lie Somalia and Sudan — all three lawless countries in which Al Queda has a presence. It’s the perfect place for Iran to set up shop.

So what can America do? Well, because of George W. Bush’s mistake, we have more than 100 thousand troops in Iraq. We shouldn’t attack Iran, but we must demand that Lebanon and Syria disarm Iran’s terrorist proxy, Hizbullah. (Let the Israelis deal with Hamas.) If we do this — will Iran bomb American troops? It’s likelier that Hizbullah will attack Israel, at which point America must have the courage to step in and help.

This scenario is pretty awful — but not as awful as living with a nuclear Iran and its new Middle Eastern alliance.

Mort Zuckerman: Why No Outrage for Anti-Israel, Phony Flotilla? – US News and World Report.

In the Middle East, it has long been understood that you should believe the threats of your enemies more than the promises of your friends. Since the date of its founding, Israel has been attacked verbally and violently by the Arab world that surrounds it. So Israel paid close attention when the so-called flotilla of some 700 activists, dominated by members of an extremist Islamist organization in Turkey known as IHH and other radical groups, boarded six ships filled with tons of “humanitarian aid” and stated that their real mission was to bust the Israeli naval blockade to establish a permanent sea lane between Gaza and the rest of the world. They also freely admitted from the start that they hoped to provoke Israel (in the expectation that, as usual, the world would protest anything Israel did).

The outcry that Israel was inhumanely denying aid was proved false —beyond any reasonable doubt—by the fact that both Israel and Egypt offered to have all the food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods sent to Gaza if the boats agreed to land in an Israeli or Egyptian port. This was rejected by the flotilla leaders. Their “mercy mission” was nothing more than a cheap political stunt, swallowed by the few real peacemakers conned into joining it and, of course, by the world’s commentators.

The background is clear. In pursuit of peace, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, a move that required Israeli authorities to remove about 8,000 Jewish residents from their homes, in some cases dragging them out. Instead of gaining peace, in 2006 the Palestinians there voted by a large majority to support Hamas, the organization whose charter is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. The next year, Hamas engineered a bloody coup in which it ousted with extraordinary violence the rival Fatah party and took complete control of Gaza. At that point, Gaza became a terrorist enclave controlled by a violent Islamist terrorist group, Hamas, backed by Iran.

What ensued was a rain of rockets and mortar shells fired from Hamas-run Gaza into southern Israel. Israel warned time and again that it could not stand idly by. In December 2008, Israel finally sent troops into Gaza. It worked.

Israel was understandably determined to preserve its naval blockade, as it understood that the flotilla was a sham. The convoy was not about freedom and it was not about aid. It was about helping Hamas, aiding its terrorist activities, and harming Israel.

Under international law, Israel has every right to stop and board ships bound for the Gaza war zone in the interest of protecting Israeli citizens, who this year alone have been subject to 150 rocket attacks from Gaza. Blockades have long been legal in international law; witness the United States and Britain during World War II and the blockade of Germany and Japan on the high seas.

This is not to suggest that Israel should be exempt from criticism. Its special forces mishandled the confrontation. It is no excuse to say that they were surprised and inadequately reinforced, and were thus unprepared to subdue the mob violence.

Israel’s rules of engagement required its soldiers to fire only paintballs unless their lives were in danger. They clearly were. Videos show the misnamed “peace activists” throwing an Israeli off the top deck of the lead ship, beating up others with iron bars, stabbing a number of them, firing guns at one of them. Ultimately, the Israelis were forced to use deadly violence in an operation that was intended to be conducted with a minimum of violence, as revealed in the takeover of the five other ships. The result was a bloody battle in which nine combatants were killed and nine Israelis injured, some seriously.

Yet only Israel is selectively prosecuted in the court of public opinion. No other country would be denied the right of self-defense under comparable circumstances. No other country would be depicted in the global media as a barbaric aggressor, while Hamas terrorists and their fellow travelers are portrayed as valiant champions of human rights. This confuses the firefighter and the arsonist. It is yet another example of how Israel is constantly subject to a double standard. Where was the international outrage when the Gazans sent thousands of missiles and rockets toward civilians in Israel, or when North Korea sank a South Korean ship and caused nearly 50 deaths?

Astonishingly, the Israelis seemed to have been unprepared to deal with the other major battleground: world public opinion. The government had a month to prepare public opinion at home and abroad that an extremist Islamist organization, the IHH, not a humanitarian organization, was behind the flotilla. Officials were unprepared when they addressed the foreign media, neglecting to point out the connections between Hamas and al Qaeda in this venture. They seemed unprofessional in presenting the Israeli case, failing to make it in a timely and effective manner. And it took them 12 hours to get the videos out on the world’s screens. They failed to disseminate the interrogation of one of the passengers on the Mavi Marmara, who confirmed during questioning that he was one of the recruiters of the violent group on the ship. They also failed to remind the world that Israel has delivered more than a million tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza and continues to deliver 10,000 to 15,000 tons of such aid every week.

The cries to end the blockade altogether are misplaced and many of them mischievous. Les Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has proposed a solution that should appeal to all reasonable people. For those wishing to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza, there should be an agreement to land aircraft, dock ships, and use land checkpoints at locations designated by Israel where contents could be inspected. Within a few days, the non-military goods could proceed to Gaza.

The Israelis understand the truth of what Cicero once said: “For what can be done against force without force?” Force here was indispensable if Israel was to exert its right of self-defense.

Israelis have learned that, in the face of Palestinian hostility and terrorist determination to kill Jews, they have to be ready to defend themselves. For six years they endured a campaign of indiscriminate murder. About 140 Palestinian suicide bombers crossed from the West Bank into Israel, killing 500 Israelis. Israel was, of course, denounced when it finally did something about this, announcing that it would build a wall and fence around the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem. Since 2006, when large sections were complete, there has not been a successful suicide attack launched from those areas. Similarly in Gaza, after Israel waged a controversial war, the number of rockets dropped by over 90 percent to 150 so far this year. That’s 150 too many attempted murders, but it is down from thousands in previous years.

And words remain potent. Israelis know that Palestinian television, in the West Bank as well as Gaza, is broadcasting sermons exhorting all Muslims to murder Jews to fulfill a religious obligation. On children’s TV, a popular Friday afternoon program called Tomorrow’s Pioneers featured a Mickey Mouse-like character named Farfur. After a few months, Farfur was “killed” on the show by an “Israeli interrogator.” His replacement, a bee character named Nahul, died when Israel prevented him from getting medical treatment. Nahul was replaced by Assud, a bunny whose name means lion and who vowed to kill Jews and eat them. This character also died, this time from an Israeli attack.

Kids fall in love with these characters who on TV evolve into shahids, or martyrs. The Palestinians believe that if they can indoctrinate their children at a young age—that Israel and the Jews are the enemy—then they won’t have much trouble recruiting them for terrorism against Israelis as they grow older. Brainwashing is carried out not only on television. Last year, more than 120,000 Palestinian children attended Hamas-run summer camps where they were given training with toy guns.

The only fair conclusion is that Hamas, headquartered in Gaza, is still determined to destroy Israel. Even worse, the support it enjoys among a substantial number of Palestinians means it can virtually veto any diplomatic progress between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

How is it, in light of this admitted record, that Israel is hauled before the court of world opinion as an international thug while Hamas gets a free pass to kill, incite hate and violence, and stage its phony “relief” flotillas? How is it that so many refuse to see that the sole purpose of this event was to portray Israel as the oppressor of Palestinians—so that any Israeli action could be twisted to indict the state and sabotage any progress on peace talks?

Fortunately, the Obama administration refused to participate in such moral hypocrisy, as it steered the United Nations Security Council into a neutral protest and then blocked demand for an international inquiry into Israel’s conduct.

FT.com / Columnists / Christopher Caldwell – Israel had no other choice.

Our View: Is a far-less-quotable peace possible in Mideast? – Peoria, IL – pjstar.com.

Israel Faces Deepening Tensions With Turkey Over Raid, and Bond With U.S. Frays – NYTimes.com.

WASHINGTON — Tensions deepened between Turkey and Israel on Friday, and a new fissure threatened to open between the United States and Israel, as the three countries continued to deal with thefallout from Israel’s deadly raid on a humanitarian aid flotilla off Gaza.

A senior Turkish diplomat warned that his country might sever diplomatic relations with Israel unless its government apologized for the attack, in which nine Turkish citizens were killed; consented to an international investigation; and lifted its blockade of Gaza.

“Israel is about to lose a friend; this is going to be a historical mistake,” said the diplomat, Namik Tan, Turkey’s ambassador to Washington. “The future of our relationship will be determined by Israel’s actions.”

Israeli officials refused Turkey’s demands, saying their commandos acted in self-defense after activists on one ship set upon them with knives, clubs and metal rods. Israel also took issue with the Obama administration’s assertion that the United States had warned Israeli officials to exercise caution and restraint in intercepting the flotilla.

“I was not contacted by anyone in the administration about this,” said Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. Mr. Oren said he was not aware that anybody else in the Israeli government had been called and was seeking clarification from the administration.

A spokesman for the State Department, Philip J. Crowley, said the United States had “extensive contacts” with Israel and Turkey before the flotilla set sail. “We expressed to the Israelis the need for caution and restraint in dealing with civilians, including American citizens,” he said.

With another aid ship steaming toward Gaza, this one from Ireland, the United States seems determined to avoid a repeat of the last raid. The White House issued a statement on Friday urging the ship, the Rachel Corrie, to instead go to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where its cargo could be unloaded and shipped to Gaza.

The dispute over who said what to whom symbolizes the fragility of the mood between the United States and Israel. The administration initially resisted worldwide condemnation of Israel, watering down a United Nations resolution that could have placed the blame on Israel. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. voiced support for Israel.

But privately, President Obama and other officials have pressed Israeli leaders to do more to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Administration officials said they were working to devise an investigation that would satisfy the Turkish demand for international involvement, while being acceptable to the Israelis, who said they would reject outside oversight.

The deepening imbroglio does not appear to have derailed the administration’s most pressing diplomatic priority: imposing new United Nations sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Administration officials and European diplomats said that despite opposition from Turkey and Brazil, the Security Council was on track to pass a resolution in the next two weeks.

The focus now, officials said, was on trying to persuade these two countries to abstain rather than vote against a resolution. Turkey and Brazil brokered a last-minute deal with Tehran to further enrich some of its uranium outside the country. But the Obama administration threw cold water on the agreement, saying it did not address all the issues.

Mr. Tan declined to say how Turkey would vote in the Council. But he said that Turkey believed that sanctions were a mistake, and that Turkey and Brazil had pursued their agreement with the administration’s blessing.

The United States has tried to mollify Turkey, with long meetings and phone calls to Turkish leaders by Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Tan said Turkey appreciated American pressure on Israel to release the passengers and return the bodies from the ship. But he repeated Turkey’s disappointment over the Americans’ refusal to condemn Israel.

“There is no word of condemnation, nowhere,” said Mr. Tan, who was once Turkey’s ambassador to Israel.

In Turkey, the vitriol toward Israel continued. Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told Turkish television that Turkey could reduce its relations with Israel “to a minimum.”

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of breaking the biblical commandment against killing. Mr. Erdogan also talked in favorable terms about Hamas, which controls Gaza, calling the group “activists in a struggle to defend themselves.” Israel and the United States consider Hamas a terrorist group.

American officials are watching the rift with growing alarm. Turkey’s deepening cooperation with Israel was one of the most promising diplomatic developments in the Middle East over the past decade, said a senior administration official. “We’re not taking anything for granted,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the situation. “We’ve seen how much emotion there is in Turkey.”

The administration, he said, is studying proposals for an Israeli-run investigation that could include outside participants. One model would be South Korea’s international investigation of the torpedo attack that sank its warship in March.

Israeli officials do not dismiss the idea of international participation, but one said, “We’re not there yet.”

Turkey\’s Erdogan bears responsibility in flotilla fiasco.

WESTERN GOVERNMENTS have been right to be concerned about Israel’s poor judgment and botched execution in the raid against the Free Gaza flotilla. But they ought to be at least as worried about the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which since Monday has shown a sympathy toward Islamic militants and a penchant for grotesque demagoguery toward Israel that ought to be unacceptable for a member of NATO.

On the opposite page today, Turkey’s ambassador to the United States makes the argument that Israel had no cause to clash with the “European lawmakers, journalists, business leaders and an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor” who were aboard the flotilla. But there was no fighting with those people, or with five of the six boats in the fleet. All of the violence occurred aboard the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara, and all of those who were killed were members or volunteers for the Islamic “charity” that owned the ship, theHumanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH).

The relationship between Mr. Erdogan’s government and the IHH ought to be one focus of any international investigation into the incident. The foundation is a member of the “Union of Good,” a coalition that was formed to provide material support to Hamas and that was named as a terrorist entity by the United States in 2008. In discussions before the flotilla departed, Turkish officials turned down offers from both Israel and Egypt to deliver the “humanitarian” supplies on the boats to Gaza and insisted Ankara could not control what it described as a nongovernmental organization.

Yet the IHH has certainly done its best to promote Mr. Erdogan. “All the peoples of the Islamic world would want a leader like Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” IHH chief Bulent Yildirim proclaimed at a Hamas rally in Gaza last year. And Mr. Erdogan seems to share that notion: In the days since an incident that the IHH admits it provoked, the Turkish prime minister has done his best to compete with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah’s Hasan Nasrallah in attacking the Jewish state.

“The heart of humanity has taken one of her heaviest wounds in history,” Mr. Erdogan claimed this week. He has had next to nothing to say about the slaughter of Iranians protesting last year’s fraudulent elections, but he called Israel’s actions “state terrorism” and a “bloody massacre” and described Israel itself as an “adolescent, rootless state.” His foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said in Washington on Tuesday that “this attack is like 9/11 for Turkey” — an obscene comparison to events in which more than 2,900 genuinely innocent people were killed.

Mr. Erdogan’s crude attempt to exploit the incident comes only a couple of weeks after he joined Brazil’s president in linking arms with Mr. Ahmadinejad, whom he is assisting in an effort to block new U.N. sanctions. What’s remarkable about his turn toward extremism is that it comes after more than a year of assiduous courting by the Obama administration, which, among other things, has overlooked his antidemocratic behavior at home, helped him combat the Kurdish PKK and catered to Turkish sensitivities about the Armenian genocide. Israel is suffering the consequences of its misjudgments and disregard of U.S. interests. Will Mr. Erdogan’s behavior be without cost?

White House: Israel blockade of Gaza unsustainable – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

The White House said on Friday Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip was unsustainable and urged a Gaza aid vessel sent by pro-Palestinian activists to divert to an Israeli port to reduce the risk of violence.

“We are working urgently with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and other international partners to develop new procedures for delivering more goods and assistance to Gaza,” said Mike Hammer, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.

“The current arrangements are unsustainable and must be changed. For now, we call on all parties to join us in encouraging responsible decisions by all sides to avoid any unnecessary confrontations,” Hammer said in a statement.

Israel says its blockade of the Gaza Strip, imposed after Hamas seized the territory from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, is meant to prevent arms and military supplies from reaching the territory’s Hamas rulers.

The Irish-owned Rachel Corrie – a converted merchant vessel bought by pro-Palestinian activists and named after an American woman killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in 2003 – pressed on despite the earlier ship’s violent interception.

One of the activists on board, Irishman Denis Halliday, a former UN assistant secretary-general, told Irish radio on Friday they expected to reach the Israeli-imposed exclusion zone overnight and aimed to continue towards Gaza in daylight.

On Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said: “We will stop the ship, and also any other ship that will try to harm Israeli sovereignty. There is no chance the Rachel Corrie will reach the coast of Gaza.”