WarSclerotic

IDF releases names of flotilla \’terrorists\’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Army claims terror activists among passengers of Marmara, some aiding Iran, al-Qaeda, Hamas

Amnon Meranda

Israel released the names on Sunday of the Turkish passengers aboard the Marvi Marmara who it claims have been involved in terror activities.

Among those named was Fatima Mohammadi (31), from Iran, who lives in the US and is active in the group Viva Palestine. Mahmadi tried to bring electronic components into the Gaza Strip, which Israel has forbidden.

Ken O’Keefe was also accused by the IDF of having ties to terror. O’Keefe (41), who holds US and British citizenship, was described by the IDF as an “extreme Israel-hating activist,Hamas activist. His aim was to reach Gaza for training and to set up commando units for Hamas.”

There were also two Turks on the list released by the IDF. Hassan Aynsey (28), a member of a Turkish charity association, regularly transfers funds to the Palestinian Islamic Jihadmovement, the IDF claimed. Hussein Orush, from the TurkishIHH organization, intended to assist al-Qaeda activists into the Strip via Turkey.

Ahmed Omemun (51) from Morocco, who also has French citizenship, is a Hamas activist, according to the IDF.

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc referred earlier to Israel’s claims that the organizers of the flotilla were responsible for the attack on Iskandurun.

“Our intelligence services are seeking material on this,” he said. “We have no concrete information on this.”

He said Israel loses from the flotilla affair, while the activists were victorious. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu denied that the IHH, which was behind the flotilla to Gaza, is a terror group.

“If Israel has the name of a terrorist who was on the flotilla, it should give it to us and we will check it,” he said.

Gerald M. Steinberg: The New War Against Israel – WSJ.com.

Terror, lies and slander are the main tools of the Leftist-Islamist alliance against the Jewish state.

By GERALD M. STEINBERG

Jerusalem

The blurring of terrorist-activists and civilians that characterizes 21st century warfare took on a new dimension in the violent confrontation between the “Free Gaza Flotilla” and the Israeli Navy last week. Ostensibly, the hundreds of passengers on a ship carrying a large Turkish flag were “peace activists” on a “humanitarian” mission to bring aid to Palestinians “trapped behind the Israeli blockade.” But this moral façade hid a strategy of engaging Israel in a bloody confrontation to exploit the “halo effect” (automatically granted to groups claiming moral missions) and to reinforce the image of Israelis as “war criminals.”

Despite all the misreporting, Gaza is not starving as Israel allows tons of food, drugs and humanitarian aid to reach Gaza every day. The entirely legal naval blockade is designed to prevent arms, primarily from Iran, from reaching the terrorists in Gaza, from which Israel withdrew in 2005. The flotilla’s aim was not to feed ordinary Palestinians, but to help Hamas break the embargo so that it can bring in weapons.

The “Free Gaza” group is a potent example of how the new alliance between radical-left Western groups and Jihadists is waging this new war. In 2001, 1,500 organizations, both Islamic and Western, participated in the NGO Forum of the United Nations Durban Conference on Racism. They declared Israel to be “a racist, apartheid state” and “a crime against humanity,” while calling on the “international community to impose a policy of complete and total isolation.” To advance this hate agenda, Israel’s enemies would use terror attacks to provoke an inevitable response, and then strip away the context to highlight allegations of “war crimes.”

The approach was implemented in the 2002 Jenin massacre myth, when Palestinian lies alleging Israeli atrocities were reported by the mainstream media and NGOs as facts. This strategy was further perfected in the 2006 Lebanon and 2009 Gaza wars, when Hezbollah and Hamas respectively attacked Israeli civilians while hiding behind their own civilian populations. Israel was then held responsible for the unavoidable death of civilians in the cause of its legitimate self-defense. In each case, false allegations of “war crimes” were published by NGOs and then adopted by U.N. inquiries, such as the deeply flawed Goldstone report.

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Associated Press

The 2001 Durban U.N. conference pioneered the new anti-Zionist strategy.

The “Free Gaza” round of provocation and condemnation marks a major escalation. The Turkish Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation) reportedly purchased the boats and provided the crew, as well as the paramilitary forces that attacked the Israeli boarding party. As the videos from the ship’s own security cameras and the IDF show (http://www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk), the soldiers acted in legitimate self-defense as they were assaulted by a lynch mob armed with slingshots, steel bars, broken glass bottles, chairs, chains, and knives. Prior to the flotilla launch, activists chanted Islamic battle cries “[Remember] Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!” Khaibar was the last Jewish village defeated by Muhammad’s army in 628. The battle marked the end of Jewish presence in Arabia.

One participant told Al Jazeera, “Either the Israelis let us reach Gaza, or they can stop us . . . . We can also die as martyrs and never return, which is okay with us.”

For the IHH, as in the case of other Islamist charities, the “humanitarian relief” dimension is a cover, or at best, a side show. IHH is a prominent member of the “Union of the Good,” which was designated by the U.S. government as “an organization created by the Hamas leadership to transfer funds to the terrorist organization.” In 1997, before the Islamist AKP came to power in Turkey, a police raid on an IHH building in Istanbul found weapons, explosives, and instructions for making improvised explosive devices widely used by insurgents and terror groups.

At a 2001 U.S. Federal trial emanating from the Millenium plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the leading French counter-terrorism investigating magistrate, gave evidence on the IHH’s “important role” in obtaining weapons, documents and dispatching fighters in various al-Qaida operations. A 2006 report published by the Danish Institute for International Studies quotes from Mr. Bruguiere’s legal depositions, including revelations that Turkish authorities had uncovered IHH links to Al-Qaeda in Milan and to Algerian terrorists in Europe, as well as having had a major role in recruiting militants sent to Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan.

Thus, the IHH was a logical vehicle for the Islamist-led Turkish government, headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to turn against its former ally Israel. While embracing Syria and Iran, Mr. Erdogan is fueling anti-Israel hatred in his country and throughout the region.

The second partner in this violent “humanitarian” confrontation was the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) which promotes Palestinian “resistance” and fuels the violence. On April 30, 2003, a suicide terrorist blew himself up at the entrance to Mike’s Place, a popular bar on the Tel Aviv beach promenade. Three Israelis were murdered, and over 50 wounded. Just a few days before the attack, the terrorists (British citizens) had spent time with a group of ISM members.

Indeed, ISM declares on its own website that its mission is to “support and strengthen the Palestinian popular resistance” through direct confrontation with the IDF. In 2002, ISM co-founder Adam Shapiro and his Palestinian-born wife promoted both “non-violent and violent” tactics in support of the Palestinian resistance. “Yes, people will get killed and injured,” but these deaths are “no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation” and “would be considered shaheed,” using the Arabic word for “martyr,” usually applied to suicide bombers.

The ISM’s Caoimhe Butterly—a prominent Irish participant in the Free Gaza campaign—has had many run-ins with the IDF. In April 2002, following a series of Palestinian terror bombings that led to the IDF’s operation “Defensive Shield,” she spent 16 days as a “human shield” in Yasser Arafat’s compound.

The hysteria, extreme hatred for the West, and for Israel, in particular, is a trademark of many ISM members. According to ISM media coordinator Flo Rosovski, “‘Israel’ is an illegal entity that should not exist.” For the ISM, like IHH, labels like “peace activists” and “humanitarian aid workers” are convenient masks for this hatred.

In addition, this Leftist-Islamist alliance is supported and legitimized by mainstream NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Notwithstanding embarrassing exposes on how, in May 2009, HRW solicited funds from the Saudis by touting the need to counter Jewish and “pro-Israel pressure groups,” and the documentation of its systematic anti-Israeli bias, this organization immediately joined in the condemnations of Israel. These once-respected watchdogs have become an integral part of the efforts to criminalize legitimate responses to terror through false allegations of human rights violations.

For the “peace activists” aboard the Free Gaza Flotilla, the deaths and the images of violence from their excursion are viewed as a great success. As an IHH official in Istanbul declared, “We are very thankful to the Israeli authorities.” Once again, Israel is on the front lines of this strategy, but NATO and the West are next in line in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.

Mr. Steinberg teaches political science at Bar Ilan University and heads NGO Monitor.

Eliot Cohen: With Friends Like the United States . . . – WSJ.com.

President Obama has emboldened America’s adversaries and unnerved its allies.

By ELIOT A. COHEN

What do the following have in common: the piling on Israel after the botched interception of the Hamas relief flotilla, the Chinese military telling the U.S. secretary of defense that he was not welcome in Beijing, and the declaration by Nick Clegg—now deputy prime minister of Great Britain—that his country’s special relationship with America is over?

Answer: The Obama administration has managed to convince most countries around the world that we are worth little as friends and even less as enemies.

Last week, Israel walked into a trap set by a flotilla of Hamas sympathizers and what Lenin used to call useful idiots. Israeli commandos who were being attacked by burly men trying to throw them overboard or beat them senseless killed a bunch of people whom they would rather not have killed. American forces do the same thing on many occasions when, for example, we use missile-firing drones to support U.S. policies. According to some accounts the recent assassination of al Qaeda No. 3 Sheikh Said al-Masri also killed his wife, three daughters and a granddaughter.

The Israelis have a right to blockade Gaza, from which they withdrew only to soak up several thousand rockets in return, and they did what they could to get the ships to send supplies into Gaza through their ports. Until Vice President Joe Biden plucked up the courage to acknowledge on “Charlie Rose” that the Israelis are at war with Hamas and have the right to prevent arms from entering Gaza, the Israelis could have been forgiven for thinking that we would hang them out to dry. When the U.S. accepted last week, albeit with some tut-tutting, the recent conclusion of the 189-nation nuclear nonproliferation review conference that singles out Israel but does not mention Iran, it was obvious that something is seriously amiss.

The folly here is to think that leaving the Israelis open to these kinds of diplomatic attacks will buy good will in a Middle East that gets its opinions from Al Jazeera and a venomous media that routinely prints outrageous lies and hate literature that echoes Nazi Germany. That part of the world, as Osama bin Laden once correctly observed, prefers a strong horse to a weak horse.

The still greater folly is to think that distancing ourselves from the Israelis will buy us leverage with them. When did the Israelis withdraw from Gaza? When they had a president in the White House upon whom they knew they could count. If, as is the case now, Israel is alone and desperate, is it more or less likely to conclude it has no choice but to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities?

The Obama administration has been peculiarly inept at handling allies, to the point that it has jeopardized some of our most important relationships. That a senior British politician would dismiss the pillar of British foreign policy since 1940 is astounding. But Nick Clegg said during the recent British election that the special relationship is over and that the American government understands this even if the British government does not. When asked about relations with the U.S. under President Barack Obama, 17% of Britons in a recent poll thought they had improved; 25% thought they had deteriorated.

The administration refuses out of timidity to advance a free trade agreement with any ally, including Colombia, a success story if only we would claim it. And its quixotic quest for total nuclear disarmament unnerves, among others, our French allies, who want to keep a robust deterrent. These are part of a broader rejection of a world in which the U.S. has real allies that need cultivating and reinforcing.

No less dismaying is Mr. Obama’s attitude to U.S. rivals. Its most recent National Security Strategy, issued a month ago, barely acknowledges that such a category exists. The need for the U.S. to balance China in Asia is evident to any moderately alert clerk in the foreign ministry of most Asian countries. Yet such notions are missing from a document that talks a great deal about education policy, economic development and the limits on American power, but very little about geopolitics.

China’s snub to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates—its rejection last week of an American request for a visit as he travels to a conference in Singapore—is part of a larger picture. The studied unwillingness of the Chinese even to acknowledge that the North Koreans launched an unprovoked attack on a South Korean naval vessel tells us that they do not think they have to take American anger about anything seriously.

Or take the case of Turkey. The outrageous statements of the Turkish government denouncing Israel for “inhumane state terrorism” toward the Gaza flotilla reflect a broader pattern, going back a number of years, of Turkey’s evolution into a country very different from that of 20 or 30 years ago. A combination of Islamist rule, resentment at exclusion from Europe, and a neo-Ottomanist ideology that envisions Turkey as a great power in the Middle East have made Turkey a state that is often plainly hostile not only to Israel but to American aims and interests. The conclusion is sobering—but first one has to recognize the facts for what they are.

There is no penalty for a foreign government crossing this U.S. president—unless you are the hapless prime minister of Israel visiting the White House, in which case, to paraphrase the deli bully in “Seinfeld,” “No dinner for you!” The most that a leader like President Lula da Silva of Brazil can expect from doing his best to derail the painfully slow effort to contain Iran is pursed lips.

As for North Korea and Iran, the National Security Strategy threatens them with . . . isolation. North Korea is not already isolated? And Iran is isolated when it has the governments of Turkey and Brazil cozying up to it? What precisely have we gained from reaching out to the Syrian government, whose leaders pocketed our restoration of ambassadorial relations, and in return lessened their ties to Hezbollah and Iran not a wit?

The administration cannot even bring itself to characterize accurately the enemies that it must admit we have. The National Security Strategy declares that we are at war with “Al Qaeda and its affiliates.” Islamist extremists? Jihadis? Perish the thought.

Senior officials have repeatedly insisted that they know that radical Islamism runs counter to the authoritative teachings of an altogether peace-loving religion—when the truth is that all religions, including Islam, have within them entirely authentic, deeply rooted, and often sophisticated fanatical streams. This refusal to acknowledge the creed of our enemies is further evidence of a lack of strategic seriousness.

The administration is making a dangerous world even more so. It has announced that it will head for the exits in Afghanistan, that it will not stand by our closest ally, as the Brits discovered when we fastidiously refused to take their side on the latest round of the Falklands dispute. The Israelis should not be the only ones who are worried.

Mr. Cohen teaches strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University and served as counselor of the Department of State under Condoleezza Rice.