WarSclerotic

The dark truth about those Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla ‘humanitarians’.

By Michael Weiss

Friday, June 11th 2010, 3:12 PM

The wisdom of Israel‘s raid of the Turkish ship in the “Free Gaza” convoy last week is still being vigorously debated, nowhere more than in Israel itself. However, there’s a certain lexicon failure in the way in which the international media have elected to characterize the passengers onboard the Mavi Marmara as “humanitarians” and “pro-Palestinian activists.”

Humanitarians don’t stick knives into other people – and to be in favor of Palestinian statehood is axiomatically to be opposed to Hamas. The grim retinue of this vessel failed both tests.

The Mavi Marmara was purchased from the Istanbul city government by the Turkish group Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), which claims to be a human rights outfit but has stood accused of being a recruitment center and financial clearinghouse for global jihadism.

The IHH was formed in 1992 and formally registered as a charity in Istanbul in 1995. Its ostensible purpose was to provide food and aid to orphans, build mosques and monitor human rights abuses in Muslim communities. IHH is the Anatolian affiliate of the larger, Saudi-based umbrella organization known as the Union of Good. The Union of Good, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, is a siphon for Hamas money that distributes it via a “web of charitable organizations.” The IHH, according to former Treasury Department official Jonathan Schanzer, is one of these.

In 1996, it was identified by the CIA in a later declassified report titled, “International Islamic NGOs and Links to Terrorism,” as maintaining connections to Islamist groups in both Iran and Algeria and of being one of fifteen NGOs sponsoring terrorist activities in Bosnia. A year later, Turkish police raided IHH’s headquarters in Istanbul and arrested a number of its top men on suspicion of terrorist activity and uncovered guns, explosives, bomb-making instructions and a “jihadist flag.” The judgment of the Turkish authorities following an investigation was that the “detained members of IHH were going to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.”

Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a renowned French counterterrorism magistrate, came to similar conclusions about the organization. I quote from a report he co-authored with Jean-Francois Ricard:

“The essential goal of this Association was to illegally arm its membership for overthrowing democratic, secular, and constitutional order present in Turkey and replacing it with an Islamic state founded on the Shariah. Under the cover of this organization known under the name of IHH, \[IHH leaders\] acted to recruit veteran soldiers in anticipation of the coming holy war.”

Bruguiere and Ricard also maintained that members of IHH were making routine phone calls to a known Al Qaeda safe house in Milan as well as to European cells of Algerian jihadists, including Abu Ma’ali, a former member of Al Qaeda’s shura, or command council, who is sometimes referred to as a “junior Osama bin Laden.” In the aftermath of the flotilla fiasco Bruguiere told the Associated Press that IHH was “basically helping Al Qaeda when (Osama) bin Laden started to want to target U.S. soil,” a claim the NGO denies. But perhaps most damning of all was Brugiere’s testimony in the trial of Ahmed Ressam – the convicted Al Qaeda operative in Canada who tried to import well over 1,000 pounds of explosives into the United States in 1999 in order to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium – that IHH played an “important role” in this planned attack.

Indeed, IHH was at one point in the late 1990’s under such intense scrutiny by the Turkish government, which considered it a “fundamentalist organization,” that it was banned from contributing to the relief effort of a devastating earthquake that struck the Turkish city of Izmit in August 1999. The governor of Istanbul froze the organization’s bank accounts and explained to the Washington Post: “All legal institutions may have some illegal connections. This might be the case here. If they don’t like it, they can appeal in court.”

This rather amplifies the hypocrisy with which Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodgan, now a born-again friend to Iran and all regional theocrats, last week announced solidarity with the convoy.

IHH was determined to make the most of its presence last week by accomplishing two things at once: presenting itself to the Western media as a peace-loving and well-intentioned Red Cross of the Mediterranean while also evincing to Arab media its long-standing commitment to enabling and underwriting jihadism.

The IHH President Bülent Yildirim has met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on several occasions, and Haniyeh has openly thanked him for his fund-raising efforts: “This is an example of Islamic fraternity,” he told Yildirim last January, “an indication that we are all parts of the same umma. Muslims are like walls reinforcing each other. Welcome.”

Days before the Mavi Marmara set sail, a Yemeni professor appeared on Hamas-run television and quoted Yildirum as saying: “We will not allow the Zionists to get near us and we will use resistance against them. How will they wage resistance? They will resist with their fingernails. They are people who seek Martyrdom for Allah, as much as they want to reach Gaza but first the martyrdom is more desirable.”

So it proved on May 31.

Weiss is executive director of Just Journalism.

Iran’s Arc Of Injustice – Forbes.com.

It’s the dissidents, not the rulers, who are increasingly isolated.

American Thinker: Obama’s Israel Doctrine.By E.W. Jackson Sr.

“Obama apparently sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective. Those who think clearly about these issues must conclude that President Obama is influenced by a quiet strain of anti-Semitism picked up from elements of the black community, leftist colleagues, Muslim associations and Jeremiah Wright. For the first time in her history, Israel may find the President of the United States openly siding with her enemies. Those who believe that Israel must be protected had better be ready for the fight.”

Since I sounded the first warning a year ago, Iran is on the brink of having nuclear weapons, and enemies of the Jews have gotten the message that if they attack Israel, this President will do nothing about it. Relations between Israel and the U.S. are the most strained they’ve ever been, and they will remain tense until Obama is voted out of office. His foreign policy doctrine toward Israel boils down to four words: he doesn’t like them. Therefore, things are going to get worse before they get better. Nonetheless, Israel is not alone and never will be. Her defenders will stay in the fight until every Jew sits under his own vine and his own fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.

Report: Saudi Arabia gives Israel air corridor to bomb Iran – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Saudis practiced standing down anti-aircraft systems to allow Israeli warplanes passage for attack on Iranian nuclear sites, the London Times reports.

Saudi Arabia has practiced standing down its anti-aircraft systems to allow Israeli warplanes passage on their way to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, a British newspaper reported on Saturday.

The Saudis have allocated a narrow corridor of airspace in the north of the country that would cut flying time from Israel to Iran, the London Times reported.

	Photo by: Getty

Israel and the West accuse of designs on a nuclear bomb, a charge it denies.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” the Times quoted an unnamed U.S. defense source in the area as saying. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [U.S.] State Department.”

Once the Israelis had passed, the kingdom’s air defenses would return to full alert, the Times said.

Despite tensions between them, Israel and Saudi Arabia share a mutual hostility to Iran.

“We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” the Times quoted a Saudi government source as saying.

According to the report, the four main targets for an Israeli raid on Iran would be uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, a gas storage development at Isfahan and a heavy-water reactor at Arak.

Secondary targets may include a Russian-built light water reactor at Bushehr, which could produce weapons-grade plutonium when complete.

Even with midair refueling, the targets would be as the far edge of Israeli bombers’ range at a distance of some 2,250km. An attack would likely involve several waves of aircraft, possibly crossing Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Aircraft attacking Bushehr, on the Gulf coast, could swing beneath Kuwait to strike from the southwest, the Times said.

Passing over Iraq would require at least tacit consent to the raid from the United States, whose troops are occupying the country. So far, the Obama Administration has refused this.

On Wednesday the United Nations passed a fourth round of sanctions against Iran in an attempt to force it to stop enriching uranium. But immediately after the UN vote, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed the nuclear program would continue.

Israel hailed the vote – but said sanctions were not enough and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to rule out a raid.

Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, is believed to have held secret meetings with high-ranking Saudi officials over Iran.