Hamas in America is CAIR, MSA, and ISNA. Is it any wonder they are covering for the San Bernardino jihadis?
ISIS commander meets with Hamas in Gaza, Washington Times, December 5, 2015:
Shadi al-Menei, the commander of ISIS in the Sinai, is meeting with Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip to discuss ways that the terrorist groups can increase cooperation and coordinate attacks. There has been conflict between Sunni jihadis and Hamas previously in the Israeli territories of the West Bank and Gaza, as Islamic radicals want to continue to provoke Israel to attack, and Hamas has been more cautious. Now it seems those gloves are off and the two will be working together.
The Times of Israel reports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s observation in his 2014 speech to the U.N. General Assembly “that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree,” seems to be ringing true.
The paper reports that Hamas and ISIS are also discussing ways to increase arms smuggling in the area, including anti-tank rockets that the Sunni terror group has used to attack Israeli and Egyptian positions, including tanks and aircraft. The global coordination of terror organizations makes the danger to Western civilization all the more real.
In July, an Israeli general confirmed that the Israeli Defense Forces had “clear information” that Hamas was assisting ISIS in the Sinai, including through logistical support and arms smuggling. If Hamas can assist in the Sinai, it can assist bringing arms into the United States or Europe. The European and pacifist Left in the United States are dangerously flirting with disaster.
France has changed its hardline stance on the government in Damascus, with Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius saying he no longer believes that Syrian President Bashar Assad necessarily has to step down before a political transition takes place in the war-torn country.
“The fight against Daesh [Islamic State, or ISIS/ISIL] is crucial but it will only be totally effective if all the Syrian and regional forces are united,” Fabius told the French regional newspaper Le Progres.
This marks an apparent shift of priorities by France to tackling Islamic State, which staged a series of attacks on the French capital last month, killing 130 and injuring 352 others. Until recently, Paris echoed Washington in saying that Assad’s resignation is key to any political solution to the four-year Syrian conflict. Paris has repeatedly insisted on the removal of the Syrian president describing him as a “butcher” of his own people.
Paris now seems to accept that the Syrian army has to play a role in the fight against ISIS. “The operations must be led by local forces: moderate Syrian, Arab, Kurdish, and if necessary, in coordination with the Syrian army, which is impossible without a political transition,” Fabius told Le Progres, explaining that “the experience of the recent decades, whether it is in Iraq or in Afghanistan, shows that Western forces on the ground quickly appear like occupation forces.”
Fabius did insist, however, that eventually Assad must go.
“A united Syria implies a political transition. That does not mean that Bashar al-Assad must leave even before the transition, but there must be assurances for the future,” he added.
Even so, the comments mark a sudden but clear softening of Paris’ position toward the Syrian president. Just earlier this week, French FM stated that working with the Syrian army to fight ISIS is not possible until Assad has been removed from power.
“If we achieve a political transition and it’s no longer Bashar in charge of the Syrian army, there could be joint actions against terrorism. But under Bashar it’s not possible,” Fabius told France Inter radio, speaking at the UN climate conference in Le Berget.
“It is obvious that it’s not under the leadership of Mr Assad that the army could be engaged alongside the moderate opposition,” he added on Monday.
On a trip to Washington last week, French President Francois Hollande said Assad “cannot be the future of Syria,” saying he must resign “as soon as possible” to halt civil war in the country.
Meanwhile US President Barack Obama told a news conference on Tuesday that ceasefires may soon be established in some parts of Syria, following the achievements in the Vienna negotiations by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“What can happen is if the political process that John Kerry has so meticulously stitched together, in concert with Foreign Minister Lavrov of Russia, if that works in Vienna, then it’s possible given the existing accord that the parties have already agreed to, that we start seeing at least pockets of ceasefires in and around Syria,” Obama told reporters before leaving the global climate summit in Paris.
The US president also repeated his assertion that that Russia is welcome to join the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, on condition that it stops supporting the Syrian government.
But he added: “I don’t expect you’re going to see a 180 [degree] turn on [Russia’s] strategy over the next several weeks.”
This still image taken from a video shared on the social media reportedly shows Turkish tanks being deployed to Mosul’s Bashiqa region.
Turkey will have a permanent military base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul as the Turkish forces in the region training the Peshmerga forces have been reinforced, Hürriyet reported.
The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter’s visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4.
At least 150 Turkish soldiers, accompanied by 20-25 tanks, were deployed to the area by land late on Dec. 4, Anadolu Agency reported.
Turkish army sources told Anadolu Agency on Dec. 5 that they had been training fighters across four provinces in northern Iraq to fight ISIL.
According to the military, the Peshmerga forces have been trained for fighting with homemade explosives, heavy machine guns, mortars, artillery and also received first-aid training.
More than 2,500 Peshmerga, including high-ranking officers, have attended the Turkish training, the military added.
The KRG’s deputy Peshmerga minister, Major General Karaman Kemal Omar, said that the training given by Turkish soldiers made a huge contribution to an operation by Iraqi Kurdish forces to retake Sinjar district from ISIL on Nov. 12.
Sinjar is a town located 120 kilometers west of Mosul with an Ezidi majority. It fell to ISIL in August 2014.
For more than two years, Turkey has had a group of soldiers in Bashiqa, located 32 kilometers north of Mosul, which is under Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) control. The soldiers have been training the Peshmerga forces and other anti-ISIL groups.
Some 150 Turkish soldiers and 20 tanks were deployed to the base to take over the mission from the 90 soldiers who have been in the region for two years.
With the increased number of Turkish soldiers deployed to the base, an increase is expected in the number of militia trained.
ISIL militants overran Mosul, a city of more than one million people, in June 2014, but a much anticipated counter-offensive by Iraqi forces has been repeatedly postponed because they are involved in fighting elsewhere.
A statement from the Iraqi prime minister’s media office confirmed that Turkish troops numbering “around one armed battalion with a number of tanks and cannons” had entered its territory near Mosul without request or permission from Baghdad authorities. It called on the forces to leave immediately.
In a separate statement flashed on state TV, the Iraqi foreign ministry called the Turkish activity “an incursion” and rejected any military operation that was not coordinated with the federal government, Reuters reported.
In Washington, two U.S. defense officials said that the United States was aware of Turkey’s deployment of hundreds of Turkish soldiers to northern Iraq but that the move is not part of the U.S.-led coalition’s activities.
Another senior Turkish official told Reuters the soldiers in the region were there to train the Peshmerga forces.
“This is part of the fight against Daesh [ISIL],” he said, adding that there were around 20 armored vehicles accompanying them as protection.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has slammed Washington’s reaction to the outing of the secret oil trade between Turkey and Islamic State terrorists, calling it a “theatre of the absurd” and saying it looks rather like “direct patronage.”
“Finally, our colleagues from the State Department and the Pentagon have confirmed that the photo-proof, which we presented at a briefing [on December 2], of the origin and destination of the stolen oil, coming from the areas controlled by the terrorists, is authentic,” Major General Igor Konashenkov, a Defense Ministry spokesman, told a media briefing on Saturday.
“However, the US claim that they ‘don’t see the border crossings with tanker trucks crossing the border,’ raises a smile, if only, because the photos are still images,” he added.
The spokesman advised the American side to have a look through the videos, which were also presented by the Russian Defense Ministry, showing “how the tanker trucks not only drive through checkpoints at the Turkish border, but pass through them without even stopping.”
f the Russian evidence is not enough, the US and its allies should look at the footage from their own state-of-the art drones, “the number of which has recently tripled above the Turkish-Syrian border and oil-rich areas controlled by the terrorists,” he said.
According to Konashenkov, it should be impossible for the Western coalition to miss the oil smuggling business running between Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Turkey, given their range of technical capabilities in Syria and Iraq.
“So when US officials claim that they do not see oil smuggled by terrorists to Turkey, this is already not dodging the issue, but smacks of a direct patronage,” he added.
The spokesman pointed out that the coalition’s drones and warplanes have been intensively using Incirlik Air Base in Turkey for their operations.
On Friday, an unnamed US State Department official confirmed to Reuters that the Russian photos of thousands of oil tanker trucks in Syria were authentic.
However, the official stressed that he hasn’t seen “the imagery of the border crossing with trucks crossing the border, and that’s because I don’t believe that exists.”
Konashenkov also commented on a recent statement by US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who said at a Senate hearing that “over the past several weeks” the Pentagon has “intensified the air campaign against ISIL’s war-sustaining oil enterprise.”
With the US-led air campaign against Islamic State beginning in September 2014, the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman wondered: “Does this mean that over the last one and a half years the Americans were only destroying non-war-sustaining infrastructure of the militants?”
“Now we know where the bandits got the money to buy weapons, recruit new supporters, and stage bloody acts of terror, and why the territory controlled by IS increased by hundreds of times during this period,” he said.
Konashenkov called recent statements by the US State Department and Pentagon “‘a theater of absurd,’ based on double standards and the wordplay.”
“First, they see something – then they don’t. They divide the opposition into moderate and non-moderate. Even terrorists, in their view, can be bad or very bad,” he said.
“We are convinced that terrorism has no comparative degrees or nationalities. Terrorism – an absolute evil that must be fought in all its manifestations,” he added.
On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry released photo and video proof that the main smuggling route for oil produced by Islamic State terrorists runs through Turkey, accusing Turkish leadership, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of being involved in the criminal trade.
Russia’s claims were denied by both Ankara and Washington, with Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, calling Turkey “a great partner.”
Turkey shot down a Russian jet. No gain, but plenty of damage to its economy. Russia gave up one jet to Turkey and has made its military presence in Syria and the strategic eastern Mediterranean permanent.
Turkey can no longer speak to Russia about the possibility of ousting Assad.
Putin seems to be making sure that NATO will do nothing.
At this year’s G-20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said that the radical jihadist Islamic State (IS) was being financed by donors from at least 40 countries, including some G-20 member states — clearly pointing his finger, without naming names, at Saudi Arabia and Turkey. A few days later, two Turkish F-16 jets shot down a Russian SU-24 warplane, and claimed that the Russian jet had violated Turkish airspace for 17 seconds on the country’s Syrian border — a violation Russia denies. This was the first time a Soviet or Russian military aircraft was shot down by a NATO air force since the end of WWII.
Turkey and Russia have long been in a proxy war in Syria: Russia, together with its quieter partner, China, supports the Shi’ite Iran-backed Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad; and Turkey explicitly supports Assad’s Sunni opponents [“moderate” jihadists] — apparently in the hope of building a Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas-type of regime in Damascus that would be friendly to its own Islamist government. After the downing of the Russian jet, the Turco-Russian proxy war has become less proxy.
No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin twice refused to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the Paris Climate Summit this week. Pictured: President Putin with then Prime Minister Erdogan, meeting in Istanbul on December 3, 2012. (Image source:kremlin.ru)
An angry Putin called the incident “a stab in the back.” He declined Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s requests to discuss the issue. He twice refused to meet Erdogan on the sidelines of the Paris Climate Summit.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, quickly cancelled his official visit to Turkey — a visit that had been scheduled for the day after the downing of the Russian jet. At the outset, NATO member Turkey had taught Russia a good lesson. In reality, judging from the consequences, it all looks like a Russian gambit, with Turkey shooting itself in the foot and risking a new NATO-Russia conflict.
Russia’s ire seemingly is being expressed in economic terms:
Moscow said it will introduce visa restrictions for Turkish citizens, beginning Jan. 1, 2016.
Russian authorities detained a group of Turkish businessmen on charges of “false statements about their trip to the country.”
Press reports noted that Russia was considering limiting or excluding Turkish construction companies from the country, a potentially multi-billion dollar loss for the Turkish economy.
Moscow warned its citizens against visiting Turkey — a ban that could deal a big blow to Turkey’s lucrative tourism industry. Last year 4.5 million Russians visited Turkey, mostly its Mediterranean coast. Russian tour operators were warned to suspend business with Turkey.
The fate of two huge Turco-Russian energy projects remains unknown, as Russia’s energy minister, Alexei Ulyukayev, did not rule out sanctions hitting the Turkish Stream gas pipeline and a planned Russian nuclear energy plant in Turkey. Turkey buys about 55% of its natural gas from Russia. Its second largest gas supplier is Iran, Russia’s ally — and Turkey’s rival — in Syria.
Russia’s Minister of Agriculture, Alexander Tkachev, said that Russia would be replacing Turkish food imports with goods from Iran, Israel and Morocco.
Shipments of wheat to Turkey from key Russian ports were put on hold.
The Kremlin officially announced a wide range of sanctions on Turkey, including a ban on Turkish workers (with estimates that 90,000 will be fired by Jan. 1, 2016), restrictions on imported goods and services from Turkey and calls for “strengthening of port control and monitoring to ensure transport safety.”
Around 1,250 trucks carrying Turkish exports were blocked from entering Russia on Nov. 30 and were stranded at border posts, awaiting clearance.
Russian soccer clubs will be banned from signing Turkish players during the upcoming winter break.
All of that is commercially punitive. There is a more serious side of the Turco-Russian conflict that concerns NATO and western interests in the Middle East.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on Nov. 25 that Russia would deploy S-400 surface-to-air missile systems in its Hmeymim air base in Syria.
Turkey shot down a Russian jet. No gain, but plenty of damage to its economy. Russia gave up one jet and has made its military presence in Syria and the strategic eastern Mediterranean permanent. It has reinforced its bases in Syria and intends to build a new military base there. Turkey can no longer speak to Russia about the possibility of ousting Assad.
In a further move to escalate tensions, the Russian General Staff deployed one of its largest air defense ships at the edge of Turkish territorial waters in the Mediterranean. Russian military spokesman General Sergei Rudskoi said that Russian bomber aircraft would be “supported by chasers, and any kinds of threats will be responded to instantly.” Accordingly, The Moscow, one of the Russian Navy’s two largest warships and the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, will be deployed where Turkey-Syria territorial waters connect.
In addition, Putin issued orders to deploy nearly 7,000 troops, plus anti-aircraft missiles, rocket launchers, and artillery to the Turkish border, and asked them to be in readiness for full combat.
There have been other military repercussions, too. Since the shooting down of the Russian jet, the Russian military has been regularly pounding the Syrian villages near the Turkish border that populated by the Turkmen, a Turkish ethnicity that supports jihadists in Syria — and is supported by Ankara. The Russians also have been hitting Turkish aid convoys bound for Turkmen villages. More than 500 Turks and Turkmen have been killed in Russian airstrikes. Meanwhile, the U.S.-led allied air strikes against IS have come to a halt. Neither Washington nor Ankara is keen for another conflict with Russia. So, IS and Russia keep on flourishing.
The Russian military has scrapped all contacts with the Turkish military, possibly waiting for the first Turkish military aircraft that violates foreign airspace to shoot.
Turkey has every liberty to challenge Russia and, inevitably, become the victim. But with its geostrategic, Islamist ambitions, it is exposing NATO allies to the risk of a fresh conflict with Russia — and at a time when the wounds of previous conflicts remain unhealed.
Putin has accused Turkey’s leaders of encouraging the Islamization of the Turkish society, which he said was a “problem.” He was not wrong. In fact, Islamism and neo-Ottoman ambitions are the source of Turkey’s (not-so) proxy war with Russia in the Syrian theater. Although Turkey, officially, is a NATO member and part of the allied campaign against IS, its Sunni Islamist ambitions over Syria hinder the global fight against jihadists. A Turco-Russian conflict is weakening the fight.
Putin seems to be making sure that NATO will do nothing.
Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
The Iraqi government has demanded that Ankara withdraw the more than 100 Turkish forces that entered Iraq with tanks and artillery for alleged “training” of troops near Islamic State-occupied Mosul. Baghdad stressed the unsanctioned move was a breach of its sovereignty.
The Iraqi foreign ministry said in a statement early on Saturday that the Turkish troops were acting in violation of the country’s sovereignty and demanded the forces withdraw immediately. “Around one regiment armoured with tanks and artillery” has entered the northern Nineveh area, according to the statement from the Iraqi Prime Minister’s media office.
The Iraqi authorities call on Turkey to respect good neighbourly relations and to withdraw immediately from the Iraqi territory,” the statement said, stressing that the Turkish troops entered “without the request or authorization from the Iraqi federal authorities,” which is a “serious breach of Iraqi sovereignty.”
The foreign ministry called Turkey’s move “an incursion,” Reuters reported.
According to the agency’s source, the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition was aware of the Turkey’s move.
“Turkish soldiers have reached the Mosul Bashiqa region. They are there as part of routine training exercises. One battalion has crossed into the region,” the source told Reuters without revealing the exact number of troops.
He added that the Turkish forces are “training Iraqi troops.”
However, according to two US defense officials quoted by Reuters, Turkey’s deployment is not part of the efforts of the US-led coalition battling Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).
On Friday, 130 Turkish soldiers equipped with heavy weapons were deployed at a military base on the outskirts of the city of Mosul, which is currently held by IS, according to the Daily Sabah newspaper.
According to Cumhuriyet newspaper, the number of the deployed Turkish troops amounts to at least 150.
The town of Bashiqa is located about 10 kilometers northeast of Mosul.
Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest city, was seized by Islamic State in June 2014 and has been fully governed by militants ever since. Moreover, the extremist group captured large stockpiles of weapons and ammunition that were stored in the city.
“In the collapse of Mosul, we lost a lot of weapons,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in an interview with Iraqiya state TV in June. “We lost 2,300 Humvees in Mosul alone,” he added.
The Turkish intrusion into Iraq comes shortly after Ankara’s motives in the war on Islamic State have been questioned by Moscow, Tehran, as well as by Baghdad.
The Russian government has been particularly vocal in pointing the finger at the illegal oil trade between IS terrorists and the Turks. Moscow-Ankara relations deteriorated after a Turkish F-16 jet downed a Russian Su-24 bomber on the Syrian-Turkish border for an alleged airspace violation on November 24, while the Russian jet was returning from an anti-terrorist mission. In the days after, the Russian Defense Ministry presented detailed photo and video evidence showing three huge “live pipelines” made of oil trucks effortlessly crossing the Syrian border into Turkey in militant-controlled areas.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described Turkey’s move as “a stab in the back by accomplices of the terrorists,” while the Defense Ministry directly tied the illegal Syrian and Iraqi oil trade – a chief lifeline for IS terrorists – to the family of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan has dismissed the accusations as “slander” and continued to defiantly present the downing of a non-hostile jet as a rightful move aimed at defending the Turkish border. The surviving Russian pilot has insisted the crew was in full control of the course of the flight and had never entered Turkey, while adding they had never received any visual or radio warning from the F-16. One Russian pilot, the commander of the jet, was killed by Turkmen rebel fire while parachuting from the plane, and one Russian Marine was killed during the search and recovery operation.
Meanwhile, as the US has stepped in for Turkey, supporting its refutation of Russia’s IS oil claims, other powers have come forward to back Moscow’s charges concerning Ankara’s trade with the terrorists. On Friday, Tehran said that it has collected photo and video evidence of IS oil entering Turkey by truck.
“If the government of Turkey is not informed of Daesh [derogatory term for IS] oil trade in the country, we are ready to put the information at its disposal,” Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted Expediency Council Secretary, Mohsen Rezaie, as saying. The official added that they are also ready to present the proof to the public.
While officially Baghdad is now considering whether there is enough evidence of Turkey’s involvement in oil trade with IS to file a formal protest at the UN Security Council, an Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman, Naseer Nuri, told Sputnik on Wednesday that “general information about the smuggling of Iraqi oil by trucks to certain countries, including Turkey” is already available to them, and “this oil is used to fund Daesh.”
Other Iraqi officials have openly accused Turkey of knowingly trading with the terrorists.
There is “no shadow of a doubt” that Ankara knows about the oil smuggling operations, Iraqi MP and former national security adviser Mowaffak al Rubaie told RT.
“The merchants, the businessmen [are buying oil] in the black market in Turkey under the noses – under the auspices if you like – of the Turkish intelligence agency and the Turkish security apparatus… There are security officers who are sympathizing with ISIS in Turkey. They are allowing them to go from Istanbul to the borders and infiltrate … Syria and Iraq,” he said.
“Money and dollars generated by selling Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market is like the oxygen supply to ISIS and it’s operation,” Rubaie added. “Once you cut the oxygen then ISIS will suffocate.”
“Let’s be very clear: ISIS is not just a terrorist organization; it is a Sunni terrorist organization. That means it blocks and targets Shi’a. And that means it’s serving the interests of Turkey and Saudi Arabia – even as it poses a threat to them.” – Retired Gen. Wesley Clark
Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General and retired U.S. General Wesley Clark revealed in an interview with CNN that the Islamic State (Daesh, ISIS) remains geostrategically imperative to Sunni nations, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as they clamor for strategic power over Shi’a nations, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. He explained that “neither Turkey nor Saudi Arabia want an Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon ‘bridge’ that isolates Turkey, and cuts Saudi Arabia off.”
When asked by the CNN host if Russian President Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that Turkey was “aiding ISIS” had any validity, he responded:
“All along there’s always been the idea that Turkey was supporting ISIS in some way. We know they’ve funneled people going through Turkey to ISIS. Someone’s buying that oil that ISIS is selling; it’s going through somewhere – it looks to me like it’s probably going through Turkey – but the Turks haven’t acknowledged that.”
After explaining this virtual gateway for the Islamic State’s oil, Clark was quick to emphasize that Putin’s allegations about Turkey’s support for terrorist organization, ISIS, aren’t without their own hypocrisy. Russia, of course, has been upholding President Bashar al-Assad’s administration in Syria against rebel groups backed by the U.S. — despite continuing denials by U.S. officials that that particular theater is its primary interest in the region.
He said, “Putin would like to dirty Turkey by saying it’s supporting terrorists, but the truth is that he’s supporting terrorists. I mean, the tactics used by the Assad regime have been terror tactics. They’re dropping barrel bombs on innocent civilians.”
Clark concludes the interview with a statement that encapsulates growing sentiment of many Westerners who’ve grown war-weary with such geopolitical wrangling overseas:
“There’s no good guy in this – this is a power struggle for the future of the Middle East.”
With Kurdish militia and US Special Forces on the ground, there is a realistic way to shut off the illegal flow of oil from Syria into Turkey, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at talks with his Serbian counterpart, Ivica Dacic.
Sealing the border between Turkey and Syria is more important at the moment than finding out who is buying the oil produced by Islamic State (IS, ISIS/ISIL), Lavrov said while speaking with Dacic in Belgrade on Wednesday. The talks come on the eve of a two-day conference of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), currently chaired by Serbia.
“Rather than launching a lengthy procedure of investigation, one must take an absolutely obvious step, i.e. close the Turkish-Syrian border,” Lavrov said, stressing that “Turkey’s efforts will not be enough and it will need help,” RIA Novosti reports.
“As for specific ways of sealing the border between Turkey and Syria, as well as between Turkey and Iraq, one must proceed from the real situation on the ground. Kurdish militia forces, which are allies of the US-led coalition, could be used both on the Syrian and Iraqi side of the border,” he added, as quoted by TASS.
Lavrov did not rule out involvement of US Special Forces stationed in Iraq in the border closure process either, but stressed that the process must be coordinated with Damascus. “Washington claims they could be also used in Syria. I am convinced that it could be done only with consent of the Syrian government,” Lavrov stressed.
At the same time, the minister announced that the facts concerning Turkey’s oil trade with Islamic State would be officially presented at the UN to all parties concerned.
“We have repeatedly publicly stated that oil from the IS-controlled territories is transported abroad, particularly to Turkey. The facts that substantiate these claims will be formally presented in the UN in particular, and to all parties concerned,” he said.
Referring to the November 24 downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber by a Turkish jet over Syria, Lavrov refuted Turkey’s claim that Russia had earlier refused to create “a hot line” between the militaries of the two countries, saying that such a line had been established, but that Ankara had never used it.
“Turkey’s media claim that he [Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu] proposed creating a “hot line” between the Defense ministries, but we [Russia] refused. This is a lie, as such a line was established at the earliest stage of the Russian Air Space Forces operation [in Syria] at Russia’s initiative,” he said.
“Turkey has never used it. It did not use it even in the incident on November 24,” Lavrov added, referring to the downing of Russia’s bomber.
The Russian foreign minister also stressed that, if by shooting down the Russian warplane Turkey had been trying to hinder talks on Syria in Vienna, or thwart Russia’s operation in Syria, it had failed.
“If Turkey’s downing of Russia’s plane on November 24 was aimed at sabotaging the political process within the Vienna group, then I can assure you that Turkey will not succeed in this matter,” Lavrov said after the talks with Dacic, who is also the current OSCE Chair.
However, Lavrov also said during the negotiations that he was ready to meet with his Turkish counterpart on the sidelines of the OSCE conference in order to try to lower recent tensions between the two countries.
“As far as the meeting with Turkish Minister [Mevlut] Cavusoglu goes, we are ready to make such a meeting on the sidelines [of the OSCE conference],” Lavrov told reporters as he arrived in Belgrade on Wednesday.
At the same time Lavrov warned that “it will be sad if we hear nothing new.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out at “part of the leadership in Turkey” during his annual address to the parliament, accusing Ankara of having trade ties with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. He also promised more sanctions for Turkey over downing of the Russian jet.
Putin said Russia still cannot comprehend why the downing of the plane happened.
“We were prepared to cooperate with Turkey on most sensitive issues and go further than their allies. Allah knows why they did it. Apparently Allah decided to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by taking their sanity,” Putin said.
Putin stressed that Moscow’s anger over the incident is directed at particular individuals and not at the Turkish people.
“We have many friends in Turkey,” he said. “They should know that we do not equate them and part of the current Turkish leadership, which holds a direct responsibility for the deaths of our troops in Syria,” he said.
He added that the killing of Russian officers would have long-term consequences for those responsible.
“We will not forget this aid to terrorists. We have always considered betrayal the worst and most shameful act. Let those in Turkey know it who shot our pilots in the back, who hypocritically tries to justify themselves and their actions and cover up the crimes of terrorists,” he said.
Putin said Russia would not resort to saber-rattling to respond to the Turkish actions, but neither would it limit itself to the economic sanctions it imposed since the incident.
The incident with the Russian Su-24 bomber shot down by Turkish warplanes near the Turkish-Syrian border has greatly deteriorated relations between the two countries. Turkey insists it acted in response to a brief violation of its airspace and was justified in using lethal force. Russia insists no violation took place and has accused Turkey of supporting terrorists in Syria.
The downing of the bomber resulted in the deaths of two Russian troops, who were the first combat losses during the two month-long Syrian campaign. The pilot of the downed plane was killed by a pro-Turkish militant group as he was parachuting to the ground. A marine was killed by militants when a helicopter dispatched to rescue the bomber crew came under fire from the ground.
Putin’s address started with a minute’s silence to commemorate the two troops. The widows of the dead Russians were present at the event.
Putin stressed that the Russian operation in Syria is aimed first and foremost at preventing fighters who went to the Middle East from Russia and its neighboring countries from returning home and bringing the threat of terrorist attacks to Russian soil.
“They are getting money, weapons, gathering strength. If they get stronger, winning there, they will inevitably come here to sow fear and hatred, blast, kill and torture people,” Putin said.
Putin called on all nations that have pledged to fight terrorism to join forces and abandon the notion that terrorist groups can be used for country’s own goals. He stressed that the rise of terrorism in the Middle East over the last few years was caused to a large degree by foreign meddling.
“Some countries in the Middle East and North Africa, which used to be stable and relatively prosperous – Iraq, Libya, Syria – have turned into zones of chaos and anarchy that pose a threat to entire world,” Putin said.
“We know why it happened. We know who wanted to oust unwanted regimes, and rudely impose their own rules. They triggered hostilities, destroyed statehoods, set people against each other and simply washed their hands [of the situation] – giving way to radicals, extremists and terrorists.”
Russia’s lost thousands of lives over two decades of terrorist attacks and is still not safe from terrorist attacks, as evidenced by the bombings in Volgograd in 2014 and the bombing of a Russian passenger plane in Egypt in October, Putin reminded.
“Breaking the bandits’ back took us almost 10 years,” he said. “We practically pushed the terrorists out of Russia, but we are still engaged in a fierce fight against the remainder of the gangs. This evil still comes back occasionally.”
Putin said the rise of jihadists in the Middle East in our time is not unlike the rise of Nazism in the mid-20th century, and that the world should learn from the mistakes of the past, when a failure to act in time resulted in the loss of millions of lives.
“We are facing a destructive barbaric ideology again and we have no right to allow those new obscurants to achieve their goals. We have to abandon all differences, create a single fist, a single anti-terrorist front, which would act in accordance with the international law and under the aegis of the United Nations,” he said.
Putin was speaking on Thursday before the Federal Assembly, a joint session of the two chambers of the Russian parliament, plus regional governors and the cabinet. The annual address is a traditional key policy report of the executive, which focuses on domestic politics rather than international relations.
‘Business as usual’ with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now over, Sergey Ivanov, the head of Putin’s office, confirmed to RT after the Russian president’s address:
“Yes, it is definitely over. But fighting terrorism is ‘business as usual’, as the Russian president said,” Ivanov said.
The Turkish leadership “must acknowledge that a tragic mistake was committed and to beg for [forgiveness], or this leadership will not play any significant role in bilateral relations between Russia and Turkey. We will not be able to have any ties with Turkey under this leadership if it doesn’t change its attitude,” Konstantin Kosachev, the chair of the State Duma Committee for Foreign Relations, told RT.
TEL AVIV – Despite repeated promises to stop the incitement, United Nations teachers in the Palestinian territories are glorifying knife attacks against what they term “Jewish apes and pigs,” the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch reported.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has imposed temporary suspensions on some of its Palestinian educators but nevertheless many of them continue to incite to violence, including posting images on social media of Palestinians brandishing blood-soaked knives with epitaphs encouraging the murder of “Zionist and Jewish apes and pigs.”
Last year, UNRWA received a total of $1 billion US in funding, largely from the EU and US.
UN Watch’s executive director Hillel Neuer asserts that the disciplinary action that UNRWA is currently administering is clearly not working. “Giving a slap on the wrist sends the message that it’s business as usual. Instead, those who incite to racism or murder should be fired, under a zero tolerance policy,” he said in a statement.
UN Watch further called for donor countries, including the US and the UK, to establish an independent commission of inquiry to investigate UNRWA’s pervading culture of impunity for perpetrators of racism and incitement.
“The UN and top funders of UNRWA such as the United States government must act immediately to terminate employees who are inciting murderous anti-Semitism and fueling the deadly pandemic of Palestinian attacks against Israeli Jews that have claimed the lives of innocent men, women and children,” said Neuer.
Neuer continued, “It’s time to put an end to the pattern and practice of UNRWA school principals, teachers and staff members posting anti-Semitic and terror-inciting images, a recurring theme that suggests a pathology of racism and violence within UNRWA.”
He also slammed the practice of UNRWA Spokesman Chris Gunness to bury reports of incitement by boycotting newspapers and NGOs that dare to report on them. Gunness spearheaded a campaign to discredit the NGO, turning to Twitter in an “Appeal to journalists: Please don’t turn UN Watch baseless allegations about anti-Semitism into a ‘he said she said’ story. It is a non-story.”
According to Neuer, the educators’ incitement to violence is in “gross violation” of UNRWA’s own regulations. Recent examples on teachers’ Facebook pages include posts of graphic images of the bloodied corpses of Israelis and texts that extol the terrorists as sacred martyrs. One teacher posted an image of a woman wearing miniature knives as earrings and bore the caption, “New accessories for Palestinians.”
No more Mr. Nice Guy.
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