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Contents:
US Livid With Israel? Hamas Can’t Believe its Luck: David Horovitz, Times of Israel, Aug. 14, 2014 — After the abandonment of Israel by the UK, with its promise to limit arms sales to Israel if Hamas restarts its attacks on our civilians, we now learn that the US is already restricting arms sales to Israel…
UN Quiz: Who’s the Prime Minister of Israel?: Elliott Abrams, Council on Foreign Relations, Aug. 13, 2014 — Despite the criticism of the UN’s Goldstone Report, including by Goldstone himself, the UN seems determined to do it again.
The Hate That Feeds the War: Barbara Kay, National Post, Aug. 13, 2014 — As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
The Islamization of Turkey: Douglas Bloomfield, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 13, 2014— Turkey took another step closer to becoming an extremist Islamist state and patron of terrorists Sunday when Recep Tayyip Erdogan became the country’s first elected president.
Turkey's New Sultan: Wall Street Journal, Aug. 13, 2014 — Recep Tayyip Erdogan called his triumph in Turkey's weekend presidential election a "trophy night for democracy."
Israel Outflanks the White House on Strategy: Adam Entous, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 13, 2014
Mideast Peace Possible if Hamas Chooses: Mark Leibler, Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 12, 2014
The Real "Siege" of the Gaza Strip: Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, Aug. 12, 2014
UNHRC Declares Israel the Aggressor – Before the Inquiry: Elder of Ziyon, Algemeiner, Aug. 13, 2014
In Turkey, a Late Crackdown on Islamist Fighters: Anthony Faiola & Souad Mekhennet, Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2014
US LIVID WITH ISRAEL? HAMAS CAN’T BELIEVE ITS LUCK
David Horovitz
Times of Israel, Aug. 14, 2014
After the abandonment of Israel by the UK, with its promise to limit arms sales to Israel if Hamas restarts its attacks on our civilians, we now learn that the US is already restricting arms sales to Israel, having halted a planned supply of the Hellfire precision missiles that enable Israel to strike at the rocket launchers set up by Hamas in the heart of Gaza’s residential areas. While we seek to ascertain just how grave the crisis now is between Israel and its most important ally — is the case of the non-delivered Hellfires a procedural delay or the beginning of an embargo? is the relationship between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations ruptured or just very heavily strained? — nobody is going to believe the prime minister the next time he claims, as he did two weeks ago, that US support throughout this campaign has been “terrific.”
It becomes ever harder to understand what the US administration thinks it is doing in the Middle East. Its influence is waning across the region. It appears insufficiently robust — to put it mildly — when dealing with the region’s most dangerous regimes, notably Iran. Its ill-judged lack of enthusiasm for Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi — apparently blamed by Washington for ending an elected Muslim Brotherhood presidency, even though president Mohammed Morsi would likely have ensured no further elections — is pushing Egypt ever closer to Russia. And now ties with the region’s only democracy are fraying. Some in the administration appear to labor under the delusion that if only Benjamin Netanyahu — described by some US officials in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal as “reckless and untrustworthy” — could be weakened and eased aside, Israelis might elect a leadership more inclined to follow its thinking and consider territorial compromise in the cause of a rejuvenated peace process with the Palestinians. The fact is, of course, that an Israel attempting to de-fang Hamas, concerned at the possibility of rising tensions in the West Bank, aware that Hezbollah in Lebanon is many times more powerful than Hamas is, and watching Iran working to outwit the West on its route to nuclear weapons, is as likely to veer left as Hamas is to voluntarily disarm. Far from being the most obdurate prime minister, Netanyahu is the most moderate that Israel can be expected to choose in the foreseeable future.
It is frankly astounding to the overwhelming majority of Israelis that Israel is being blamed for and pressured to end a war it manifestly sought to avoid — against a terrorist-government sworn to its destruction that repeatedly breaches the ceasefire efforts Israel consistently accepts. That the conflict is widely misrepresented, and that hostile governments are critical, is bad enough for Israel. Far, far graver is that key allies, to one degree or another, are turning upon it…It should be blindingly obvious that Israel and Egypt do not impose the blockade as a collective punishment or caprice. There was no blockade before Hamas seized power in 2007. Israel had unilaterally left Gaza two years earlier, and hoped to be rewarded with tranquility. If Gaza was not run by a terrorist government, there would be no need for a security blockade to prevent arms smuggling. Rather than criticizing Israel for seeking to protect its civilians from Hamas, and moving now to limit its capacity to do so, the US, UK and the rest of the international community should be emphatically backing Israel in its struggle against the cynical Hamas — for the sake, too, of the civilians of Gaza. They should be insisting that Hamas disarm. And they should be making clear that they share Israel’s and Egypt’s concern that lifting the blockade is not tenable so long as any easing of restrictions would be exploited by Hamas. They would thus be underlining the message to Gazans that Hamas is not fighting for their freedom, as it claims, but is, through its pursuit of war against Israel, denying them their freedom. They would also be giving Israel reason to believe that when it finds itself in crisis — in good part, it can be argued, because it undertook a territorial withdrawal widely urged by the international community — the world will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with it. Right now, the sense in Israel is quite the reverse — not support, but abandonment.
From Hamas’s point of view, it must be a source of immense delight to witness the strains, and practical fallout, in the relationship between Washington and Jerusalem. It wins an election in which the US insisted it be allowed to take part, even though it has never renounced terrorism. It murders its way to control of Gaza. It diverts Gaza’s resources to turn the Strip into one great big terrorist bunker. It hits Israel, over and over and over again. It intimidates international journalists to not report on and film its attack methods. And the international community condemns Israel, the UN sets up inquiries into Israeli war crimes, and Israel’s allies limit its arms supplies. All it needs to do, Hamas can only conclude, is keep firing at Israel’s towns and villages, forcing Israel to respond, confident that this will bring still more criticism down on Israel as well as growing restrictions on Israel’s ability to defend itself. Wow, the Hamas leaders must be thinking, the free world is just so dumb.
UN QUIZ: WHO’S THE PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL?
Elliott Abrams
Council on Foreign Relations, Aug. 13, 2014
Despite the criticism of the UN’s Goldstone Report, including by Goldstone himself, the UN seems determined to do it again. Goldstone investigated “Operation Cast Lead,” the war between Israel and Hamas in December 2008 and January 2009, or more precisely he ignored Hamas and investigated Israel. Now the UN Human Rights Council has appointed a commission to investigate the current conflict, and once again Israel alone is to be the target. There will be no investigation of the rocket and mortars fired at Israel by Hamas, nothing about the purpose of the terror tunnels dug by Hamas into Israel, nothing about human shields, nothing even about Hamas’s use of UN facilities as storage sites and launching pads.
This kind of investigation requires the right leader, and the UN appears to have found him: a Canadian law professor named William Schabas. No nonsense about objectivity here: Schabas is on record denouncing Israel repeatedly, as UN Watch has documented. But it gets worse: he is also on record as saying that Prime Minister Netanyahu should be “in the dock” for the crimes Israel committed during Operation Cast Lead. Minor problem: Netanyahu was not in government at the time; Ehud Olmert was prime minister then. Such small details do not apparently trouble Schabas: what’s the difference, prosecute one Israeli or another. His own intense hostility to Netanyahu, also documented by UN Watch, may have led to this little mistake–which shows not only hostility to Israel and Netanyahu but a cavalier attitude toward the facts. All in all, he’s exactly what the UN Human Rights Council is looking for. Canada’s foreign minister John Baird had it right when he tweeted “UN Human Rights Council continues to be a sham for advancing human rights; today’s ann’t for members of its Gaza inquiry reveals its agenda.”
Barbara Kay
National Post, Aug. 13, 2014
As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. In every religious faith, in every ideology, leaders know that the surest route to mass compliance and unshakable faith is through the children. Get ‘em early and, if possible (in democracies it isn’t), insulate them from any competing belief system. If there is ever to be harmony between Israel and the Palestinians, it won’t come about solely through negotiations over settlements or demilitarization or the right of return. True peace will only exist when Palestinian children are no longer brainwashed into Judeophobia from birth.
There are Israeli individuals who loathe all Arabs, and who say so. Most other Israelis condemn such hateful expressions. They aren’t the norm because Israeli children are not exposed to hatred of any collective demographic in school, at synagogue or via children’s programming on TV. But a child in Gaza today would likely have seen a TV show like the one I recently viewed, which aired this past May. In one segment an older child host “interviews” younger ones. Rawan, the older girl, asks a little girl, “Tulin, why do you want to become a policeman [like your uncle Ahmad]?” Tulin: “They shoot thieves.” Prompt from Rawan: “And they shoot Jews, right? You want to be like him? Allah willing, when you grow up.” Tulin nods. “I will shoot the Jews.” Rawan: “All of them?” “Yes.” “Good.” Rawan smiles broadly. In another segment, we see a circle of children who look about six to 10. Again, an older girl interviews a younger one. “Iman, you are the daughter of the martyr [Abu] Nidal. What did your father do to help liberate Jersualem?” Iman: “He produced missiles.” Prompt: “He produced the first missile and it was called ‘Qassam’, right? Did [your grandmother, Nidal’s mother] encourage him to do so?” “Yes, of course.” “Would you like to follow in their footsteps?” “Yes.”
In a third segment, the children are led in song by a chicken mascot figure, chanting in unison, “The mothers send their sons to victory or to Paradise, Allah willing (repeat). Jihad bestows pride and glory upon you when you become a martyrdom-seeker (repeat). Oh, explosive device of glory — with her blood she created freedom (repeat). Ask [suicide bomber] Fatima Al-Nazzar how one should live a life of pride.” A young girl then extols the life of Fatima, concluding, “When one of us is martyred, we say that his life is precious, yet it is a cheap price to pay for the liberation and defence of the homeland.” This show is not exceptional. It is typical. Is it any wonder that by the time they are adults, virtually all Palestinians hate all Jews and wish for their extermination? I can think of no other conquered territory in which state-sanctioned exterminationist hatred toward the conquerors’ ethnicity or religion is systematically inculcated in children via cultural institutions — institutions funded and serviced by the United Nations, no less, which only adds insult to injury.
How is one to conclude a “peace” under such circumstances? Peace negotiations with Palestinians should be predicated on the cessation of incitement to hatred of Jews in children, which is a form of child abuse and a hateful practice to all civilized people. We would not know about this vile propaganda if it were not for organizations like Palestinian Media Watch and, in this case, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which has a wider mandate. For more than 15 years, MEMRI, an independent and non-partisan non-profit organization based in Jerusalem (MEMRI Canada is headquartered in Montreal) has translated mainstream media, speeches, sermons, social media and online forums of the Arab and Muslim world that were not previously available in the West. MEMRI maintains the largest archive in the world of translations and research from Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Pashtu and Dari sources. MEMRI provides services to the RCMP, the Armed Forces, the Canada Border Service Agency, the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board and the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has called MEMRI’s work “a peaceful weapon of truth-telling in a civilizational conflict in which we are all engaged.” The famous words of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir are often invoked: “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” Arabs love their children. What they believe is pleasing to Allah in the expression of that love is the more intractable issue.
Douglas Bloomfield
Jerusalem Post, Aug. 13, 2014
Turkey took another step closer to becoming an extremist Islamist state and patron of terrorists Sunday when Recep Tayyip Erdogan became the country’s first elected president. That should worry Washington. It already has the country’s 17,000 Jews very nervous. The increasingly autocratic Erdogan has carved out a reputation as one of the most virulently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic world leaders today. Turkey is a long-time NATO ally, but under Erdogan it has moved closer to Iran and radical Islamists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and, possibly, ISIS. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has been actively recruiting in Turkey, Erdogan’s government admitted, and Turkish and other media reports that Turkey has provided funds and medical assistance for the notorious terror group. The Jerusalem Post quotes an unnamed ISIS source saying, “Turkey paved the way for us. Had Turkey not shown such understanding for us, the Islamic State would not be in its current place. It showed us affection.”
Erdogan’s visceral hatred of Israel – which predates the 2010 flotilla incident – led him to burn 10 Israeli intelligence assets in Iran, according to The Washington Post, which also reported his intelligence chief has close links to Teheran. His vitriol reached new heights during the recent Gaza war when he repeatedly likened Israel and its leaders to Hitler and the Nazis, accused Israel of “barbarism surpassing Hitler” and of deliberately killing Palestinian mothers. He accused Israel of genocide in Gaza and his foreign minister called Israel’s actions “ethnic cleansing and a crime against humanity.” The Turks, of all people, should know that’s a false charge. The term “genocide” was actually created with the systematic Turkish slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians during and right after World War I. That was part of its ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Greeks and Assyrians who Turkey drove out of their homelands. When resolutions are introduced in Congress to commemorate the Armenian genocide, the Turkish government goes berserk and blames the Jews. Its officials call the Israeli government in Jerusalem and their highly paid Jewish lawyers in Washington demanding the legislation be stopped and Jewish sponsors remove their names.
When I was legislative director at AIPAC those who heard from the Turks would call me to help prevent passage. We ignored them. In the 100 years since the Armenian genocide, Turkey has gone from the Ottoman Empire to a secular republic and now Erdogan wants to turn it into an Islamic state. He has been moving in that direction during his three terms as prime minister and as the first elected president he is intent on transforming that office from a figurehead to a strong American-style executive minus the checks and balances, leading him to be called the Turkish Putin. He is expected to name as prime minister his protégé, the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, who shares his virulent strain of anti-Semitism. Erdogan has accused Jews of being behind many of the country’s problems and has failed to criticize threats against Jews by his supporters. He pressured Turkish Jews to publicly denounce Israel’s actions in Gaza while saying he disapproves of a negative “attitude toward our Jewish citizens in Turkey.” He can’t be the inciter-in-chief and then say he will protect Turkish Jews. Some had hoped he would dial down his anti-Semitism, popular among more conservative Muslims, but it only seems to be growing.
Turkey and Qatar, by providing diplomatic, financial and weapons support to Hamas, which is on the State Department terrorist list, are state sponsors of terrorism. Both countries also host major American military facilities, including air bases, and give sanctuary to terrorist leadership. The US administration has denounced Erdogan’s “inflammatory” and “offensive” attacks on Israel, saying they “only damage Turkey’s international standing.” He responded by telling Washington to mind its own business. Erdogan has long sought to replace Egypt as Washington’s go-to guy in the Middle East and chief broker between Israel and the Palestinians. But his close relationship with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood plus his rabid anti-Semitism have disqualified him in the eyes of the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
One result of the Islamization of Turkey under Erdogan has been the dramatic improvement in Israeli ties with Greece and Cyprus. Turkish ties to Israel began to unravel early on as Erdogan pivoted from Europe to warm up relations with Syria and Iran. He purged military and intelligence officials from the previous government who had good relations with their Israeli counterparts. But the worst blow came when Israeli stopped a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, attempting to break the Gaza blockade in 2010. Nine Turks who attacked the Israeli boarding party were killed. On his trip to Israel last year, President Barack Obama persuaded Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to phone Erdogan to apologize and agree to pay reparations. Erdogan trumpeted his humiliation of the Israelis but broke his promise to Obama and has consistently found excuses not to normalize relations. His latest is a demand that Israel lift the Gaza blockade. He also has said there will be no normalization as long as he is in office, and that will be at least another five years.
Another flotilla is planning to challenge the Israeli blockade, according to the group that sent the Mavi Marmara, Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH). No date was given for the trip, but look for Erdogan to cloak it in threats against Israel if it dares to interfere.
The bipartisan Congressional Turkish Caucus sent a sharply worded letter to Erdogan warning that his inflammatory anti-Semitic rhetoric is damaging bilateral relations. He contemptuously replied that they should instead be criticizing Israel’s “state terrorism” in Gaza. Congress needs to hold serious hearings on the US-Turkish relationship. Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic power grab, his support for terrorists, his reliability as a NATO ally and his trustworthiness for sharing US intelligence, security and technology should be carefully examined. If Erdogan has turned over the names of Israeli intelligence agents to Iran why wouldn’t he also share Israeli and American secrets and technology like drones with Teheran, as well as with Hamas or even ISIS? “By any objective measure, the United States should consider Turkey a state-sponsor of terror and an intelligence vulnerability,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser now with the American Enterprise Institute.
Wall Street Journal, Aug. 13, 2014
Recep Tayyip Erdogan called his triumph in Turkey's weekend presidential election a "trophy night for democracy." That's one way to put it. Another is that Mr. Erdogan is using his success at the polls to move his country toward a politics of illiberalism that will undermine democracy. Sunday's vote marked the first time Turks directly elected a president. Mr. Erdogan, who has served 11 years as Prime Minister, garnered 52% of ballots—13 points ahead of Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the candidate put forward by the two main opposition parties, the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Selahattin Demirtas of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party placed a distant third with 10%. As with municipal elections in March that saw Mr. Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, or AKP, retain key mayoralties, some opposition media were quick to allege voter fraud. While fraud can never be ruled out, the resort to the allegation is symptomatic of the state of the opposition, which has failed to advance a serious agenda to compete with the AKP's record of jobs and growth. Turkish GDP grew fourfold over the last decade—the main source of Mr. Erdogan's popular appeal.
Yet there is little question that Mr. Erdogan and the AKP are hollowing out the institutions of Turkish democracy. The Turkish government has in recent months attempted to ban YouTube and Twitter dealt brutally with peaceful protesters; fired or reassigned thousands of judges, prosecutors and law enforcers deemed insufficiently loyal; and earned the dubious honor of being the world's top jailor of journalists in 2012 and 2013, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. It may now get worse. Mr. Erdogan has already vowed to transform the presidency into an energetic executive office from the largely ceremonial function it currently plays. Abdullah Gul, the outgoing President who possesses more liberal instincts, will no longer serve as a moderating influence on Mr. Erdogan. And since no figure within the AKP can match his political skill and charisma, Mr. Erdogan is likely to lord over whoever might serve as the country's next Prime Minister.
One silver lining might be a settlement of Turkey's long-running tensions with its Kurdish minority. Mr. Erdogan has launched a productive peace process with the Kurds, who in recent years have been permitted to assert their linguistic and cultural identity in ways that were unthinkable a few years ago. But elsewhere in the region, he is less than constructive. Turkey under Mr. Erdogan has emerged as a chief backer of Hamas, hosting Saleh al-Arouri, the operative suspected to have masterminded the kidnapping of three Israeli teens earlier this summer. Ankara may also seek rapprochement with Tehran, having already helped the Iranian regime evade sanctions by facilitating billions of dollars in gas-for-gold transactions. Turkey is a NATO member and was long a linchpin of the American order in the Middle East—or at least what remains of it. Neither the Obama Administration nor the European Union can be blamed for Mr. Erdogan's turn away from Western standards of openness and moderation, but Washington and Brussels should call him out if he continues his habit of abusing individual rights.
Israel Outflanks the White House on Strategy: Adam Entous, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 13, 2014—White House and State Department officials who were leading U.S. efforts to rein in Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip were caught off guard last month when they learned that the Israeli military had been quietly securing supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon without their approval.
Mideast Peace Possible if Hamas Chooses: Mark Leibler, Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 12, 2014—As of this writing, the war that raged between Israel and Hamas over the past month appears to have ebbed.
The Real "Siege" of the Gaza Strip: Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, Aug. 12, 2014—Recent calls for lifting the "siege" on the Gaza Strip have ignored that Hamas's main demand, even more than for an airport or seaport, is that Egypt reopen the Rafah border crossing, the Palestinians' only gateway to the Arab world.
UNHRC Declares Israel the Aggressor – Before the Inquiry: Elder of Ziyon, Algemeiner, Aug. 13, 2014—Here is the statement from the UN Human Rights Council establishing a “commission of inquiry:”
In Turkey, a Late Crackdown on Islamist Fighters: Anthony Faiola & Souad Mekhennet, Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2014—Before their blitz into Iraq earned them the title of the Middle East’s most feared insurgency, the jihadists of the Islamic State treated this Turkish town near the Syrian border as their own personal shopping mall.
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