Quote:Neoconservatives Lead Charge Against Turkey
Posted By Jim Lobe On June 9, 2010 @ 11:00 pm As the right-wing leadership of the organized U.S. Jewish community defends Israel against international condemnation for its deadly seizure of a flotilla bearing humanitarian supplies for Gaza, a familiar clutch of neoconservative hawks is going on the offensive against what they see as the flotilla’s chief defender, Turkey.
Outraged by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip’s Erdogan’s repeated denunciations of the May 31 Israeli raid, as well as his co-sponsorship with Brazil of an agreement with Iran designed to promote renewed negotiations with the West on Tehran’s nuclear program, some neoconservatives are even demanding that the U.S. try to expel Ankara from NATO as one among of several suggested actions aimed at punishing Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) government.
"Turkey, as a member of NATO, is privy to intelligence information having to do with terrorism and with Iran," noted the latest report by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a hard-line neoconservative group that promotes U.S.-Israeli military ties and has historically cultivated close ties to Turkey’s military, as well.
"If Turkey finds its best friends to be Iran, Hamas, Syria and Brazil (look for Venezuela in the future) the security of that information (and Western technology in weapons in Turkey’s arsenal) is suspect. The United States should seriously consider suspending military cooperation with Turkey as a prelude to removing it from the organization," suggested the group.
Its board of advisers includes many prominent champions of the 2003 Iraq invasion, including former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director James Woolsey, and former U.N. Amb. John Bolton.
Neoconservative publications, notably the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard and the National Review, have also been firing away at the AKP government since the raid.
"Turkey now represents a major element in the global panorama of radical Islam," declared the Standard’s Stephen Schwartz, while Daniel Pipes, the controversial director of the Likudist Middle East Forum (MEF), echoed JINSA’s call for ousting Ankara from NATO and urged Washington to provide direct support for Turkey’s opposition parties in an article published by the National Review Online.
The Journal has been running editorials and op-eds attacking Turkey on virtually a daily basis since the raid, accusing its government, among other things, of having "an ingrained hostility toward the Jewish state, remarkable sympathies for nearby radical regimes, and an attitude toward extremist groups like the IHH (the Islamist group that sponsored the flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi Marmara) that borders on complicity."
On Monday, it ran an op-ed by long-time hawk Victor Davis Hanson that labeled the IHH "a terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaeda", while an earlier op-ed, by Robert Pollock, its editorial features editor, called Erdogan and his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, "demagogues appealing to the worst elements in their own country and the broader Middle East."
Meanwhile, in an op-ed published by The Forward, a Jewish weekly, Michael Rubin, a Perle protégé at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), accused Turkey of having "become a conduit for the smuggling of weapons to Israel’s enemies", notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The onslaught is ironic both because of the neo- conservatives’ long cultivation of Turkey and their avowed support for promoting democratic governance — of which they have singled out Turkey for special praise — in the Muslim world.
Neoconservatives were among the most important promoters of the military alliance between Israel and Turkey that began to take shape in the late 1980s and was consolidated by the mid-1990s.
In fact, Perle and another of his protégés, former undersecretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith, worked as paid lobbyists for Turkey during that period, in major part to persuade the powerful "Israel Lobby" on Capitol Hill to promote Ankara’s interests on Capitol Hill.
In 1996, the two men participated in a task force chaired by Perle that proposed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he work with Turkey and Jordan to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power as part of an alliance designed to transform the strategic balance in the Middle East permanently in favor of Israel.
But the Turkey promoted by Perle and his fellow-neocons in the 1980s and ’90s was one that was dominated by a secular business and political elite carefully monitored by an all- powerful military institution that mounted three coup d’etats between 1960 and 1980 and intervened a fourth time in 1997 to oust an Islamist-led government.
Despite its close links to both the U.S. and Israel, however, the Turkish military badly disappointed the neo- cons in the run-up to Washington’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Instead of insisting that the civilian government at the time grant U.S. requests to use Turkish territory as a major launching pad into northern Iraq, the armed forces decided to defer to overwhelming parliamentary and public opposition to the invasion.
"I think for whatever reason they did not play the strong leadership role on that issue that we would have expected," complained then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, a long-time Perle friend and colleague who, despite his lavish praise of Turkey as a model Muslim democracy, headed repeated efforts by the George W. Bush administration to persuade Turkey’s national security council — where the military’s voice was dominant — to effectively overrule its parliament.
Erdogan, who became prime minister just a week before the invasion and whose political and economic reforms have been widely praised in the West, at first sought good relations with Israel. As late as 2007, he arranged for Shimon Peres to become the first Israeli president to address the Turkish parliament.
By then, however, many neocons had become concerned about Erdogan’s efforts to weaken the military’s power, his warm reception of a top Hamas leader in 2005, criticism of Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in 2006, and rapprochement with Syria.
When the military not so subtly threatened to intervene against Erdogan and the AKP in 2007, some neocons, notably Perle, suggested that the U.S. should not try to discourage it. Others, including the Standard’s Schwartz and Pipes, encouraged it as the lesser of two evils, even as the Journal defended the AKP as "more democratic than the secularists."
Since Erdogan’s furious denunciation of Israel, and Peres personally, at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) of Israel’s Cast Lead operation in Gaza in Jan 2009, however, neocons of virtually all stripes — including those, like the Journal’s editorial writers, who have praised the AKP as a democratizing force — have turned against Ankara. And the flotilla incident, combined with Erdogan’s perceived defense of Iran’s nuclear program, has raised their animus to new heights.
"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," wrote Eliot Cohen, professor at Johns Hopkins University, in a Journal op-ed Monday.
(Inter Press Service)

Quote:German-Jewish Boat to Challenge Israeli Blockade

By Charles Hawley

AP

Palestinians enjoying a water pipe while looking out into the Mediterranean Sea. The waters off the Gaza Strip could get busy this summer.



A group of German Jews has stepped up efforts to send a humanitarian mission to the Gaza Strip in defiance of the Israeli sea blockade. Increasingly, it looks as though the group will have plenty of competition. The waters off Gaza promise to be busy this summer.
For years, the waters just off the coast of the Gaza Strip have been relatively quiet. Ever since Israel imposed an air, land and sea blockade on the region following the ascent of Hamas to power in 2007, fewer and fewer visitors have risked the trip. Even the local fishing industry has suffered mightily.


Now, though, a little over a week after the Israeli raid on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza City -- an operation which resulted in 9 dead and global condemnation of Israel -- sea-going traffic looks as though it might soon pick up. Several groups have threatened to send ships to test the Israeli blockade, among them a group of Jewish activists based in Germany. "We want to break the Gaza occupation and end the occupation of the West Bank as well," Kate Katzenstein-Leiterer, a member of the executive committee of the European Jews for a Just Peace, which is organizing the mission, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "We as Jews want to bring the Palestinians something other than bombs."
Donations Flooding In
She says that between eight and 16 people will be on board the boat, which plans to sail in mid-July. The ship, whose current location in the Mediterranean is being kept secret, will be carrying school supplies, musical instruments, children's clothing and "stuff for children that Israel has forbidden, such as sweets and chocolates."
The idea for the project is not new. The group, made up of pro-Palestinian Jews in Germany and around Europe, began collecting funds for their mission in 2008. But the Israeli raid on a flotilla of aid ships early last week has increased both interest in the project and the likelihood that it will become a reality. Donations, says Katzenstein-Leiterer, have been flooding in since the May 31 raid.
It has also, however, demonstrated that such a mission could be dangerous. "Because of what happened, we are quite concerned," said Katzenstein-Leiterer. "We are afraid that we too could become involved in a clash, which we don't want. We will not use violence."
Still, by the time they arrive in the waters off the coast of the Gaza Strip, there is reason to believe that Israeli patience toward attempts at breaking the Gaza blockade may have worn thin. In addition to the German-Jewish group, others have also indicated their interest in sending ships to the Gaza Strip. The Iranian government announced Monday it would send two ships, loaded with humanitarian goods from the Iranian Red Crescent, to Gaza this summer. The head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the Iranian navy is prepared to escort the ships. Turkey -- whose foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu recently called the Israeli operation "Turkey's September 11" -- has also indicated its interest in sending more ships to Gaza in the near future.
Calming Frayed Nerves
Israel has vowed to continue its blockade of the Gaza Strip, reiterating its concern that Iran, in particular, seeks to smuggle weapons and munitions to the Islamist militants of Hamas. Still, Israeli officials said on Wednesday that the country was expanding the list of food items being allowed into the territory, the first small sign that Israel wishes to calm global nerves frayed by the raid.


Additionally the National Union of Israeli Students is hoping to be able to send 300 yachts and two ships toward Turkey with the aim of intercepting any additional aid ships and engaging them in dialogue. "We will tell them that if they want to help Gaza's residents, we will be happy to deliver their aid," reads the group's press release. "We would also like to (discuss) the Armenian issue and the problem of the Kurdish minority in Turkey."
European Jews for a Just Peace, for their part, are also interested in dialogue and have twice tried contacting the Israeli Embassy in Berlin to discuss their impending aid shipment. So far, says Katzenstein-Leiterer, they haven't received a response.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:Today there is going to be the release of some video footage that the IDF did NOT confiscate and shows what REALLY happened....

Myra Bronstein Wrote:...
There is also this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlElXOJV4CA&feature=player_embedded
Entitled "İsraeli soldiers murdering Peace Activist on The Freedom Flotilla"

Myra Bronstein Wrote:...
Jewish-American journalist and blogger Richard Silverstein has thrown his weight behind the veracity of video clip that appears to show two commandos in the process of executing someone....

Peter Presland Wrote:More from Anti-War.com. Seems the Israeli lobby is already calling for the suspension of Turkey from NATO as a prelude to expulsion.

This has the potential to get seriously out of control.

Quote:Neoconservatives Lead Charge Against Turkey
Posted By Jim Lobe On June 9, 2010 @ 11:00 pm As the right-wing leadership of the organized U.S. Jewish community defends Israel against international condemnation for its deadly seizure of a flotilla bearing humanitarian supplies for Gaza, a familiar clutch of neoconservative hawks is going on the offensive against what they see as the flotilla’s chief defender, Turkey.
Outraged by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip’s Erdogan’s repeated denunciations of the May 31 Israeli raid, as well as his co-sponsorship with Brazil of an agreement with Iran designed to promote renewed negotiations with the West on Tehran’s nuclear program, some neoconservatives are even demanding that the U.S. try to expel Ankara from NATO as one among of several suggested actions aimed at punishing Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) government.

Peter Presland Wrote:More from Anti-War.com. Seems the Israeli lobby is already calling for the suspension of Turkey from NATO as a prelude to expulsion.

This has the potential to get seriously out of control.

Ed Jewett Wrote: A short primer on Israeli propaganda for media dummies

Mark Stapleton Wrote:

Ed Jewett Wrote: A short primer on Israeli propaganda for media dummies

Great piece from Stuart Littlewood, Ed.

Thanks for posting it.