by Daniel Greenfield

Throughout the War on Terror, liberals have been lecturing us on the virtue of holding on to the "Moral High Ground", which is their way of saying that we should forgo trying to defeat terrorists military, and instead show them up with our superior civil liberties. Yes Abdul, you may have a suitcase nuke, but if we catch you, we'll still  pay for your legal defense. Torture our soldiers if you will, Mohammed, but see if you aren't impressed when we TIVO your favorite team's soccer matches for you in that horrible 19 million dollar hellhole of misery and degradation at Guantanamo Bay.

Of course Mohammed is never going to be very impressed by his free legal team, Halal cooking, volleyball courts and pro bono prosthetic legs, because Islamists don't derive their moral high ground from doing nice things for their enemies. They derive their moral high ground from getting up on a high place and tossing rocks or grenades down at their enemies. A Good Muslim is willing to kill for Islam. The Koran says so explicitly. On the other hand liberals insist that only a Bad American is willing to kill for America. A Good American will believe that Islam is a religion of peace, even while he's having his head chopped off by Johnny Mujaheed. He will eschew any tacky American flags, in favor of Chomsky and Zinn essays that will enable him to understand what a rotten country he lives in, and why the terrorists chopping his head off might have a point. All this really means is that practicing the Moral High Ground is a good way to get beheaded and reading the works of mentally ill Communists is not a good survival strategy.

We can't win the War on Terror so long as we hold to liberal definitions of the Moral High Ground. We can't even begin to really fight it. What's worse, is that not only does this warped understanding of morality result in more American deaths, it results in more deaths of both fighters and civilians on the enemy side. Because where the soldier understand that the most moral way to win a war is, quickly. The bleeding heart liberal thinks that the most moral way to win a war is, never. To a liberal if we must fight a war, we should do it with our hands tied behind our backs, and after a decade of senseless bloodshed, we'll finally come to realize that war is a bad thing.

Putting liberals in charge of determining what soldiers can do in a war is like putting die hard big government advocates in charge of privatizing the government. Not only will they see that the whole thing fails, they'll make sure that it fails as painfully and horribly as possible in order to serve as a lesson to any future government that might flirt with any similar notion. They did it with the War on Terror, intimidating military interrogators with threats of legal action and exposure, while helping the terrorists realize that all they need to do is claim torture in order to be set free. They did it brilliantly in Iraq, subverting the reconstruction in the aftermath of a successful war, from within, until the entire thing collapsed into squabbling factions. They did it on Iran, feeding false claims that there was no nuclear program long enough for Bush to leave office.

Their goal is to break Western civilization. Break it of its exceptionalism. Break it of any notion that it has any worthwhile accomplishments to its name. Break it of any idea that it has a right to exist. That is their real Moral High Ground. National and international suicide in favor of nobler and better Third World creeds that won't be as greedy or as industrially developed, and will build societies based on sharing and caring, and of course the obligatory head chopping. Nothing else matters.

Israel, which has its own hard-at-work left, has something similar called "Purity of Arms" which is Hebrew for the "Courageous Restraint" medal that General McChrystal was thinking of handing out to US soldiers in Afghanistan for not killing terrorists. Purity of Arms is one of the best strategic advantages Israel has ever handed to the terrorists, because it gives the terrorists a free pass to carry out attacks behind civilians, while threatening soldiers with severe penalties if they fire without being 100 percent certain that they're about to be murdered if they don't. The ongoing captivity of Gilad Shalit and the entire Second Lebanon War would probably never have happened, if the IDF weren't constantly trapped in the Purity of Arms madness, as soldiers in a war zone are forced to second-guess their own survival, because Jewish self-defense is bad for public relations.

How many people died in both Israel and Lebanon because IDF soldiers are trained not to shoot, rather than to shoot, thereby allowing themselves to be ambushed by terrorists and turned into hostages and the causes of a war? How many more people will die when Noam Shalit finally gets his way and thousands of terrorists with blood on their hands are traded in for Gilad Shalit's freedom? And how many more will die when the cycle repeats itself. The numbers become more horrifying as you trace them back to their source.

Why does Israel have a terrorist problem, and not Jordan, which has the same Arab population that Israel does? It's not simply because Israel is mostly Jewish and Jordan is mostly Muslim, though that is a contributing factor. A primary focus of Islamists is to take over countries with majority Muslim populations in order to build the Caliphate. The reason is because in 1970 when the terrorists began hijacking planes and declared that a part of Jordan belonged to them, King Hussein sent in the army. He didn't kill a mere 52 Palestinian Arab terrorists, as Israel did in Jenin. Or a mere 107 in Deir Yassin. Not even the 800 or so killed in fighting between Arabs in Sabra and Shatilla. No, according to Arafat, King Hussein's troops killed an estimated 25,000 Palestinian Arabs.

This wasn't some sort of unique event by Middle Eastern standards. When the Islamists tried to stage an uprising in Hama, Syrian troops killed somewhere between 20,000 to 40,000 people. When Arafat sided with Saddam during the Gulf War, Kuwait expelled 400,000 Palestinian Arabs. Why did they do it? Because by 1990, Kuwait had some 564,000 native Arabs, and some 450,000 Palestinian Arabs. So the Kuwaitis began bombing Palestinian Arab neighborhoods, top officials boasted about "cleansing" Palestinian Arabs from Kuwait, and tanks and troops were sent into Palestinian Arab neighborhoods, setting up checkpoints, killing, imprisoning and torturing thousands. There were plenty of atrocities that got brief mentions in the media, before the Palestinian Arabs were gone from Kuwait, and everyone moved on.

Just to grasp the sheer scale of the double standard here, in the same year that the Bush Administration was pressuring Israel to negotiate with the PLO in the name of human rights, President H.W. Bush gave a blank check to the Kuwaiti royal family to do anything they wanted to the Palestinian Arabs in their country. He told the Kuwaiti ambassador, "The war wasn’t fought about democracy in Kuwait" and justified everything the royals were doing, saying, "I think we're expecting a little much if we're asking the people in Kuwait to take kindly to those that had spied on their countrymen that were left there, that had brutalized families there, and things of that nature." The Kuwaiti government newspaper Sawt Al Kuwait, featured Bush's comments under the headline, "We Would Be Asking a Lot, If We Asked Them to Show Mercy."

And that just about says it all. The same Western governments which think it's asking a lot to expect Muslims to show mercy, make those demands of Israel all the time. They make those demands of their own forces, while never expecting Muslims to show mercy.

There are no efforts to indict the Kuwaiti Royal Family or the Assad or Hussein clans for atrocities or war crimes. Bashar Assad is an honored visitor to the same UK, which calls in the Israeli ambassador every other weak, to preach to him about restraint. King Hussein remains widely popular. His wife Raina has a YouTube channel in which she talks about how important human rights are, and how awful the Israelis are to the same people that her hubby's regime rules over, and which his father massacred. The web isn't cluttered with piteous sites about the Black September massacres or the Kuwaiti ethnic cleansing of their Palestinian Arabs or the Syrian massacres at Hama. Aside from a few people who were directly affected by it, no one actually cares.

And who's to blame? The Moral High Ground is. Terrorist groups can only win, if you let them. Their entire strategy relies on drawing you into a conflict, on the understanding that you won't have the nerve to really crush them. If you do crush them, the conflict goes away. But if you try to be Mr. Nice Guy, the terrorists now have you hook, line and sinker. If you restrain yourself, you'll be involved in endless little fights, dying the death of a thousand cuts, until the terrorists and their international backers successfully replace you with a Pro-Appeasement government. And if you recognize the terrorists and make concessions to them, you'll be up to your neck in terror.

The only way the terrorists can win against superior forces is if those forces have their hands tied behind their backs. Governments that focus on "Hearts and Minds" campaigns, and care about posing and primping against the background of the Moral High Ground are the terrorists' best friends. But what is the real Moral High Ground? It's not mercy toward those who show you none. For governments it is about doing their duty by protecting their citizens. For soldiers it is about serving as the protectors of the home front. It is not about sparing enemies, either those under arms or those who aid and abet them. Because that is the surest way to prolong the conflict, and in the long run will cost more lives on both sides.

Not only that, but this false mercy actually kills more civilians, because it turns human shields into a viable tactic. A terrorist who hides behind a civilian, and doesn't get shot, learns that hiding behind civilians is a useful strategy. Other terrorists learn from him that civilians are better than bulletproof vests, because vests won't stop automatic fire, but human shields will. A terrorist who hides behind a civilian and gets shot, is dead, and a warning to other terrorists that hiding behind civilians is not a good way to stay alive. In the long run, the "cruel" act of disregarding a hostage is a much better way to protect civilians in conflict zones.

In the same way, stamping out the first terrorist attacks will save you from engaging in a prolonged struggle. That means doing it with decisive finality. This is a simple truth that every Middle Eastern country, but Israel understands. And a simple fact that every Muslim country understands, but the United States does not. Throw a dart at any major Muslim nation, and you find repression, mass graves and even genocide. Indonesia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Turkey-- it never ends. There's a very simple reason for that. In Islam, force is the only real morality.

Mohammed is not the Prophet of Islam because he offended the Meccans and got killed for it. He's the prophet of a worldwide religion, because he killed everyone in his path. And then his followers killed everyone in their path. And then their followers went on doing the same damn thing for over a thousand years, right into the present day-- where Muslims are still killing and making war on everyone who isn't a Muslim, and refuses to become one. Islam has only one real revelation, death. But it has to be death with a purpose. The purpose is the triumph of Islam. If victory is possible, then the Islamists have plenty of volunteers to die, because they believe in the Islamic paradise and its 72 virgins. If on the other hand, the Islamists get stomped into the dirt, their religious credibility runs at an all time low. When victory is impossible, Islam withers and goes into the long sleep of cultural hibernation to awaken in a more permissive time.

There's only one way to defeat terrorists. To fight them without any more restraint than they impose on themselves. Under such conditions, superior force and technology makes the victory of the civilized side inevitable, and creates an incentive for the uncivilized side to become civilized, or pay the price. The Moral High Ground, the whole idea that restraint toward those who would kill you is the essence of morality, is one of the most perniciously self-destructive ideas ever coined. It is suicide with a slogan. The Moral High Ground is not moral and it is not the high ground, it is the way by which civilians go to their death over the cliff of their own warped ideals.

There is only one Moral High Ground that that can defeat, the moral high ground of standing up for civilization, against those who would drown it in the ichor of their own hate, the stench of their own greed, the lust of their own power and the blood of their endless murders. It is not moral to let your family be murdered, rather than harm the murderers. He who slays those who kill his loves ones, stands on the true moral high ground. The only true Moral High Ground that there is.

Daniel Greenfield

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Cracking the Code of Civilization
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2010/06/cracking-code-of-civilization.html
 
 
 

by Daniel Greenfield
 
 

Civilization is a code, and while we easily fall into the habit of assuming that civilized norms are universal, they are limited to the civilized. Kindness, humility and reaching out to the enemy are valid behaviors only when they are likely to be reciprocated. Practicing that code toward nations and cultures which markedly refuse to be civilized, is the same thing as painting a target on your own back.

Because civilized codes of conduct only work when they are reciprocal. They allow us to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves and permit us to find common ground based on underlying principles. But to those who choose to be outside the code, such concessions are a weakness. Not a sign of moral strength, but physical cowardice. To the Muslim who has been raised on the tales of the Koranic conquests of Mohammed and his successors, only force represents moral truth. In the Koran, the infidels negotiate in good faith, while Muslims negotiate in bad faith. That is because Islam was meant to supersede the old tribal codes with a superior moral system, based not on honor, but on submission to Allah and Mohammed.

What we might consider foul treachery, was to the Muslim only a means to an end. Because moral behavior no longer had anything to do with trust, only with forcing more victims to submit to Islam. Negotiating in good faith was itself a symptom of a lack of faith. For the true Muslim could never honestly accept any enduring compromise with an infidel that would lessen the temporal power of Islam. He could only do so as a stratagem for weakening the infidel. To do otherwise would be blasphemy and heresy, two charges still commonly raised in the Muslim world against their own leaders who make even the appearance of honest negotiations with Western leaders. Meanwhile the willingness of the infidels to negotiate in good faith, in the Muslim worldview only demonstrated their lack of faith.

Paradoxically the willingness to negotiate in bad faith, to betray and assassinate shows a commitment to something greater. While negotiating in good faith and treating your enemy kindly shows a lack of confidence and principles. This attitude is not unique to Muslim fanatics, it is just as ubiquitous the left of our own cities, which considers radicalism and ruthless terrorism the mark of a true revolutionary conscience. From Lenin to Mao to Che, Communists ridiculed and murdered those who were not willing to be as ruthlessly amoral as them. The Western left has long since absorbed that same attitude, treating political activism as a kind of fevered passion that does not answer to any moral code. From the Paris Commune to the Baader Meinhof Brigade. From the Chicago Anarchists to the Chicago Seven. From the Black Panthers to the PLO. The left admires most those who are willing to kill or die, as evidence of their sincerity.

And such people, whether they are Hamas members in Gaza or the descendants of the Mayflower in Berkeley, are savages. Not savages by race, but savages by choice. They know what civilization is. They have often benefited from it. But they despise it as weak and unprincipled. To them the civilized code is a sign of the cowardice of the infidel or the bourgeois, who want to make limited concessions in order to protect their possessions and privileges. To them civilization is the compact of materialism over spirituality for the Muslim and passionate political engagement for the leftist. And they are entirely willing to exploit it, but they have no interest in honoring it.

When we treat savages as civilized, we let ourselves be vulnerable by pretending that people who do not share our code, are nevertheless entitled to its privileges. But civilization can only be a reciprocal code, or it risks being overrun by the barbarians at the gate. Because civilization only has value if membership has its privileges. If one can be a savage and still benefit from being treated according to civilized codes-- then civilization becomes a mug's game. Such a conception of civilization cannot and will not last.

Imagine if taxes were done on the honor system. Or if stores were equally willing to extend credit to thieves as to valued customers. Very soon, honesty and decency would become endangered traits. Instead those who ripped off the system would thrive, while those with integrity would suffer. And that is exactly the consequence of extending the benefit of civilized codes to savages. Civilization itself becomes a devalued and worthless commodity.

A savage can be reformed only by providing him with the incentive to be civilized. That requires a two tiered system. One for those who follow civilized codes. And one for those who do not. The former are protected by mutual agreements. The latter have no protection whatsoever. They are treated as they treat others. They have no rights, but those which they are willing to permit to others. If they are willing to live and let live, so much the better. If they are not, then so much the worse for them. Let them not hide behind words or excuses, because only civilized people may be judged by their words-- savages can only be judged by their deeds.
 
 

What is the savage then? He is not a savage because he is illiterate or uneducated. He may have the finest education that civilization has to offer. The savage may be wealthy or poor, but in the civilized world he is more likely to be wealthy. He may be of any race and skin color. These things do not matter. Only this does.

The savage seeks power to rule over others. He lives by no true laws, instead laws for him are means of achieving his goals. His word is worthless, as there is nothing he will not betray for his greater aims. He may believe in all sorts of things, but there is one thing he does not believe in, that others have the same rights that he does. Therefore he cannot be a citizen of any civilized nation. Alone he is a wolf seeking prey. When he finds a pack, then he sets to sniffing around the walls of the city, he looks for a way to bring down the city and all within it.

Mohammed, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Benito Mussolini, Hassan al Banna Bill Ayers, Charles Manson, Eldridge Cleaver, Yasser Arafat, Idi Amin, Lori Berenson, Abu Hamza and so many others-- all savages. And when the savage stands in the light of civilization, his only impulse is to burn it all down. The savage has cracked the code of civilization and to allow him to exploit it, is to let the civilized world burn.
 
 
 
 

Daniel Greenfield

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Syria and Turkey Sink Another Obama Initiative
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2010/06/syria-and-turkey-sink-another-obama.html
 

by Jonathan Tobin
 
 

One of the keys to President Obama's ill-fated attempt to engage the Islamic world has been the effort to convince Syria to abandon its alliance with Iran and to join the West. But like his vaunted outreach to Iran, this too fell flat — though some in the administration continued to try getting Israel to pay for this initiative with concessions on the Golan Heights and the standoff with Hezbollah, an ally of both Iran and Syria, along the border with Lebanon. But the final nail in the coffin of the Syria gambit appears to have come not from Israeli intransigence but rather from the intervention of a country that once feared the Syrians: Turkey.

Writing in Le Monde Diplomatique, Stephen Starr reports that Turkey has become "Syria's new best friend." Though not so long ago the Turks looked to cultivate an alliance with Israel as a counter-balance to the threat they perceived from the Assad regime, they have now embarked on their own outreach campaign to Damascus. Trade between the two countries has grown from a trickle to a flood. More importantly, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision to become an apologist and diplomatic partner for Iran and to attempt to become the leader of the Islamic world's anti-Israel diplomatic front has the potential to change the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean. By sponsoring the Gaza flotilla provocation and then engaging in what even Starr concedes was a "disproportionate response" to Israel's efforts to maintain the blockade on the Hamas regime, Turkey has "improved Syria's political clout significantly."

Obama's attempt to woo the Syrians away from Iran was always doomed. While willing to pocket lucrative bribes from the West in the form of aid and development projects, the Assad family regime has no real interest in the welfare of the Syrian people or in better relations with the West. As any narrowly based dictatorships, the Assads know that a more open and prosperous society and peace with Israel do not serve their purposes of perpetuating their vise-like grip on their country. Iran and Hezbollah were always going to be the natural allies of Damascus. The United States might have been able to tell the Syrians that they could get them the Golan Heights back if they just made peace with Israel and deigned to accept Western largess in return. Contrary to how Starr interprets Syria's past flirting — sponsored by Turkey – with negotiations with Israel, Bashar al-Assad was not interested in peace even if it brought him the Golan.

But edging away from its military alliance with Israel and bidding to revive the Ottoman Empire's pose as the leader of the Islamic world, NATO member Turkey is a far better fit for being a partner with Syria than with the United States. Indeed, as Starr writes, with Turkey behind it, Assad can now afford to ignore Obama's entreaties altogether. The result not only deepens Israel's isolation but also exposes the utter failure of one of the administration's foreign policy goals. The president imagined that, by distancing the United States from Israel and trying to "engage" the Arab "street" and Iran's dictators, he could inaugurate a new era of American influence in the Middle East. But it appears as though all he has done is to set the stage for a dangerous turn for the worse in the region.
 
 

Jonathan Tobin

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Too Early To Cheer: Will the White House Actually Implement Congressional Sanctions on Iran?
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2010/06/too-early-to-cheer-will-white-house.html
 

by Barry Rubin

The American media is starting a campaign to promote the story that President Barack Obama will soon sign the toughest anti-Iran sanctions in history when the bill passed by Congress reaches his desk. In fact, the White House has already watered down the original legislation.

Beyond that, a very large number of waivers have been added to the bill by the Democratic-dominated conference committee. This means that President Obama can suspend any portion of the new economic sanctions on Iran at will, sometimes even being given the power to avoid having to do any investigation. He need merely state that implementing any such provision is not in the national interest.

In addition, when the president puts his name on the bill, he may make a Signing Statement in which he could define or further limit the sanctions.

All of this is especially significant because the main problem limiting sanctions' pressure on Iran in the past was not so much the lack of laws to do so—sanctions have been passed since 1996—but the chief executive's failure or refusal to implement them.

Why hasn't this been done and why should we watch closely how Obama handles these matters?

First, it can be argued that the president needs flexibility since he might want to remove sanctions as an incentive for Iran to negotiate or as a concession to Iran for anything it gives.

This makes sense in principle but the problem is that the administration has been too quick to seek engagement with Tehran, too eager to make unilateral concessions, too naïve in interpreting the Iranian regime as moderate, and too timid about getting tough. In other words, it is possible that the administration will take credit for congressional sanctions that it delayed for six months and then not even carry them out in (unrealistic) hope of making some deal with Tehran.

Second, sanctions may be reduced because they damage U.S. business interests and lobbyists complain.

Third, rather than try to enforce sanctions in ways that lead to friction with European allies, the Obama Administration might give them an exemption. This has happened repeatedly in the past. Even more important, it could be a way of avoiding any conflict with Russia and China, even as these two countries undercut the sanctions to a large extent.

Having said all this, it is important to note that the new law would increase the pressure on Iran regarding the financial aspects (making it harder for Iran to borrow money, finance projects, or manage trade), as well as restrictions on refined petroleum exports to Iran. But if, for example, China builds more refineries for Iran, without the U.S. government saying or doing anything, these won't matter so much.

One provision killed by the administration concerned prohibiting or discouraging countries giving export credits to companies investing or trading with Iran.

Recently, I gave a briefing to staffers in the House of Representatives and pointed out that the U.S. Congress was just about the only government institution that provided some hope regarding U.S. foreign policy. But now the sanctions are going to be in the Executive Branch's hands. Let's carefully monitor White House behavior on this issue.
 
 
 
 

Barry Rubin
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Turkey, from Ally to Enemy Part I
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2010/06/turkey-from-ally-to-enemy-part-i.html
 

by Michael Rubin
 
 

1st part of 2
 
 

Traveling abroad on his first trip as president, Barack Obama tacked a visit to Turkey onto the tail end of a trip to Europe. “Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul to send a message,” he told the Turkish Parliament. “My answer is simple: Evet [yes]. Turkey is a critical ally.” On the same visit, however, the president showed that he considered Turkey more firmly part of the Islamic world than of Europe. “I want to make sure that we end before the call to prayer, so we have about half an hour,” Obama told a town hall in Istanbul. Obama was not simply demonstrating cultural sensitivity. The fact is that Turkey has changed. Gone, and gone permanently, is secular Turkey, a unique Muslim country that straddled East and West and that even maintained a cooperative relationship with Israel. Today Turkey is an Islamic republic whose government saw fit to facilitate the May 31 flotilla raid on Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Turkey is now more aligned to Iran than to the democracies of Europe. Whereas Iran’s Islamic revolution shocked the world with its suddenness in 1979, Turkey’s Islamic revolution has been so slow and deliberate as to pass almost unnoticed. Nevertheless, the Islamic Republic of Turkey is a reality—and a danger.

The story of Turkey’s Islamic revolution is illuminating. It is the story of a charismatic leader with a methodical plan to unravel a system, a politician cynically using democracy to pursue autocracy, Arab donors understanding the power of the purse, Western political correctness blinding officials to the Islamist agenda, and American diplomats seemingly more concerned with their post-retirement pocketbooks than with U.S. national security. For Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is a dream come true. For the next generation of American presidents, diplomats, and generals, it is a disaster.

_____________

The Middle East is littered with states formed from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I. Most have been failures, but in Anatolia, one has flourished: in 1923, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Republic of Turkey and, soon after, abolished the Ottoman Empire and its standing as a caliphate, a state run according to the dictates of Islamic law. In subsequent years, he imposed a number of reforms to transform Turkey into a Western country. His separation of mosque and state allowed Turkey to thrive, and he charged the army with defending the state from those who would use Islam to subvert democracy. While Middle Eastern states embraced demagogues and ideologies that led to war and incited their peoples to hate the West, Turkey became a frontline Cold War and NATO ally. Turks faced down terrorists, embraced democracy, and dreamed of full inclusion as a nation of Europe. No longer.

Turkey’s Islamic revolution began on November 3, 2002, when Erdogan’s Justice and Reconciliation Party (AKP) swept to power in Turkey’s elections. Through a lucky quirk of the Turkish election system, the AKP’s 34 percent total in the popular vote translated into 66 percent of the Parliament’s seats, giving the party absolute control.

Initially, Erdogan kept his ambition in check. He understood the lessons to be learned from the undoing of his mentor, Necmettin Erbakan, the first Islamist to become prime minister. After taking the reins of power in 1996 with far less power in Parliament, Erdogan’s predecessor sought to shake up the system—to support religious schools at home and to reorient Turkey’s foreign policy away from Europe and toward Libya and Iran. This became too much for the military, which exercised its power as guardians of the constitution and demanded Erbakan’s resignation. Afterward, Turkey’s Constitutional Court banned the party to which Erdogan belonged because of its threats to secular rule.

Erdogan himself had been banned from politics because of a 1998 conviction for religious incitement. And so he initially managed the newly created AKP from the sidelines only, working through Abdullah Gul, the lieutenant who served as caretaker prime minister after the party’s 2002 victory. Gul pushed through a law to overturn the ban against Erdogan, and the latter became prime minister in March 2003. Learning the lessons of Islamist failures of the past, Erdogan sought to calm Turks who feared the AKP would dilute Turkey’s separation of mosque and state. As mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan described himself as a “servant of Sharia,” or Islamic canon law. But after his party’s 2002 victory, he declared that “secularism is the protector of all beliefs and religions. We are the guarantors of this secularism, and our management will clearly prove that.” He took pains to eschew the Islamist label and instead described his party as little more than the Muslim equivalent of the Christian Democrats in Europe—that is, all democracy and religious in name only.

Both Turks and Westerners can be forgiven for taking Erdogan at his word. He had cultivated an image of probity as a local official that stood in sharp contrast with the corruption of many incumbent Turkish politicians. Rather than upend the system or pursue a divisive social platform, as prime minister Erdogan first sought to repair the Turkish economy. This was an attractive prospect for Turks across the political spectrum, since in the five years prior, the Turkish lira had declined in value eight-fold, from 200,000 to 1.7 million to the dollar, leading to a ruinous banking crisis in 2001. A Coca-Cola cost millions. Erdogan stabilized the currency and implemented other popular reforms. He cut income taxes, slashed the value-added tax, and used state coffers to subsidize gasoline prices. The Turkish electorate rewarded his party for its efforts. The AKP won 42 percent of the vote in the March 2004 municipal elections and placed mayors in four of Turkey’s five largest cities. In July 2007, it increased its share of the popular vote to 47 percent.

But there was far less here than met the eye. Rather than base economic reform on sound, long-term policies, Erdogan instead relied on sleight of hand. He incurred crippling debt and, in effect, mortgaged long-term financial security of the republic for his own short-term political gain. Deniz Baykal, the former leader of the main opposition party, has said that the state debt accrued during Erdogan’s first three years in power surpassed Turkey’s total accumulated debt in the three decades prior.

And that was only official debt. Outside of public view, Erdogan and Gul, now his foreign minister, presided over an influx of so-called Green Money—capital from Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Persian Gulf emirates, much of which ended up in party coffers rather than in the public treasury.

And here begins the tale of the interweaving of Turkey’s destiny with the nations to its east and south, and to the Muslim world rather than with the West.

Between 2002 and 2003, the Turkish Central Bank’s summary balance of “payments for net error and omission”—which is to say, money that appeared in the nation’s financial system for which government reporting cannot account—increased from approximately $200 million to more than $4 billion. By 2006, Turkish economists estimated the Green Money infusion into the Turkish economy to be between $6 billion and $12 billion, and given the ability of the government to hide some of these revenues by assigning them to tourism, that is probably a wild underestimation. Some Turkish intelligence officials privately suggest that the nation of Qatar is today the source of most subsidies for the AKP and its projects.

Thus, if Iran’s Islamic revolution was spontaneous, Turkey’s was anything but: it was bought and paid for by wealthy Islamists.

AKP officials are well-placed to manage the Green Money influx. Throughout much of the 1980s, Erdogan’s sidekick, Gul, worked as a specialist at Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Development Bank. Before the 2002 victory, he criticized existing state scrutiny of Islamist enterprises. Senior AKP advisers made their fortunes in Islamic banking and investment. Korkut Ozal, for example, is the leading Turkish shareholder in al--Baraka Turk, Turkey’s leading Islamic bank, as well as in Faisal Finans, which also has its roots in Saudi Arabia.

Erdogan has systematically placed Islamist bankers in key economic positions. He appointed Kemal Unakitan, a former board member at both al--Baraka and Eski Finans, as finance minister and moved at least seven other al-Baraka officials—one of whom had served as an imam in an illegal commando camp—to key positions within Turkey’s banking regulatory agency.

Erdogan also reoriented Turkey’s official foreign trade. In 2002, bilateral trade between Turkey and the United Arab Emirates hovered at just over half a billion dollars. By 2005, it had grown to almost $2 billion. That same year, Kursad Tuzmen, the state minister for foreign trade, announced that United Arab Emirates ruler Sheik Khalifa bin Zayid al-Nuhayyan would invest $100 billion in Turkish companies. Not to be outdone, Saudi Arabia’s finance minister announced earlier this year that Saudi Arabia would invest $400 billion in Turkey over the next four years. In contrast, in 2001, Turkish-Saudi trade amounted to just over $1 billion. When Turkish-Iranian trade surpassed $10 billion in 2009, Erdogan announced a goal to increase it to $30 billion. Whether or not Turkey and its Persian Gulf allies are exaggerating their figures, the trajectory of trade is clear.

_____________

For wealthy donors, the conversion of Turkey has been a good investment. For decades, Turkey stood out like a sore thumb for Islamists. Here was a majority Muslim country which, even lacking oil, was far more successful than any Arab state or Iran. No sooner had Erdogan stabilized the economy and solidified his political monopoly than he turned to changing Turkey’s social order and reversing its diplomatic orientation. Erdogan’s strategy was multi-tiered. He endorsed the dream of Turkey’s secular elite to enter the European Union but only to rally European diplomats to dilute the role of the Turkish military as guardians of the constitution.

While Turkish liberals, businessmen, and Western diplomats took solace in Erdogan’s outreach to Europe, his motivation was cynical. His ideological constituents had no interest in Europe, and Erdogan himself is intolerant of European liberalism and secularism. He criticized the European Court of Human Rights for failing to consult Islamic scholars when it upheld a ban on headscarves in public schools—a ban that dates back to Ataturk’s original reforms.

Erdogan’s ambitions to remake Turkey, however, reached far beyond superficial issues such as the veil. He sought to revolutionize education, dominate the judiciary, take over the police, and control the media. Erdogan worked to achieve not short-term gains on hot-button issues like the headscarf but rather a long-term cultural revolution that, when complete, would render past battles moot.

Erdogan attacked the secular education system at all levels. First, he loosened age restrictions on children who attend supplemental Koran schools—restrictions intended to prevent their indoctrination. He also undid content regulation meant to counter the ability of Saudi-funded extremists to teach in Turkish academies. Those schools that break the remaining regulations need not worry: Erdogan’s party eviscerated penalties to the point where unaccredited religious academies now advertise openly in newspapers.

Simultaneously, he equated degrees issued by Turkish madrassas—Islamic religious schools—with ordinary high school degrees. This bureaucratic sleight of hand in theory enabled madrassa students to enter the university and qualify for government jobs without ever mastering or, in some cases, even being exposed to Western fundamentals. When such students still fumbled university entrance exams, the AKP provided them with a comparative bonus on their scores, justifying the move as affirmative action. Erdogan made little secret of his goals: in May 2006, he ordered his negotiator at European Union accession talks to remove any reference to secularism in a Turkish position paper discussing Turkey’s educational system. Over the past year, the Ministry of Education has gutted the traditional high school philosophy curriculum and Islamized it.

Moreover, the judiciary is no longer independent. Erdogan’s initial attempts to lower the mandatory retirement age of judges (a move that would have seen him replace 4,000 out of 9,000 judges) foundered on constitutional challenges. More than a year later, the Supreme Court of Appeals chided the AKP for attempts to interfere in the judiciary. When Gul, Erdogan’s closest ally, assumed Turkey’s presidency in 2007, there was no longer any check on his party’s authority. The president selects the Higher Education Board, appoints a quarter of the justices on the Constitutional Court, nominates the chief public prosecutor, and officially confirms the commanding general of the Supreme Military Council. Now, on the rare occasion when the high court levies decisions not to the prime minister’s liking, the prime minister simply refuses to implement them. In any case, after almost eight years in power, the AKP has been able to remake the courts. The government can now assign sympathetic judges to hear highly politicized cases. And in March 2010, the AKP unveiled proposed constitutional reforms that would make it easier for political leaders to appoint judges.

In any other democracy, discussion and debate about government abuse of power and societal change would saturate the news. Not so in Turkey. No prime minister in Turkish history has been so hostile to the press as Erdogan. What had been a vibrant press when Erdogan took over is now flaccid. The prime minister has sued dozens of journalists and editors, sometimes for nothing more than a political cartoon poking fun at him. When a Turkish media group pursued a story about a Turkish-German charity transferring money illegally to Islamists in Turkey, tax authorities punished it with a spurious $600 million lien. When it continued to report critically, the group received an additional $2.5 billion tax penalty. And, in a strategy borrowed from Iran, Erdogan has confiscated newspapers—the high-circulation national daily Sabah most famously—that he deemed too critical or independent, and transferred their control to political allies.

With the independent press muzzled and almost all print and airtime dedicated to his agenda, Erdogan upped his campaign against both the political opposition and the military. Whereas the Interior Ministry would once root out Islamists and followers of the anti-Semitic Turkish cult leader Fethullah Gulen, the AKP filled police ranks with them. Even AKP supporters acknowledge that the Interior Ministry regularly eavesdrops without warrants and leaks embarrassing transcripts to the Islamist press without consequence. “For 40 years, they have kept files on us. Now, it is our turn to keep files on them,” AKP deputy Avni Dogan recently said.

The real coup against democracy, however, came on July 14, 2008, when a Turkish prosecutor indicted 86 Turkish figures—retired military officers, prominent journalists, professors, unionists, civil-society activists, and the man who dared run against Erdogan for mayor years earlier—on charges of plotting a coup to restore secular government. The only thing the defendants had in common was political opposition to the AKP. The alleged conspiracy grabbed international headlines. At its root, the 2,455-page indictment alleged that retired military officers, intellectuals, journalists, and civil-society leaders conspired to cause chaos in Turkey and to use the resulting crisis as justification for a military putsch against the AKP. In February 2010, the prosecutors revealed a 5,000-page memorandum detailing coup plans.

The documents are ridiculous. The indictment was paper-thin. Security forces rounded up most suspects before it was even written. And as for the smoking-gun memorandum, the charge is risible: coup plotters do not write plans down, let alone in such detail. The indictments had a chilling effect across society. Turks may not like where Erdogan is taking Turkey, but they now understand that even peaceful dissent will have a price. Turkish politics had always been rough and tumble, but except at the height of the Cold War, it had seldom been lethal.

Nor can liberal Turks rely on the Turkish military to save them. Bashed from the religious right and the progressive left, the Turkish military is a shadow of its former self. The current generation of generals is out of touch with Turkish society and, perhaps, their own junior officers. Like frogs who fail to jump from a pot slowly brought to a boil, the Turkish general staff lost its opportunity to exercise its constitutional duties. Simply put, the Turkish military failed in its job. Obsession with public relations and media imagery trumped responsibility.
 
 

Michael Rubin

Copyright – Original materials copyright © by the authors.

Turkey, from Ally to Enemy Part II
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2010/06/turkey-from-ally-to-enemy-part-ii.html
 

by Michael Rubin
 
 

2nd part of 2
 
 

A decade ago, Turks saw themselves in a camp with the United States, Western Europe, and Israel; today Turkish self-identity places the country firmly in a camp led by Iran, Syria, Sudan, and Hamas. Turkey may be a NATO member, but polls nevertheless show it to be the world’s most anti-American country (although, to be fair, the Pew Global Attitudes Project did not conduct surveys in Libya or North Korea). Nor do Turks differentiate between the U.S. government and the American people: they hate Americans almost as much as they hate Washington. This is no accident. From almost day one, Erdogan has encouraged, and his allies have financed, a steady stream of anti-American and anti-Semitic incitement. Certainly, many Turks opposed the liberation of Iraq in 2003, but this was largely because Erdogan bombarded them with anti-American incitement before Parliament’s vote, which withdrew the support promised to the operation. Much of Erdogan’s incitement, however, cannot be dismissed as a dispute over the Iraq war.

In 2004, Yeni Safak, a newspaper Erdogan endorsed, published an enemies list of prominent Jews. In 2006, not only did Turkish theaters headline Valley of the Wolves, a fiercely anti-American and anti-Semitic movie that featured a Jewish doctor harvesting the organs of dead Iraqis, but the prime minister’s wife also publicly endorsed the film and urged all Turks to see it. Turkish newspapers reported that prominent AKP supporters and Erdogan aides financed its production. While much of the Western world boycotted Hamas in the wake of the 2006 Palestinian elections in order to force it to renounce violence, Erdogan not only extended a hand to the group but also welcomed Khaled Mashaal, leader of its most extreme and recalcitrant faction, as his personal guest.

The question for policymakers, however, should not be whether Turkey is lost but rather how Erdogan could lead a slow-motion Islamic revolution below the West’s radar. This is both a testament to Erdogan’s skill and a reflection of Western delusion. Before taking power, Erdogan and his advisers cultivated Western opinion makers. He concentrated not on American pundits who found U.S. policy insufficiently leftist and sympathetic to the Islamic world but rather on natural critics, hawkish American supporters of Turkey and Israel who helped introduce Erdogan confidantes to Washington policymakers.

After consolidating power, however, the AKP did not cultivate Jewish and pro-Israel groups, but they did little to sever the relationships. Turks traditionally looked kindly on Israel and Jews; of all the peoples of the Ottoman Empire, the Jews in Palestine were one of the few who had not revolted against the Ottoman Sultan. In the 1980s and 1990s, Turkey and Israel had much in common: both were democracies amid a sea of autocracy. They enjoyed close diplomatic, economic, and military relations. So many Israeli tourists visited Turkey that Hebrew signs became ubiquitous in Turkish cities. It was not uncommon to hear Hebrew in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar or in restaurants along the Bosporus.

Against such a backdrop, many Jewish groups turned a blind eye to warning signs of Erdogan’s antipathy and rationalized Turkey’s outreach to Hamas and Hezbollah, Syria, Sudan, and Iran. It was not until Erdogan exploded at the 2009 Davos World Forum, telling Israeli President Shimon Peres “you know well how to kill,” storming off the stage, and subsequently accusing Israel of genocide, that Jewish groups awakened to the change that had come over Turkey.

Much of the blame for failing to recognize Erdogan’s agenda also lies in the West’s intellectual approach to radical Islam. For too many, the headscarf was the only metric by which to judge Islamist encroachment. For Erdogan, however, the scarf was a symbol; the state was the goal.

Even after Erdogan began to eviscerate the checks and balances of Turkish society, European officials and American diplomats remained in denial. Certainly moral equivalency played a role: as Erdogan asked last October, why should Turkey accept the Western definition of secularism? For too many Western officials, however, to acknowledge Turkey’s turn would be to admit the failure of moderate Islamism. To criticize Erdogan’s motivations would be racist.

Many diplomats and journalists inserted into this situation their own disdain for any military, let alone Turkey’s, and embraced a facile dichotomy in which Islamism and democracy represented one pole, while the military, secularism, and fascism represented the other. Hence, they saw the AKP as democratic reformers, while the military became defenders of an anti-democratic order. Certainly, the healthiest democracies have no room for the military in domestic politics, but by cheering the AKP as it unraveled the military’s role in upholding the constitution without simultaneously constructing another check on unconstitutional behavior, the European Union and Western diplomats paved the way for Erdogan’s soft dictatorship.

Alas, when intellectual smoke and mirrors were not enough to deceive the West, Erdogan and the AKP used more-devious tactics. Just as many American diplomats retired from Saudi Arabia to serve commercially their former charges, since the AKP’s accession every retired U.S. ambassador to Turkey—Eric Edelman being the exception—has entered into lucrative business relationships with AKP companies. While running the Turkish program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, for example, Mark Parris, who led the U.S. Embassy from 1997 to 2000, just prior to the AKP’s rise, cultivated a business relationship with the AKP and helped with stories in Turkey’s anti-Semitic press about neoconservatives and coup plots. Throughout the first four years of AKP rule, Yeni Safak columnist Fehmi Koru, an outspoken Erdogan supporter, published more than a dozen columns accusing American Jewish policymakers, led by Richard Perle—who was not then a government official—of both manipulating the press and plotting a coup in Turkey. Both charges were not only false but also consistent with anti-Semitic refrains about Jewish control of the press and Protocols of the Elders of Zion–like plots. And, indeed, they served their purpose: the AKP used the columns to rally both nationalist and anti-Semitic feelings. Koru would often refer to a well-placed Washington diplomatic source. In a November 2006 column, he revealed Parris to be his source, a charge Parris has neither explained nor denied.

Turkish Islamists also cultivated academics. After Georgetown University’s John Esposito received donations from the Gulen movement, he sponsored a conference in the Islamist cult leader’s honor, whitewashing both Fethullah Gulen’s Islamism and his anti-Semitism. The University of North Texas similarly received Gulen’s largesse, as does Washington, D.C.’s Brookings Institution, which has long peddled a soft line toward Erdogan and his agenda.

Turkey today is an Islamic republic in all but name. Washington, its European allies, and Jerusalem must now come to terms with Turkey as a potential enemy. Alas, even if the AKP were to exit the Turkish stage tomorrow, the changes Erdogan’s party have made appear irreversible. While Turkey was for more than half a century a buffer between Middle Eastern extremism and European liberalism, today it has become an enabler of extremism and an enemy of liberalism. Rather than fight terrorists, Turkey embraces them. Today’s rhetorical support may become tomorrow’s material support. On the world stage, too, Turkey is a problem. Rather than help diffuse Iran’s nuclear program, Erdogan encourages it.

Turkey’s anti-Americanism, its dictatorship, and the inability of Western officials to acknowledge reality endanger security. Hard choices lay ahead: as a NATO member, Turkey is privy to U.S. weaponry, tactics, and intelligence. Any provision of assistance to Turkey today, however, could be akin to transferring it to Hamas, Sudan, or Iran. Does President Obama really want to deliver the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to a hostile Turkey, Iran’s chief regional defender, as promised in 2014? Should Turkey even remain in NATO? After all, half a century ago, NATO learned to live without France.

Losing Turkey is tragic, but failing to recognize its loss can only compound the tragedy. The worst outcome, however, would be to let strategic denial block assessment of lessons learned. As mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan quipped, “‘Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.” Perhaps, in hindsight, the West’s mistake was to ignore the danger of Erdogan’s ascendance into the driver’s seat.
 
 
 
 

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Human Spirit: Women and children
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2010/06/human-spirit-women-and-children.html

by Barbara Sofer

Whether it’s a Gaza-bound flotilla of so-called women activists or a cell block full of women prisoners, they should be dealt with no differently than a mixed gender or all-male party.
 
 

A women’s flotilla. What a brilliant public relations move. Images of women sailing the seas excite our imagination. Named for the Virgin Mary, the ship was christened at a shrine to make its passengers appear to be the envoy of sanctity and maternal love. I’m reminded of a breakfast I was privileged to take part in more than a decade ago at a Jerusalem hotel. The guest of honor was Harvard law professor and jurist Alan Dershowitz. I came away with two important thoughts that have remained with me. The first was the realization that no matter how horrendous their crime, the guilty among this famous defense attorney’s clients always rationalized their actions. The second was Dershowitz’s correcting someone who used the phrase “women and children” in its clichéd sense, as in “women and children stood in the front rows of the demonstration facing the cameras.”

“Why group women and children together?” asked Dershowitz. “If women are indeed equal to men, they should not be grouped with children. They’re adults and make their own decisions.” Point well-taken. You either want women to be full-fledged grown-ups responsible for their decisions or not. Whether we’re speaking of a flotilla of so-called women peace activists sailing toward Gaza or a cell block full of women prisoners, there should be no different procedure in dealing with them from a mixed gender group or all-male party.

NONE OF us old enough to identify the names Baader-Meinhof, Red Brigades or Leila Khaled without typing them into a search engine would be naïve enough to think for a moment that women are incapable of terrorism. Let us not forget that there was also a widely reported alert earlier in the year that al-Qaida was sending trained non-Arab women terrorists to attack the West.

To elevate the image of the Mariam, it is purportedly carrying cancer medications. This alleged cargo creates the cynical and false impression that Israel would deny tomixifin or herceptin to Palestinian women.

According to press reports, only women who comply with the dress code designated by the male sponsor can take part in the so-called sacred journey. No licentiousness allowed.

But modesty offers no guarantee of innocent intentions. Remember, please, Hamas-emissary Reem Riashi. In January 2004, this mother of two told the security checkers at the Erez exit from Gaza that the metal plates in her supposedly crippled legs would set off the security alarm. Sensitive to Riashi’s need for modesty, she was asked to wait on the side so that a woman security guard could search her discreetly. That’s when Riashi detonated a two-kilogram bomb, killing two people and wounding 11 Israelis and Palestinians. Fellow Gaza resident Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, 21, was injured in a cooking accident in her home in Jabalya in January 2005. She was admitted for treatment at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, where the patient physicians and nurses eventually sent her home. She continued to receive treatment as an outpatient, crossing also through Erez. On one visit for treatment, she was found to be hiding 10 kilograms of explosives in her underwear. On Israeli TV she admitted that she had planned to explode the bomb in the hospital. She explained to other reporters that she yearned to murder as many children as possible.

INDEED, I had a personal encounter with female terrorism. On the sunny afternoon of January 27, 2002, I was hurrying toward my cousins at a shoe shop on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem when a young Palestinian woman blew herself up between us. She was a Red Crescent professional named Wafa Idris. I escaped harm, but one person was killed and scores of others, including my cousins, seriously wounded.
 
 

 Like Dershowitz’s high-profile clients, terrorists also justify what they do. More so with women terrorists. Not only do they justify their actions, but the media are obsessed with figuring out why a woman – as opposed to a man – would blow herself and others up. Such a decision is counterintuitive to every feminine and maternal stereotype. Even our own Foreign Ministry Web site oddly offers speculation about how and why the infamous terrorists of the intifada were drawn to their diabolic roles. Maybe Idris committed murder because she’d been hit by rubber bullets. Another woman terrorist had been taken advantage of by her boyfriend. Another supposedly couldn’t stand living at home.

All this said, if we find it harder to understand that women would choose terrorism, it is indeed easier to believe that the women espouse peace. For all the public relations nastiness, there is something fascinating and hopeful in a women’s flotilla. In the bleak Middle East, we have experienced a dearth of women’s voices at the peacemaking tables.

Here’s my fantasy: I’d like the Mariam to sail into Ashdod. While the cargo is being examined, the women should gather a few minutes away from the port in the all-women’s secluded beach where no men are allowed. Having nearly been blown up by Wafa Idris, I would appreciate security checks and am willing to undergo one, too.

There they could meet with us Israeli women to talk about regional problems. I would hope that Aviva Schalit would be there to insist that visiting her son would be an indisputable part of the agenda. I would hope the Lebanese women would invite her to join them in Gaza and see him there.

Since the flotilla women are interested in treating cancer, international aid for Palestinian women who are not getting referrals to Israeli hospitals would be an important subject to discuss. We all know that treating cancer is a complex process which requires far more than a medicine cabinet full of medication. Israeli medical centers function at a high level of cancer treatment that doesn’t exist in the Palestinian Authority. A mechanism to ensure that funds for needy patients are not diverted already exists through the Peres Center for Peace.

Perhaps the Lebanese women would join the Komen Race for the Cure on October 28, when women of every ethnic group here will march in Jerusalem. Wouldn’t that be a step in the right direction?

At the Ashdod segregated beach, there would be actual and figurative jellyfish tentacles to avoid, of course. The brave might dip their feet in the water.
 

Barbara Sofer
is a Jerusalem writer who concentrates on the wondrous stories of modern Israel and its people.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Jordan is Palestine
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2010/06/jordan-is-palestine_27.html
 

by Melanie Phillips
 
 

The Dutch politician Geert Wilders has hit the bullseye:
 
 

‘Jordan is Palestine,’ said Wilders, who heads the third-largest party in Holland. ‘Changing its name to Palestine will end the conflict in the Middle East and provide the Palestinians with an alternate homeland...There has been an independent Palestinian state since 1946, and it is the kingdom of Jordan.’ Wilders also called on the Dutch government to refer to Jordan as Palestine and move its embassy to Jerusalem.
 
 

Wilders has spoken the big inconvenient truth. As a result, it is inevitably being dismissed as merely what ‘the right’ regularly says. So of course it's untrue, on the grounds that, by definition, everything ‘the right’ says is untrue. Yadda yadda.
 
 

But it is not untrue. It is correct. Anyone familiar with the history knows it is correct. Immediately after World War One, Palestine consisted of what is now Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. The great powers dividing up the region decided that Britain should be given a mandate to administer Palestine and restore within it the historic Jewish national home. Within a couple of years, however, Winston Churchill, for reasons of realpolitik, gave away three quarters of Palestine to the Hashemite dynasty to found (Trans)Jordan (leaving all the rest to be settled by the Jews; but that’s another story).
 
 

So Jordan is indeed Palestine. As Camie Davis points out, the Arabs themselves repeatedly said so:
 
 

Jordanians, for decades, were avid proponents of the ‘Jordan is Palestine’ position.  They used that position as justification for the annexation of the West Bank, arguing that Palestine was one single, indivisible unit, and that Jordan was the legitimate governing body of Palestine...
 
 

‘We are the government of Palestine, the army of Palestine and the refugees of Palestine.’ Prime Minister of Jordan, Hazza' al-Majali, 23 August 1959
 
 

 ‘Palestine and Transjordan are one.’ King Abdullah, Arab League meeting in Cairo, 12 April 1948
 
 

‘Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate.’  Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2 February 1970
 
 

‘Jordan is not just another Arab state with regard to Palestine, but rather, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan in terms of territory, national identity, sufferings, hopes and aspirations.’  Jordanian Minister of Agriculture, 24 September 1980
 
 

'The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.' King Hussein 1981

Indeed, until 1970 the Palestine Liberation Organisation conducted terrorist operations against Jordan on the grounds that it was Palestine and the Hashemite minority was ruling the Palestinian majority. It was only after Jordan killed thousands of Palestinians in 'Black September' (and who in the west ever cared about that??) that Israel suddenly became the sole historic homeland’ of the Palestinians and Jordan was airbrushed out of the picture -- and the fabrication of ‘Palestinianism’ became the accepted truth.

But as 'Palestinian' politician Zouhair Moussein told the Dutch newspaper Trouw in 1977 (hat tip: Israel Matzav):
 
 

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.
 
 

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
 
 

It is the west’s refusal to acknowledge this connection, and wholly to misrepresent instead both the history of the region and the causes of the conflict in the Middle East, which is one of the principal reasons why that murderous impasse continues to this day.

There can be no peace without justice; and there can be no justice without truth. Wilders has told the truth. With the west’s collective brain twisted beyond reason by lies, he will of course be vilified and dismissed for doing so. The bigger the truth, the greater the vilification and the more ‘right-wing’ the truth-teller becomes in order to neutralise his challenge to the lies.
 
 

That’s why the bad guys are winning.
 
 
 
 

Melanie Phillips

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama Can't Decide Whether to Stand with Israel
http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2010/06/obama-cant-decide-whether-to-stand-with.html
 

by Jennifer Rubin
 
 

Josh Rogin reports: “The Obama administration is still not saying what it will do if and when the U.N. calls for another international investigation into the Gaza flotilla incident.” You see, Obama is supportive of the Israeli investigation; he just won’t say whether he’ll defend Israel’s right to conduct its own investigation and rebuff UN attempts to set up an international kangaroo court. Rogin tells us:

The uncertainty is whether the Obama administration is willing to actively oppose a new investigation. This uncertainty is compounded by the mixed messages coming from senior officials like Jones, as well as the Obama team’s apparent unwillingness to brush Secretary-General Ban off the plate.

This lack of resolve and maddening squishiness should no longer shock us. While other American presidents would leave no “uncertainty” and would make clear that the U.S. would not countenance such an action from the UN, this president is different (to use Michal Oren’s description). His attitude toward the U.S.-Israel relationship is unlike his predecessor’s. For Obama, the highest foreign-policy priorities are getting along with the “international community,” accommodating our foes (i.e., “engagement”), and reorienting the U.S. toward the “Muslim World.” If those aims come in conflict with Israel’s security needs (which they inevitably do) and its efforts to hold back the assaults on the Jewish state’s legitimacy, Israel may well have to fend for itself.

Unfortunately, the uncertainty in and of itself is harmful both to Israel’s security and America’s international standing. Most immediately, the hemming and hawing demonstrates less than “rock-solid” (Hillary’s description) support for the Jewish state, serving as another sign of  daylight between this administration and the Israeli government. This will only encourage more attacks on Israel (diplomatic or otherwise). As for our own standing, once again, we display what a fickle and unreliable ally we are. Uncertainty is not what allies expect – or what keeps foes at bay.

Perhaps if American Jewry demonstrated the same “uncertainty” about its support for Obama, the administration might feel compelled to straddle less and defend our ally more. Jewish leaders of mainstream groups should be concerned. If Obama has this much difficulty deciding whether to fend off an UN investigation, what will he do when there is another terrorist propaganda stunt? Or when Israel is compelled to attack Iran? It’s not enough for Obama to drop his outward hostity toward Israel. What is required is what Jewish groups expect of every American president — that he stand with Israel unambiguously against efforts to weaken and defame the Jewish state.

Commending him for straddling sends precisely the wrong message to this president. And while we’re talking about straddlers, it’s time for Jewish groups, whose membership is overwhelmingly Democratic, to decide whether at this point in history it is more important to run interference for Obama or to challenge him to live up to his pro-Israel campaign rhetoric.
 
 

Jennifer Rubin

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

by  Andrew Pessin

-Satire-

Israel breathed this morning. There was a quick intake of air, and then a gentle exhalation.

World condemnation was instantaneous.
 
 

P.A. President Abbas decried the Israeli attempt to commandeer the Middle East air supply, and demanded a prompt return to the 1967 air distribution which Palestinian leaders had previously violently rejected. Iranian President Ahmadinejad interrupted his weekly call for the destruction of Israel in order to blast the Zionist entity for its blatant oxygen grab and call for its immediate destruction.
 
 

Egyptian newspapers detailed the malicious Mossad plot to exhale germs into the air and then spread the poisoned air via high-tech windmills directly into the lungs of Muslim children. Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal announced that in response to the Israeli aggression, Hamas would not let the Red Cross visit captured soldier Gilad Schalit. When it was pointed out that they hadn't allowed such visits in the four years prior to Israel's action, he snorted, "And now you see why!"
 
 

Turkey announced it would be withdrawing its ambassador, only to retract that announcement in slight embarrassment when it realized it had already withdrawn him last week, in response to some other Israeli outrage it could no longer quite recall. The United Nations General Assembly, after meeting for an all-night emergency session, called for another all-night emergency session. And the Security Council demanded an immediate impartial investigation, only to backtrack when it was informed that all its available staff were already tied up in ongoing impartial investigations of other Israeli actions.
 
 

Indeed, outrage at Israel's action was heard around the globe. People everywhere exclaimed that Israel's aggression was against international law, and then asked for a copy of the newspaper so they could see just what it was, in fact, that Israel had done this time. Others, more intellectually-inclined, asked for some links on "international law," curious to find out, at last, just what was this special code which apparently all non-Israelis had secretly agreed upon. And, of course, there were numerous calls for Israel's leaders to be brought up on charges of war crimes.
 
 

Loudest of these were from regimes as diverse as China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea, which took time off from their busy schedules oppressing Tibetans, Darfur civilians, women and all religious minorities, and their own citizens respectively to make their pronouncements. In fact, Israel's action this time was so offensive that Muslim extremists actually paused from their work installing massive explosives in each others' mosques in order to condemn Israel's attacks on Muslim civilians.
 
 

The criticisms could even be heard within Israel itself. "How can Israel call itself a democracy," Haaretz asked in an editorial, "while allowing its Jewish citizens to consume 75% of the air?" Arab-Israeli MKs signed a petition demanding that the Israeli constitution, guaranteeing their right to sit in the Knesset despite their repeated calls for Israel's destruction, should be dissolved, preferably in favor of something more totalitarian. "On this day I am ashamed to be a Jew," proclaimed one prominent left-wing leader, a man who had repeatedly urged all peoples to be proud of their ethnic and religious identities, except for Jews.
 
 

Israel initially attempted to respond to these criticisms, but quickly realized that speaking would require it once again to inhale and thus draw upon itself further global ire.
 
 

And so, Israel stopped breathing altogether.
 
 

This action, clearly aimed to destroy the regional economy and destabilize the entire Middle East, triggered instantaneous worldwide condemnation.
 
 
 
 

Andrew Pessin

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

IHH head calls for violence, "martyrdom" in new 'Marmara' footage.

New footage from the Mavi Marmara was released by the Foreign Ministry on Friday afternoon, this time showing IHH head Bülent Yildirim inciting to violence against Israeli commandos hours before the encounter that claimed the lives of nine Turkish passengers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSYjuDEZw1w&feature=player_embedded

“We follow in the footsteps of the martyrs,” Yildirim could be seen declaring to a large crowd of activists. “You shall see, we will definitely claim one or two victories.”

Yildirim went on to urge the ship’s passengers not to turn back as other flotillas had done, but rather to resist the attempt to divert the ship. “We don't want to be recorded in Allah's book as cowards,” he said in Turkish and Arabic.

An Egyptian parliamentarian who was also present led the activists in the room in a chant, “Martyrs marching into Gaza by the millions.”

Yildirim then threatened, “If you send the commandos, we will throw you down from here and you will be humiliated in front of the whole world." He added, “If they board our ship, we will throw them into the sea, Allah willing!"

He later called Israel “weak,” saying it resorted to propaganda to combat the activists’ determination to reach Gaza. “We thought [Israel] considered itself a state,” he could be heard saying. "It's not a state."

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