Tag Archives: Turkey

Increasing The Stakes In The Propaganda War Because You Are Losing The Real War

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Today’s Jerusalem Post is reporting that a flotilla is preparing to set sail from Turkey to Gaza to bring humanitarian aid. According to the report, the flotilla will be protected by the Turkish military.

The article reports:

Harold Rhode, a senior fellow at the New-York-based Gatestone Institute and a former adviser at the in the office of the American defense secretary on Islamic affairs, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Sunday that the real issue in the ongoing conflict is that Turkey and Qatar are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in their goals.

“[Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan has been associated with the Muslim Brotherhood long before he was prime minister,” Rhode said.

It should now be clear to all that Erdogan “is now out of the bag,” Rhode said, adding that US President Barack Obama does not speak to the Turkish leader anymore despite previously describing him as one of his closest friends among the world’s leaders.

“Erdogan is doing whatever he can to help Hamas,” he said, asserting that it will only hurt the Palestinian people in the end.

Israel has sent humanitarian aid to Gaza. They have treated residents of Gaza in Israeli hospitals with the same care given to Israelis. As word gets out that Hamas is using human shields and storing weapons in schools, Hamas begins to lose the propaganda war. The flotilla is an attempt to turn public opinion against Israel. Meanwhile, America is promising aid to Gaza. Where has the aid to Gaza gone in the past? It certainly has not been spent on the people or the infrastructure. The money we give to Gaza goes to weapons and to line the pockets of the leaders of Hamas and Fatah. It is time that we attached enough strings to any money given to Gaza so that we know it is spent on the people there to raise their standard of living. If we can’t do that, we should cut off the money.

Changing Alliances In The Middle East

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Please excuse the short history lesson, but it is needed to put current events in perspective. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the first President of Turkey. When the modern state of Turkey was established after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, Ataturk wanted to abolish the caliphate and create a secular country. (In response to the idea of Turkey becoming a secular country, Hassan al Banna founded the Ikhwan al-Muslimin, the Society of Muslim Brothers or the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt in 1928.) The efforts of Ataturk were successful until the election of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2003. Erdogan is very quietly moving the country toward an Islamic state. Logically, as Turkey moves toward becoming an Islamic state, relations between Israel and Turkey are becoming strained.

On Thursday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Turkey has been charged with leaking the identities of Israeli agents to Iran.

The article reports:

Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) allegedly revealed the identities of as many as 10 Iranians who were meeting covertly with Israeli spies in Turkey, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported Wednesday. Israeli and Turkish intelligence have had a close collaboration for decades.

U.S. officials declined to protest the leak directly to Turkey after it was discovered, according to the Post. President Obama also pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come to a detente with Erdogan in March after several years of strained relations stemming from the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid.

“That Obama didn’t condemn the leak really is as great a scandal as Turkey betraying the secrets in the first place, especially given how the United States benefits so directly from Israel’s intelligence gathering,” said Michael Rubin, a Middle East scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Michael Rubin also stated that President Obama should suspend sharing intelligence information with Turkey.

A U.K. Telegraph article posted on Thursday added more information:

There was no immediate comment from Israel’s government, but one former intelligence chief suggested that the leak might have led to the men’s executions. Israeli media pointed out that the report fitted with Iran’s declaration in April last year that it had uncovered a network of 15 Mossad agents.

Turkey, a Nato member, has long been Israel’s key security ally in the region, but that changed gradually after Mr Erdogan, a “soft Islamist”, was elected prime minister and became more expressly vocal in support of the Palestinian cause.

At some point, we are going to have to examine Turkey’s membership in NATO.

The article in the U.K Telegraph points out:

However, the response inside Israel was bitter. Danny Yatom, a former head of Mossad, described the alleged incident as a “great betrayal”.

“It’s against all the rules which have existed for many years, the unwritten rules concerning cooperation between intelligence organisations that reveal sensitive information to one another and trust one another not to use that information to harm whoever gave it to them,” he told Israeli radio.

The alliances in the Middle East are changing; the Obama Administration needs to acknowledge that fact and act accordingly.

 

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The Phone Call Really Didn’t Solve The Problem

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On Saturday, the New York Times remarked that President Obama’s talent for arm twisting to get things accomplished was wonderful. They were referring to the phone call placed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey that was supposed to have healed the rift between the two countries. (The Times noted that this kind of successful deal making has eluded the President when dealing with Congressional Republicans.) Well, as usual, not so fast.

Commentary Magazine posted an article yesterday stating:

But apparently the hosannas about the president’s achievement are a little premature. Less than a day after the supposed reconciliation Erdoğan was already backtracking, saying that the resumption of normal relations, let alone the old alliance between the two countries, was still on hold. It is to be hoped that a dose of reality will cool the ardor of those, like Kay, who believe Obama’s “much mocked faith in diplomacy and human rationality” has been vindicated.

 Erdoğan’s double dealing on normalization even after Netanyahu’s call is hardly surprising. This is, after all, the same person who recently compared Zionism to fascism and whose regime has encouraged anti-Semitism as it transformed a secular republic into an Islamist regime in all but name. The Mavi Marmara incident, in which a flotilla of ships sponsored by Turkey attempted to run the Israeli blockade of Hamas-run Gaza, was intended to provoke an Israeli attack. While, as Netanyahu admitted, the raid on the ship appears to have been botched by Israeli forces, Ankara’s purpose was to create a pretext for a complete break. This was the end of a process begun years earlier by Erdoğan, not a spontaneous reaction to anything Israel had done.

I believe that most of the world would love to see peace come to the Middle East, but there are some pretty big obstacles to peace in that region. The Islamic countries surrounding Israel do not acknowledge Israel’s right to exist–they want to drive Israel into the sea. That philosophy does not lend itself to peace. The children in Gaza are being trained for war from the time they are toddlers.

Watch the video below posted on YouTube to understand the problem:

Until the children spouting this garbage are taught that it is garbage, we can expect to see war–not peace in the Middle East.

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The Part Of President Obama’s Trip To Israel That Was Not Widely Reported

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When President Obama traveled to Israel, the American press hailed it as a new beginning–a do-over of the way President Obama had treated Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu during the President’s first term. President Obama did say a lot of the right things when he spoke to Israel–he seems to understand to some degree that in order for Israel to survive, they may have to attack Iran. But there is another part of the story.

On Friday, Paul Mirengoff at Power Line reported:

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized today to Turkey for an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla. The apology is, of course, the handiwork of President Obama. Indeed, Netanyahu made the call during an airport meeting with Obama shortly before Obama mercifully left Israel.

The apology is a humiliation for Israel, which had nothing for which to be sorry. Netanyahu’s statement — which he wisely resisted making for three years — will not improve Israeli relations with Turkey. Relations are poor not because of the flotilla incident, but because Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, a good friend of Obama’s, is an Israel-hating Islamist.

Prime Minister Erdogan has been systematically moving his country away from its previously secular government into a Muslim state. He has cancelled military operations with Israel (which used to be routine) and condemned the State of Israel whenever possible.

The article at Power Line cites some of Prime Minister Erdogan’s recent statements:

How much does Erdogan hate Israel? Daniel Pipes reminds us that last month, Erdogan stated: “Just like Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, Islamophobia must be regarded as a crime against humanity.” And three days ago, Erdogan stood by his claim that Zionism, the principle upon which Israel is founded, constitutes a crime against humanity.

He really does not sound as if he wants to make friends.

Andrew McCarthy posted an article at PJMedia on Saturday which provided more information on the flotilla that was the source of the problem:

The lowlight of President Obama’s Middle East trip is his strong-arming of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a humiliating apology to Turkey’s Islamic-supremacist government over Israel’s defense in 2010 of its blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. The blockade was subjected to a terrorist offensive camouflaged as a humanitarian flotilla. The spearhead of the siege was the Mavi Marmara, a vessel controlled by a Turkish jihadist organization, the IHH, that is a part of the Union of Good, a formally designated terrorist organization under American law. Due to President Obama’s close relations with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Obama administration has resisted congressional calls to designate the IHH itself as a terrorist organization – sparing itself the embarrassment of noticing the intimate collusion of Erdogan’s ruling Islamist party and the jihadist group.

President Obama is not a friend of Israel. He may pose as a friend, but his actions show that he is not a friend.

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While We Were Focused On Sequestration

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The Obama Administration has a habit of focusing our attention on ‘the crisis of the moment’ while they do something significant behind the scenes, hoping we won’t notice. Well, they’ve done it again.

Andrew McCarthy posted an article at the National Review today about the upcoming trial of Sulaiman Abu Ghayth, the son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, in New York City. Sulaiman Abu Ghayth was captured in Turkey last month, and rather than being sent to Guantanamo to face a military tribunal, he was transported to New York to stand a civilian trial.

There are some interesting implications of doing this:

Because Abu Ghayth was not detained at Gitmo, he was not subject to the statutory prohibition against using government funds to transfer enemy combatants into the U.S. So, while no one was paying attention, the administration whisked him into lower Manhattan, where his indictment in civilian court was promptly announced. He thus promptly received legal representation — so much for interrogation — and is enjoying all the protections of the Bill of Rights.

…Moreover, as Attorney General Holder must know, by proceeding with this civilian prosecution in New York at the very moment when  KSM and the other 9/11 defendants are facing a military commission at Gitmo, he has given KSM & Co. an exquisite legal argument that proceeding with their military commission would be arbitrary and unjust in light of the grade-A due process Abu Ghayth is getting. That is, the government is virtually inviting the federal courts to invalidate military commissions — which was a top goal of many Obama administration lawyers back when they were in private practice, volunteering their services to terrorist detainees.

Snookered again by the snookerer-in-chief. Unfortunately, this move prevents the officials at Guantanamo from collecting intelligence from this man, and it creates massive legal problems for those attempting to carry out the military tribunals. This move makes Americans less safe.Enhanced by Zemanta

Are Economic Sanctions Working On Iran ?

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On Friday, the Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the impact of economic sanctions on the economy of Iran.

The article reports:

As Tehran moves to bolster its bilateral trade relations, senior regime leaders have indicated that Western sanctions are leading Iran to become more economically independent and less reliant on oil revenue.

The region’s continued dependence on Iran’s energy sector and other exports suggests that Western sanctions have not dented the pocketbook of Tehran’s top leaders.

Iranian officials estimate that the government will earn $70 billion in non-oil exports by March 2013.

Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear program continues.

Turkish energy minister Taner Yildiz recently stated that Turkey would not honor the sanctions prohibiting Turkey from importing natural gas from Iran, as that is essentially imposing a natural gas sanction on Turkey.

The article concludes:

The biggest hole in sanctions, however, is Barack Obama,” Rubin added. “His waivers [on sanctions] make legal the same sanctions avoidance in which many of these other countries engage. Moral clarity is important.”

Tehran meanwhile has downplayed the effect of Western sanctions on its economy.

Iranian General Mohammad Reza Naqdi said Friday that a decrease in oil revenue should be ”turned into opportunities to boost self-sufficiency and produce economic independence,” according to Fars.

Reports earlier this year indicated Iranian exports of copper and medicine have drastically risen in recent months, earning the regime more than a billion dollars in revenue.

Meanwhile, the nuclear program in Iran continues…

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Now For Something Completely Different

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The civil war in Syria continues despite the fact that the news doesn’t seem to be paying a lot of attention to it. I have no suggestions for a course of action–I am not convinced anyone involved is the ‘good guys.’ My only concern is for the civilians caught in the middle. We need to find a way to get the civilians out of the way and let the people who are determined to fight with each other slug it out. However, the human cost of this civil war is a major concern.

Gary Lane at CBN News posted a story today about the refugees that are fleeing the Syrian civil war.

Please follow the link above to CBN News to see the video showing what is going on in Syria.

The article reports:

The United Nations estimates the number of registered Syrian refugees at more than 170,000. They have scattered across the region, ending up in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan.

These refugees are being met by Christian relief groups who are helping move from border camps to apartments. I was touched by a quote from a woman who was helped by the Christian groups:

The article reports:

Doyle (Tom Doyle, with the Dallas-based ministry E3 Partners) witnessed how the effort affected the life of one refugee.

“Some of the people were pushing them around and it was mass chaos and this woman looked at me and she said, ‘but it was the Bible people that came to us and gave us food and clothes and loved us and played with our children. It was the Bible people who were there for us,'” Doyle recalled.

“When she got done sharing her story she looked at me and said, ‘And I want you to know, I love Jesus now!'” he said.

Out of wartime tragedy, “The Bible People” are having an impact on the lives of the refugees by sharing the love of Christ, meeting material needs and shining light into the lives of Syrians fleeing chronic darkness.

Obviously, this is an awful situation, but it is encouraging to know that Tom Doyle and others like him are helping the refugees find a new life after fleeing such horrendous violence.

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