Turkish president says flotilla raid ‘crime’ closer to act of terror group than of sovereign state, adds Israel must offer compensation if it wants forgiveness
Israel must make amends to be forgiven for a commando raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, including apologizing and paying compensation, Turkish President Abdullah Gul told the French daily Le Monde.
Gul added that if Israel made no move to heal the rift, then Turkey could even decide to break diplomatic relations.
In an interview published on Friday, Gul said the Israeli raid at the end of May, which killed nine activists, was a “crime” which might have been carried out by the likes of al-Qaeda rather than a sovereign state.
“It seems impossible to me to forgive or forget, unless there are some initiatives which could change the situation,” Gul was quoted as saying by Le Monde.
Asked what these might be, he said: “Firstly, to ask pardon and to establish some sort of compensation.” He added that he also wanted to see an independent inquiry into the botched raid and a discussion on lifting Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
Asked if Turkey might break relations with Israel if they did nothing, Gul said: “Anything is possible.”
Once a close ally of Israel, Turkey recalled its ambassador following the flotilla incident, cancelled joint military exercises and said trade and defense deals worth billions of dollars would be reduced to a minimum.
Separately, Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, said any inquiry set up by Israel to investigate the Gaza flotilla incident “must be given a genuine capacity to find the facts” or it would not be credible.
To comply with international standards, he said, such an inquiry would have to be independent of the government and have full legal authority to obtain direct access to all relevant evidence, including the military personnel involved.
Israel has fended off a UN demand for an international investigation, instead accepting a US proposal for an Israeli inquiry with the participation of outside observers.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul said Sunday that fight against terrorism was the most important issue of Turkey.
Gul replied to questions of reporters on board the plane en route from Turkey to South Korea.
“Terrorist organizations are used or motivated sometimes. They don’t have their own rules. Together we should fight against terrorism. We are combating it also by minimizing it and isolating it with all dimensions. Fight against terrorism is always atop the agenda of Turkey,” he said.
Replying to a question, Gul said, “Turkey will get rid of terrorism.
Turkey’s standards have been upgraded. The country’s democracy standards are of great importance for isolation of terrorism. We will do whatever we can to get rid of it. There is no other way. We will overcome this issue. Our fight will continue till terrorism is isolated.”
The Israeli government has apologised after its press office emailed to journalists a spoof video about the flotilla which tried to dock in Gaza.
The video shows people dressed as peace activists singing “we con the world” to the tune of We Are the World.
A spokesman said the video did not represent the Israeli government’s view.
The video contains real footage of the Israeli raid on the flotilla in which nine activists died.
‘Bluff’
In the clip, which parodies the video made for the 1985 charity song, the singers are dressed up in costumes representing the captain of the flotilla, western peace activists, and Arabs wearing keffiyeh scarves.
“There’s no people dying, so the best that we can do, is create the greatest bluff of all”, they sing.
“We are peaceful travellers, we’re waving our own knives,” the song goes.
The song builds to a chorus of “we con the world, we con the people. We’ll make them all believe the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) is Jack the Ripper.”
At one point the singer dressed as the flotilla captain sings “Ithbah al-Yahud” which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic.
The video is interspersed with footage from the Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish lead vessel of the flotilla which tried to break an Israeli and Egyptian blockade on Gaza last week.
‘Funny’
Nine passengers on board were killed during the Israeli commando raid on the ship.
The ships were towed to the port of Ashdod and the activists deported.
Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, told the UK’s Guardian newspaper: “I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny. It is what Israelis feel. But the government has nothing to do with it.”
The video was made by the Hebrew satirical website Latma.co.il, run by Jerusalem Post deputy editor Caroline Glick.
On her website she said the clip featured “the Turkish-Hamas ‘love boat’ captain, crew and passengers in a musical explanation of how they con the world.”
“We think this is an important Israeli contribution to the discussion of recent events,” Ms Glick wrote.
But there has also been condemnation of the spoof.
“The video is a repulsive attempt to use satire to make Israel’s case on Flotilla debacle,” Didi Remez of the Coteret blog said.
A Turkish Islamic group — the “Humanitarian Relief Foundation,” often associated by Western intelligence agencies with terrorist sponsorship — orchestrated the recent Gaza flotilla. It was hoping for the sort of violent, well-publicized confrontation with the Israeli navy that later followed.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, immediately issued veiled threats to Israel. He then badgered the United States, Turkey’s NATO patron ally, to condemn the Israeli interdiction.
While the world piled on in its criticism of Israel, there was also a sort of stunned silence over the actions of Turkey, without whose help the blockade-running flotilla would never have left a Turkish port.
Erdogan’s hysterics emphasized the Islamic transformation of a once secular Turkey that has been going on for well over a decade. In 2003, Turkey forbade passage to U.S. troops in their efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq. State-run Turkish television instead aired virulent anti-American dramas, like “Valley of the Wolves,” in which our soldiers appear as little more than blood-crazed killers who dismember poor Iraqi civilians.
Lately, Turkey has reached out to Iran and Syria. Both habitually sponsor Mideast terrorist groups and have aided anti-American insurgents in Iraq. Turkey and Brazil recently offered to monitor Iran’s nuclear program, sidestepping American and European efforts to step up sanctions to stop Teheran’s plans for a bomb.
Erdogan’s anti-Israel attacks often match those of his newfound friends, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah’s Hasan Nasrallah. Former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, remember, once blamed the Jews for starting the Crusades, and for instigating World War I to create Israel. He also described them as a “disease” that needed to be eradicated.
What is behind the Turkish metamorphosis from a staunch U.S. ally, NATO member and quasi-European state into a sponsor of Hamas, ally of theocratic Iran and fellow traveler with terrorist-sponsoring Syria?
The Cold War is over. Turkey no longer guards the southeastern flank of Europe from the advance of Soviet communism, lessening its importance within NATO. Its Anatolian Muslim population grows, while more secular European and Aegean Turks have lost influence. Turkey senses a growing distance between Tel Aviv and Washington, and thus an opportunity to step into the gulf to unite Muslims against Israel and win influence in the Arab world.
Erdogan clearly identifies more with the old transnational Ottoman sultanate than with Kemal Ataturk’s modern, secular and Western nation-state.Indeed, he has bragged that he is a grandson of the Ottomans and announced that Turkey’s new goal was to restore the might of the Ottoman Empire.
And so, like the theocratic Ottomans of old, Erdogan’s Islamic Turkey fancies itself a window on the West, absorbing technology and expertise from Europe and the United States in order to empower and unite the more spiritually pure Muslims across national boundaries.
Of course, Turkey tolerates no criticism about its own violations of human rights in suppressing its Kurdish population. It lectures Israel about occupied land but is silent about its sponsorship of the Turkish absorption of much of Greek Cyprus. It laments a divided Jerusalem but says nothing about the segregation of Nicosia.
Erdogan often accuses Israel of human rights violations, but to this day no Turkish government has ever acknowledged culpability for the genocide of the Armenians. Far from it: Not long ago, Erdogan threatened to deport Armenians from Turkish soil.
Where and how does all this end?
Turkey’s new ambitions and ethnic and religious chauvinism are antithetical to its NATO membership. The United States should not be treaty-bound to defend a de facto ally of Iran or Syria, which are both eager to obtain nuclear weapons. European countries foresaw the problem when they denied Turkey membership in the now fragile European Union, fearful that Anatolian Islamists would have unfettered transit across European borders.
In response, the United States should make contingency plans to relocate from its huge Air Force base at Incirlik — a facility that Turkey has in the past threatened to close. We should brace for new troubles in the Aegean region and Cyprus, as a bankrupt and often anti-American Greece is now alienated from both the United States and northern Europe — and yet increasingly vulnerable to a return of Ottoman regional ambitions.
Just as the Shah of Iran’s pro-Western, secular transformation failed and led to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s anti-Western Islamic revolution, we are seeing something similar in Erdogan’s efforts to turn Ataturk’s Turkey back into the theocratic sultanate that ran the Eastern Mediterranean for more than three centuries.
If Erdogan is intent on a suicidal reinvention of Turkey into a pale imitation of Ottoman hegemony, we can at least take steps to ensure that it will be his mess — and none of our own.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of “A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.” You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
Google is “almost certain” to face prosecution for collecting data from unsecured wi-fi networks, according to Privacy International (PI).
The search giant has been under scrutiny for collecting wi-fi data as part of its StreetView project.
Google has released an independent audit of the rogue code, which it has claimed was included in the StreetView software by mistake.
But PI is convinced the audit proves “criminal intent”.
“The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system used for the wi-fi collection intentionally separated out unencrypted content (payload data) of communications and systematically wrote this data to hard drives. This is equivalent to placing a hard tap and a digital recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorisation,” said PI in a statement.
This would put Google at odds with the interception laws of the 30 countries that the system was used in, it added.
Scotland Yard
“The Germans are almost certain to prosecute. Because there was intent, they have no choice but to prosecute,” said Simon Davies, head of PI.
In the UK the ICO has said it is reviewing the audit but that for the time being it had no plans to pursue the matter.
PI however does intend to take the case to the police.
“I don’t see any alternative but for us to go to Scotland Yard,” said Mr Davies.
The revelation that Google had collected such data led the German Information Commissioner to demand it handed over a hard-disk so it could examine exactly what it had collected.
It has not yet received the data and has extended the original deadline for it to be handed over.
The Australian police have also been ordered to investigate Google for possible breach of privacy.
‘Systematic failure’
According to Google, the code which allowed data to be collected was part of an experimental wi-fi project undertaken by an unnamed engineer to improve location-based services and was never intended to be incorporated in the software for StreetView.
“As we have said before, this was a mistake. The report today confirms that Google did indeed collect and store payload data from unencrypted wi-fi networks, but not from networks that were encrypted. We are continuing to work with the relevant authorities to respond to their questions and concerns,” said a Google spokesman.
“This was a failure of communication between and within teams,” he added.
But PI disputes this explanation.
“The idea that this was a work of a lone engineer doesn’t add up. This is complex code and it must have been given a budget and been overseen. Google has asserted that all its projects are rigorously checked,” said Mr Davies.
“It goes to the heart of a systematic failure of management and of duty of care,” he added.
(Parts of this article were published in Ma’ariv, Israel’s second largest newspaper.)
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Exodus 2010
by Uri Avnery, June 07, 2010
On the high seas, outside territorial waters, the ship was stopped by the navy. The commandos stormed it. Hundreds of people on the deck resisted; the soldiers used force. Some of the passengers were killed, scores injured. The ship was brought into harbor; the passengers were taken off by force. The world saw them walking on the quay, men and women, young and old, all of them worn out, one after another, each being marched between two soldiers…
The ship was called Exodus 1947. It left France in the hope of breaking the British blockade, which was imposed to prevent ships loaded with Holocaust survivors from reaching the shores of Palestine. If it had been allowed to reach the country, the illegal immigrants would have come ashore and the British would have sent them to detention camps in Cyprus, as they had done before. Nobody would have taken any notice of the episode for more than two days.
But the person in charge was Ernest Bevin, a Labor Party leader, an arrogant, rude, and power-loving British minister. He was not about to let a bunch of Jews dictate to him. He decided to teach them a lesson the entire world would witness. “This is a provocation!” he exclaimed, and of course he was right. The main aim was indeed to create a provocation, in order to draw the eyes of the world to the British blockade.
What followed is well known: the episode dragged on and on, one stupidity led to another, the whole world sympathized with the passengers. But the British did not give in and paid the price. A heavy price.
Many believe that the Exodus incident was the turning point in the struggle for the creation of the state of Israel. Britain collapsed under the weight of international condemnation and decided to give up its mandate over Palestine. There were, of course, many more weighty reasons for this decision, but the Exodus proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I am not the only one who was reminded of this episode this week. Actually, it was almost impossible not to be reminded of it, especially for those of us who lived in Palestine at the time and witnessed it.
There are, of course, important differences. Then the passengers were Holocaust survivors; this time they were peace activists from all over the world. But then and now the world saw heavily armed soldiers brutally attack unarmed passengers, who resist with everything that comes to hand, sticks, and bare hands. Then and now it happened on the high seas – 40 km from the shore then, 65 km now.
In retrospect, the British behavior throughout the affair seems incredibly stupid. But Bevin was no fool, and the British officers who commanded the action were not nincompoops. After all, they had just finished a World War on the winning side.
If they behaved with complete folly from beginning to end, it was the result of arrogance, insensitivity, and boundless contempt for world public opinion.
Ehud Barak is the Israeli Bevin. He is not a fool, either, nor are our top brass. But they are responsible for a chain of acts of folly, the disastrous implications of which are hard to assess. Former minister and present commentator Yossi Sarid called the ministerial “committee of seven,” which decides on security matters, “seven idiots” – and I must protest. It is an insult to idiots.
The preparations for the flotilla went on for more than a year. Hundreds of e-mail messages went back and forth. I myself received many dozens. There was no secret. Everything was out in the open.
There was a lot of time for all our political and military institutions to prepare for the approach of the ships. The politician consulted. The soldiers trained. The diplomats reported. The intelligence people did their job.
Nothing helped. All the decisions were wrong from the first moment to this moment. And it’s not yet the end.
The idea of a flotilla as a means to break the blockade borders on genius. It placed the Israeli government on the horns of a dilemma – the choice between several alternatives, all of them bad. Every general hopes to get his opponent into such a situation.
The alternatives were:
To let the flotilla reach Gaza without hindrance. The cabinet secretary supported this option. That would have led to the end of the blockade, because after this flotilla more and larger ones would have come.
To stop the ships in territorial waters, inspect their cargo, and make sure they were not carrying weapons or “terrorists,” then let them continue on their way. That would have aroused some vague protests in the world but upheld the principle of a blockade.
To capture them on the high seas and bring them to Ashdod, risking a face-to-face battle with activists on board.
As our governments have always done, when faced with the choice between several bad alternatives, the Netanyahu government chose the worst.
Anyone who followed the preparations as reported in the media could have foreseen that they would lead to people being killed and injured. One does not storm a Turkish ship and expect cute little girls to present one with flowers. The Turks are not known as people who give in easily.
The orders given to the forces and made public included the three fateful words: “at any cost.” Every soldier knows what these three terrible words mean. Moreover, on the list of objectives, the consideration for the passengers appeared only in third place, after safeguarding the safety of the soldiers and fulfilling the task.
If Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, the chief of staff, and the commander of the navy did not understand that this would lead to killing and wounding people, then it must be concluded – even by those who were reluctant to consider this until now – that they are grossly incompetent. They must be told, in the immortal words of Oliver Cromwell to Parliament: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately…. Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”
This event points again to one of the most serious aspects of the situation: we live in a bubble, in a kind of mental ghetto, which cuts us off and prevents us from seeing another reality, the one perceived by the rest of the world. A psychiatrist might judge this to be the symptom of a severe mental problem.
The propaganda of the government and the army tells a simple story: our heroic soldiers, determined and sensitive, the elite of the elite, descended on the ship in order “to talk” and were attacked by a wild and violent crowd. Official spokesmen repeated again and again the word “lynching.”
On the first day, almost all the Israeli media accepted this. After all, it is clear that we, the Jews, are the victims. Always. That applies to Jewish soldiers, too. True, we storm a foreign ship at sea, but turn at once into victims who have no choice but to defend ourselves against violent and incited anti-Semites.
It is impossible not to be reminded of the classic Jewish joke about the Jewish mother in Russia taking leave of her son, who has been called up to serve the czar in the war against Turkey. “Don’t overexert yourself,” she implores him. “Kill a Turk and rest. Kill another Turk and rest again…”
“But mother,” the son interrupts, “what if the Turk kills me?”
“You?” exclaims the mother. “But why? What have you done to him?”
To any normal person, this may sound crazy. Heavily armed soldiers of an elite commando unit board a ship on the high seas in the middle of the night, from the sea and from the air – and they are the victims?
But there is a grain of truth there: they are the victims of arrogant and incompetent commanders, irresponsible politicians, and the media fed by them. And, actually, of the Israeli public, since most of the people voted for this government or for the opposition, which is no different.
The Exodus affair was repeated, but with a change of roles. Now we are the British.
Somewhere, a new Leon Uris is planning to write his next book, Exodus 2010. A new Otto Preminger is planning a film that will become a blockbuster. A new Paul Newman will star in it – after all, there is no shortage of talented Turkish actors.
More than 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson declared that every nation must act with a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” Israeli leaders have never accepted the wisdom of this maxim. They adhere to the dictum of David Ben-Gurion: “It is not important what the Gentiles say, it is important what the Jews do.” Perhaps he assumed that the Jews would not act foolishly.
Making enemies of the Turks is more than foolish. For decades, Turkey has been our closest ally in the region, much closer than is generally known. Turkey could play, in the future, an important role as a mediator between Israel and the Arab-Muslim world, between Israel and Syria, and, yes, even between Israel and Iran. Perhaps we have succeeded now in uniting the Turkish people against us – and some say that this is the only matter on which the Turks are now united.
This is Chapter 2 of “Cast Lead.” Then we aroused most countries in the world against us, shocked our few friends, and gladdened our enemies. Now we have done it again, and perhaps with even greater success. World public opinion is turning against us.
This is a slow process. It resembles the accumulation of water behind a dam. The water rises slowly, quietly, and the change is hardly noticeable. But when it reaches a critical level, the dam bursts and the disaster is upon us. We are steadily approaching this point.
“Kill a Turk and rest,” the mother says in the joke. Our government does not even rest. It seems that they will not stop until they have made enemies of the last of our friends. (Parts of this article were published in Ma’ariv, Israel’s second largest newspaper.)
ISRAEL, 2009
HEBREW, FRENCH WITH SUBTITLES
79 Min
DIRECTOR: ITZIK LERNER, URI BORREDA
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
APRIL 18 – 3:20PMCINEPLEX ODEON SHEPPARD CENTRE APRIL 25 – 6:00PMBLOOR CINEMA
TheExodus 1947 was an ancient American riverboat called the President Warfield that was refitted to carry 4,500 Holocaust survivors to Palestine. The only obstacle was the British navy boats that patrolled the seas in search of Jewish ships carrying such immigrants. When the Exodus was spotted in the Mediterranean, British warships kept it under close surveillance and eventually rammed the ship. They forced the passengers onto three British prison ships and transported them to detention camps in Germany. This film follows three of the passengers and tells the story of their harrowing experiences through their memories, as well as those of French and British witnesses.
