Category: Israel

Video: Turkey’s spy sat to zoom in on Israeli secrets

Israel’s politicians and military have a new headache to worry about. High resolution photos of the country’s territory, which are currently unavailable to the public, may soon turn up in the hands of any of its many enemies.

Until now, only the Americans had the technology capable of taking satellite images greater than two meters per pixel resolution, and American law stopped US companies from distributing the pictures. Washington shares Israel’s security concerns and abides by the wishes of its key Middle East ally.

This means even with Google Earth one can zoom into Israel only so far, explains Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. “If you try to look at specific parts of Israel, many of them will come out blurrier than any other place in the world that I have checked,” he told RT.

But that is about to change. Turkey is putting the finishing touches to a military satellite it plans to launch within the next two years. The Gokturk satellite will be capable of taking the very pictures Tel Aviv does not want distributed, and there are no American-style legal qualms in Turkey about upsetting its photo-sensitive neighbor.

“Turkey could sell directly or indirectly some of these imageries to enemies of Israel,” explains Mohammed Najib, defense analyst at Jane’s Defense Weekly.

Such a prospect is especially unnerving for Israelis now, because tensions between Tel Aviv and Ankara are at an all-time low. An aid flotilla attempt on Gaza two years ago that left nine Turks dead, and Ankara’s expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, has Tel Aviv nervously weighing its options.

The irony is that not so long ago the Gokturk satellite would have spelt good news for Israel. The two countries co-operated extensively, especially sharing military intelligence. But whereas once turkey was Israel’s closest ally in the Muslim world, today Ankara is increasingly asserting itself as a powerful player in its own right.

“Turkey is trying to say that Israel will not be granted special service or relations that it used to have. They are saying that the eastern Mediterranean is not the playing ground of Israel, there are different countries, everyone should abide by the same laws,” says Dr Nimrod Goren, Middle East politics expert, who focuses on Turkish-Israeli relations.

One satellite is barely enough to put Israel’s picture-shy world in a spin. But this is not a country that wants its neighbors knowing its business, especially with an Arab world in flux, and Israel fast losing former friends.

via Turkey’s spy sat to zoom in on Israeli secrets — RT.

January 3, 2012
Top Hamas Official Visits Turkey

By SEBNEM ARSU and ETHAN BRONNER

ISTANBUL — Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister of Gaza, who is making his first official trip abroad since his Islamist movement took over the Palestinian strip in 2007, sought on Monday to strengthen ties with the Arab and Muslim world in the wake of regional uprisings that have produced a rise in Islamist political strength.

Here in Turkey, where Mr. Haniya arrived after visiting Egypt and Sudan, he was quoted by the semi-official Anatolian Agency on Monday as saying that “the Arab spring is turning into an Islamic spring.”

Turkey, ruled by the Islamic-based Justice and Development Party, has grown close to Hamas and has downgraded its relations with Israel. In 2010, a group of ships and boats sailed from Turkey in an effort to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, and Israeli commandos boarded the vessels to stop them. When they met with resistance, the commandos killed nine activists on board. Turkey has demanded an apology and compensation; Israel has refused.

Mr. Haniya visited the Mavi Marmara, the largest ship of the flotilla, on Monday and said, “The blood of Mavi Marmara martyrs and that of Palestinian martyrs is joined for a hopeful future.”

While Mr. Haniya tours the region seeking financial and political support — he is heading to Iran, a major backer, in the coming days, according to the semi-official Iranian news agency FARS — his rivals in the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority were due to meet with Israeli officials on Tuesday for the first time in 15 months.

The meeting, organized in Amman, the Jordanian capital, by King Abdullah II of Jordan, is viewed as an effort to revive peace negotiations aimed at establishing a Palestinian state, but both Palestinian and Israeli officials were keeping expectations for the meeting low. Hamas opposes negotiations with Israel as a waste of time, and it urged the Palestinian Authority not to attend.

By calling the meeting, King Abdullah is, in part, seeking to parry the rise of Islamism, especially that of Hamas within the Palestinian movement. Though Israeli officials want to help him in that task, it was not clear whether they would arrive in Jordan with proposals that could lure the Palestinians back into direct talks.

Hamas has long maintained its political headquarters in Syria, where an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad has roiled the country for nearly a year. Mr. Haniya declined on Monday to comment on the situation in Syria, or to directly address numerous reports that the group is seeking another base.

“The Hamas leadership currently lives in Damascus,” Mr. Haniya said on NTV, a private television news channel, declining to elaborate on a possible move. “Everything, however, remains open to discussion.”

In a meeting with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Sunday, Mr. Haniya thanked him for Ankara’s continuing support for the lifting of the Israeli embargo on Gaza, and he briefed senior Turkish officials on civilian hardships in Gaza. Mr. Haniya also praised Turkey’s acceptance of 11 Palestinian ex-prisoners who were released last year as part of the exchange that led to release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Omer Celik, a senior party official in Turkey, called the Gaza conflict Turkey’s “national issue” and urged Israel to recognize Hamas as a legitimate political organization; Israel, the United States and European nations regard it as a terrorist group.

“If Israel is sincere about the peace process,” Mr. Celik said on NTV, standing next to Mr. Haniya, “it should quit declaring organizations like Hamas that support the peace process illegal, and stop building settlements.”

Turkey backs Egyptian-led reconciliation efforts between Hamas and Fatah that began last May but are moving slowly. Israel says that if Hamas joins the Palestinian Authority, there can be no peace talks. At the moment, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and head of Fatah, is caught between reconciling with Israel and reconciling with Hamas.

Mr. Haniya’s tour is expected to take him to Qatar, Tunisia and Bahrain in addition to Iran.

Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul and Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem.

January 3, 2012
9/11 Truth could be the answer to the Israel/Palestine conflict

by Joshua Blakeney

I appeared on this week’s edition of the Press TV show Remember Palestine. I used the platform that Press TV graciously provided me with to argue that those of us who want to bring an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict ought to capitalize on the evidence of Israeli involvement in 9/11 rather than neglect the subject because it is deemed by some to be “controversial”.

I think most would agree that without the U.S. government altering its stance vis-à-vis Israel that there is little hope for justice in Palestine. The only conceivable way of the U.S. undertaking a volte-face vis-à-vis Israel is if a sufficient proportion of the citizens of the U.S. become conscious of

a) the extent to which Israel and its affluent supporters are distorting U.S. Middle East policy as well as

b) the extent to which such pro-Israel forces lack any respect for the U.S. taxpayer.

Arabs and Muslims have been dehumanized and stigmatized in the Western media

Unfortunately, Arabs and Muslims have been dehumanized by opportunist journalists and careerist academicians who have jumped on the anti-Islam, pro-Israel bandwagon, post 9/11, which has resulted in a preponderance of U.S. citizens lacking any empathy with the beleaguered Palestinians and the other benighted inhabitants of the region.

I argued on Remember Palestine that the abundant evidence linking Israel to 9/11 provides the pro-Palestinian movement with a unique opportunity to foster such empathy among the U.S. body politic. Those in the pro-Palestinian movement, I argue, must stop shying away from the evidence linking Israel to 9/11 and must actively educate the people of the U.S. and other nations that nearly 3000 U.S. citizens were slain on 9/11 with the complicity of the Israeli government.

I suspect that many U.S. citizens would be unmoved if you informed them that 3000 or even 3 million Arabs and Muslims had been killed by Israel. Indeed Dr. Gideon Polya has deduced that the (largely Israeli concocted) 9/11 wars have resulted in the deaths of as many as 2.3 million Iraqis and 4.5 million Afghans and, yet, the anti-Islamic 9/11 wars continue unabated. The most recent phase of the 9/11 wars includes an illegal incursion into Libya and increased meddling in Syria. The main goal from the perspective of the Israeli government has been to foment sectarianism and civil war in the Middle East so those who dwell in the Middle East are fighting each other rather than the Israeli hegemon.

I am of the view that the pro-Palestinian movement ought to emphasize the fact that 3000 mostly Caucasian and non-Muslim U.S. citizens were killed on 9/11 with the complicity of the Israeli government. It’s not that U.S. or caucasian blood should be deemed more valuable than Palestinian or Arab blood. The Western media have created an intellectual environment where, in the eyes of many U.S. citizens, Palestinian and Arab blood isvalueless. Thus, those of us who are serious about promoting peace in the region ought to emphasize crimes of the Israeli government that will have the most efficacy in mobilizing support for the Palestinians.

It is likely that if enough U.S. citizens became aware of the Israeli involvement in 9/11 that they would begin to voice criticism of the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship.” Thus, this is the tack I am taking in most of my media appearances. I encourage others to do so.

Noam Chomsky, a self-proclaimed Zionist, perplexed many when, unburdened by evidence, he affirmed the official story of 9/11 within months of the terrorist atrocities

I very much hope that those academicians who focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict such as Norman Finkelstein, Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, Noam Chomsky, Ali Abunimah, Ilan Pappé and others will likewise acknowledge the evidence implicating Israel in 9/11 as this evidence could be decisive in ending the Israel-Palestine impasse. [For more on Chomsky’s 9/11 denialism, which was presaged by his dismissal of conspiracy in the death of JFK, see: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/12/18/the-assassination-of-cpl-pat-tillman-usa/]

Such scholars have since 9/11 presupposed the veracity of the official story of 9/11 and in doing so have based much of their scholarship on a false-premise, namely that bin-Laden and al-Qaeda were responsible for 9/11, when this theory, which is a conspiracy theory, has been debunked by numerous credible scholars including David Ray Griffin who has written ten books addressing very specific claims made by adherents to the official story of 9/11 demonstrating them to be inconsistent with the available evidence and in many cases even with the laws of physics and of aerodynamics. Indeed many ears should have pricked up when, in the immediate hours following 9/11, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was blamed and footage of Palestinians dancing, albeit from 1993, was projected to the U.S. public.

I think history will not absolve those in the so called “pro-Palestinian” movement who have helped to suppress evidence implicating Israel in 9/11. Imagine if the Afrikaners, during the 1980s, out of desperation had killed 3000 Americans and blamed this act of terrorism on the ANC so as to make it’s enemies (in this case black africans) the perceived enemy of the American people thus justifying the continuance of the U.S.-South African “special relationship”. Would the anti-apartheid movement not have been feckless, indeed insane, if they had failed capitalized on this blunder of the pro-apartheid forces?

It does a disservice to the Palestinians and non-Palestinian victims of Israeli foreign policy to try to divorce the Palestine Question from the broader manifestations of the locus of power which James Petras has referred to as the “Zionist Power Configuration” (ZPC). This ZPC operates at both a global and local level as was indicated on 9/11. As Naomi Klein accurately wrote in the Guardian “[the] Likudisation of the world [is] the real legacy of 9/11.”

For those of us living in Western countries, especially in North America, the most efficient way for us to engender empathy with the Palestinians in the eyes of uninformed Westerners, especially U.S. citizens, is for us to illuminate Israel’s involvement in the massacre of U.S. citizens on 9/11. A failure to capitalize on Israel’s most egregious crimes and blunders is tantamount to complicity in the oppression of the Palestinians and the other victims of Israeli foreign policy.

www.veteranstoday.com, January 1st, 2012

January 2, 2012
Murphy’s Law: Israel Cuts Turkey Off

December 27, 2011: Growing political hostility between Turkey and Israel has led to the Israeli military cancelling the export permit for UAVs and support services for Turkey. This will cost the firm that sold Turkey Heron UAVs some $90 million. The Israeli military has veto power over any arms exports and in this case believed it was too risky to complete the supplying of Turkey with UAV technology.

Meanwhile, Turkey has a Plan B. Two months ago, four American Predator UAVs, which had long operated in Iraq, were moved to Turkey. There, the American UAVs will be under the control of the Turkish security forces and assist in tracking Kurdish separatist (PKK) rebels. American UAVs based in Iraq had been helping the Turks track the PKK, but with all American forces gone from Iraq, the Turks were happy to give some of the Iraq-based Predators a new home.

Turkey has six Predator and four Reaper UAVs on order but there is a big backlog. Meanwhile, Turkey has been using ten Israeli Heron UAVs. This has been complicated because of growing Turkish hostility towards Israel. The latest accusations are that Israel is assisting the PKK and the Turkish media is having a good time with this sort of thing. After that sort of thing, the Israeli armed forces decided that the Turks could not be trusted. This was not a sudden change of mind. Last year Israeli UAV technicians and instructors were recalled from Turkey, where they were training Turkish troops on how to operate and maintain Israeli Heron UAVs. The Israeli personnel were withdrawn because it was believed they might be attacked.

The Turkish government has become increasingly anti-Israel in the last seven years. The Islamic politicians, who were elected in 2002, adopted an anti-Israel, anti-West attitude and strove to increase their stature in the Islamic world. Actually, the Turks are trying to regain the stature they used to have in the Islamic world. Until 1924, the Sultan of the Turks was the Caliph (technically the leader of all Moslems). But in the 1920s, Turkey turned itself into a secular state. Although Turkey became a major economic power in the Middle East, with one of the best educated populations, it was still hobbled by corruption and mismanagement. The current Islamic politicians promised to attack the corruption (which they have) and return religion to a central place in Turkish culture (in progress). This has upset a lot of secular Turks. But the Islamic politicians have made it fashionable to hate Israel.

The Turks ordered ten Herons seven years ago but delivery was delayed because of problems with the Turkish made sensor package. Meanwhile, the Turks were still fighting Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq and really needed those UAVs. Four years ago, the Israeli manufacturer made an interim deal to supply Israeli (without the Turkish sensors) Herons, along with support personnel, on a $10 million lease. But now those Herons are inoperable and the Turks have turned to locally made IHA UAVs, which are much less effective.

The Heron Shoval UAVs are very similar to the American Predator A (or MQ-1). The Shoval weighs about the same (1.2 tons) and has the same endurance (40 hours). Shoval has a slightly higher ceiling (9,600 meters/30,000 feet, versus 25,000 feet) and software which allows it to automatically take off, carry out a mission, and land automatically. Not all American large UAVs can do this. Both Predator and Shoval cost about the same ($5 million), although the Israelis are willing to be flexible on price. The Shoval does have a larger wingspan (16.5 meters/51 feet) than the Predator (13.2 meters/41 feet) and a payload of about 137 kg (300 pounds).

via Murphy’s Law: Israel Cuts Turkey Off.

December 28, 2011
Israel Risks New Turkish Ire with Recognition of Armenian Genocide

By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — The Israeli Parliament on Monday held its first public debate on whether to commemorate the Turkish genocide of Armenians nearly a century ago, an emotionally resonant and politically fraught topic for Israel, founded on the ashes of the Holocaust and trying to salvage frayed ties with Turkey.

The session resulted from a rare confluence of political forces — an effort under way for decades by some on the left to get Israel to take a leading role in bringing attention to mass murder, combined with those on the right angry at how Turkey has criticized Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians.

Previous efforts to declare one day a year a memorial for “the massacre of the Armenian people” have failed, and hearings on the topic were restricted to closed sessions of the Parliament’s defense and foreign affairs committee because of concerns over Turkey’s reaction, especially at a time when relations were friendlier.

But with Turkey having recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv, the hearing was moved this year to the education committee, where sessions are open. The debate was on live television.

“As a people and as a country we stand and face the whole world with the highest moral demand that Holocaust denial is something human history cannot accept,” Reuven Rivlin, the speaker of the Parliament, who has favored official recognition of the genocide, said in his testimony. “Therefore we cannot deny the tragedy of others.”

More than 15 countries have officially labeled as genocide the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the chaos connected to World War I and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Its denial is a crime in Switzerland and Slovenia.

Turkey acknowledges atrocities occurred, but not any specific death toll.

At Monday’s hearing, some advocates of commemorating the massacre said their efforts had nothing to do with politics or with the Turkey of today. Rather, they said, the goal was to educate young Israelis about genocide and publicly assert the need to prevent such acts.

But officials from the Foreign Ministry said relations with Turkey were fragile and that passing such a resolution could have bad strategic consequences.

After Israel invaded Gaza three years ago to stop rocket fire by Palestinian militants, Turkey expressed anger. A year and a half ago, the Israeli navy stopped a Turkish-sponsored flotilla from going to Gaza, killing nine activists aboard. Turkey demanded an apology and compensation. When Israel refused, ties were downgraded.

Otniel Schneller, a legislator from the opposition Kadima Party, spoke against the commemoration, saying the region was growing more hostile to Israel in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings and that Israel had to be pragmatic.

“This is the time when we must rehabilitate our relations with Turkey because this is an existential issue for us,” he said. “Sometimes our desire to be right and moral overcomes our desire to exist, which is in the interest of the entire country.”

The committee took no action, agreeing to meet again.

www.nytimes.com, December 26, 2011

December 27, 2011
Turkey, Israel and the Armenian Genocide

It goes without saying that had Turkey not spent the last few years doing everything it could to destroy its erstwhile alliance with Israel there would have been no debate in the Knesset yesterday about whether to commemorate the Turkish genocide of Armenians during World War I. But since the Turks have become the sponsors and perhaps even the financial backers of Hamas, the consensus within the Israel to stay away from anything touching the Armenian question has dissolved. Though there were some MKs who thought the commemoration should be shelved as part of a new effort to win back the affections of Turkey, most Israelis rightly understand the ship has sailed on good relations with its former ally.

The discussion will, it should be admitted, do nothing to ameliorate the now tense relationship, let alone revive the now shattered alliance between the two nations. With the Turks, as Max noted yesterday, willing to engage in name calling and accusations with France over the genocide issue, there can be no doubt that the Knesset’s session will only widen the breech between Ankara and Jerusalem. But rather than a mystery, the Turks’ decision to make a nearly century-old controversy a diplomatic litmus test can be understood in light of their history. Their unwillingness to bend even a little bit on the Armenians must be understood as something that speaks to their national identity and is unlikely to be dropped anytime soon.

Max is right that logically it makes no sense for the Turkish republic to be so uptight about criticism of the actions of the Ottoman Empire that it replaced. But the Turkish Army carried out the mass slaughter of Armenians. The army was the heart and soul of the Ataturk regime that succeeded the old empire. It was the same army, led by Ataturk, that defeated the Greeks in the aftermath of World War I and evicted the Greeks from Asia Minor.

Though we may see no connection between the Young Turk government that conducted the genocide and what followed, Ataturk’s modern republic is based on the idea of creating a Turkish national identity in which minorities such as the Greeks, the Kurds and, yes, the Armenians could play no real role. While the exodus of the Greeks from Turkey was more a matter of a mass ethnic cleansing than genocide, the intent was not dissimilar. So, too, was the decades-long Turkish campaign to eradicate the language, culture and political identity of the Kurds within their borders.

I agree that Turkish gestures toward the Armenians or just a decision to drop their perennial campaign to make other nations stop commemorating the genocide would objectively cost them nothing. But they can’t seem to do it because to admit that Turks were at fault with the Armenians might also mean they were at fault with the Greeks or the Kurds. Just as the political culture of the Palestinians is so obsessed with negating Zionism that it prevents them from doing the rational thing and making peace with Israel, so, too does Turkey’s history render them incapable of giving up the argument about the Armenians.

The one upside to the decision of Turkey’s Islamic government to betray their alliance with Israel and embrace Hamas is that it is no longer obligated to keep quiet about the Armenian genocide. The same goes for American Jews who understandably chose to make nice with the Turks for the sake of their backing of Israel. No longer need Israelis listen to lectures about the treatment of the Palestinians from a government that denies the Armenian genocide while oppressing Kurds in our own time.

www.commentarymagazine.com, 27.12.2011

December 27, 2011