ISTANBUL — A Turkish boat that became an international symbol of anti-Israeli activism has dropped out of a Gaza-bound flotilla that plans to set sail for the Palestinian territory at the end of this month, organizers said yesterday.
The withdrawal of the Mavi Marmara ferry from the convoy — which aims to break Israel’s sea blockade of the Gaza Strip — removes a potential flashpoint for confrontation.
Last year, nine activists died in a botched Israeli commando operation on the Turkish ship in a similar flotilla, with each side accusing the other of starting the violence.
Israel has warned that it will not allow any more ships to break its naval blockade and said without providing details that security forces have adopted new tactics since last year’s raid in an effort to limit casualties.
IHH, the Islamic aid group in Turkey that refitted the Mavi Marmara after Israel returned it following the raid, said technical problems prevented it from joining 10 other ships that will head for Gaza from European ports on June 25. The original plan was to sail around the first anniversary of the Israeli raid before dawn on May 31, 2010.
“We did not want the flotilla to be postponed again,’’ IHH president Bulent Yildirim said. “When we fix the Mavi Marmara, our journey will continue. I hope it will not take a long time.’’
Organizers said their decision to exclude the Turkish boat was not a response to appeals from any government.
There was an interesting story in the Daily News last week, about the cancelling of a Yuval Ron concert in Istanbul. Mr. Ron, an award-wining Israeli musician, was supposed to play his tunes in a Sultanahmet hall, but the event was cancelled at the last minute due to protests, and, allegedly, some “threats.” The organization holding the protest – but denied any threat – was the famous Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or İHH, that organized last year’s controversial Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, which was lethally raided by Israeli commandos.
The İHH, of course, is an Islamic-minded organization. Therefore, I received a few emails from Western friends complaining how Islam and its ascendant role in public life are making Turks fanatically anti-Semitic. If Turkey had been dominated by more-secular minded Turks, these friends added, it would have been a tolerant and loving, and particularly Israel-loving, society.
The missing piece
But there was an interesting detail in the Yuval Ron story that my Islamo-sceptic friends, and probably most others, were missing: The organization that helped organize the concert of the Israeli musician was quite Islamic-minded as well. It was the Intercultural Dialogue Platform, founded by none other than the followers of Fethullah Gülen, Turkey’s most influential Muslim religious leader.
In fact, the Gülen Movement, as it is called, has probably been the most active force against anti-Semitism in Turkey in the past two decades. Until his departure from Turkey in 1998, one of Gülen’s best friends was Turkey’s chief rabbi and the two men routinely appeared in front cameras for joint “Abrahamic” prayers. To date, Gülen’s followers have held dozens of interfaith meetings in Turkey and elsewhere, and their media outlets have persistently promoted understanding between Muslims and Jews.
Even on the flotilla incident, Gülen took a different line than that of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government he supports, and said it would have been better if the flotilla sought a deal with Israeli authorities to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Of course, there are also anti-Semitic strains in the Islamic camp. The daily Vakit, and the marginal Saadet Party, which got one percent of the votes in last weekend’s elections, are unabashedly anti-Israel and use rhetoric that often turns outright anti-Jewish. But similar rhetoric exists also among Atatürk-venerating secular nationalists “ulusalcılar,” who believe in crazy conspiracy theories about how Jews are supposedly buying Turkish land in the southeast to incorporate into “greater Israel.” One of these lunatics even wrote a bestselling book in 2007, which argued that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was a crypto-Jew who was “selling” Turkey to “Jewish capitalists.”
Grey area
The Turkish picture about Israel, in other words, is not black-and-white. We are not divided between Israel-hating Islamics and Israel-loving seculars.
Erdoğan’s party, for that matter, is somewhere between the Saadet and the Gülen Movement, if we put these in a spectrum and closer to the latter rather than the former. Most Israelis, who really are not in a love affair with Erdoğan, might find that hard to believe, but they should recall that the AKP leader had pretty good relations with the Jewish State until the end of 2008, when “Operation Cast Lead” began killing hundreds of innocents in Gaza. Erdoğan and his team passionately care for their Muslim brethren in Palestine, just like many American Jews care for theirs in Israel. Besides, they can not just sleep over the killing of nine Turks in international waters by Israeli soldiers, which has become a matter of national pride. But they ultimately support a two-state solution, and can be quite helpful in building it.
So, here is a friendly advice to Israeli policy makers and their advisors: Stop dreaming about the days when Turkey will become hyper-secular again. Those days are gone and Turkey’s Muslim identity is here to stay. But it might not be as bad as you fear, especially if you try to build bridges and reconsider some of your hawkish and intimidating policies.
via Which Turks hate Israel most – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review.
The Turkish Islamist organization IHH has decided not to participate in the upcoming flotilla attempt to break the blockade of Gaza. As reported last week, IHH was under pressure from the Turkish government to drop out of the flotilla, presumably because the timing doesn’t look right for Turkey to precipitate an armed confrontation with Israel. (After the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010, Turkey warned that it might provoke just such a confrontation by providing a naval escort for future flotillas.)
This will mean no Turkish ships in the flotilla. Earlier this week, the French ship pulled out of the flotilla when pressure from French Jewish groups prevented it from docking in Marseilles, where it was to load its activists.
The ships left in the flotilla are the US and Canadian “Boats to Gaza,” the Irish Boat, the Swiss-German Boat, the Italian Boat, the Greek Boat, the Netherlands Boat, the Norwegian-Swedish Boat, and possibly one or two Spanish Boats. (CrethiPlethi has a very extensive write-up from late May.) That tally squares roughly with the Wednesday statement of activist Adam Shapiro (founder of the International Solidarity Movement, or ISM) that about 10 ships, other than the IHH contingent, would sail in the flotilla, which will reportedly get underway next week.
Thus, it is ships sailing under the flags of NATO and the EU that will be attempting to break the blockade of Gaza. But not all the flags of NATO; only the flags that fly over the liberal, democratic, traditionally Christian nations. In the surreal progress of events, Islamic Turkey has dropped out.
As CrethiPlethi’s article reveals, proto-flotilla surges from elsewhere have yielded mixed results. Indonesia reportedly has a flotilla movement, but there has been nothing concrete from it in the way of a boat or any real publicity. Malaysia’s Perdana foundation, brainchild of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, has of course been behind actual flotilla ships, but none are sailing with the All-American/European flotilla this month. Perdana supported M/V Rachel Corrie in the 2010 flotilla, and most recently was behind the antics of M/V Finch, which made a separate attempt to break the blockade in May 2011.
Also in 2010, activists in Lebanon, Europe, and the US sought to mount the “women’s flotilla” that was to sail from Beirut. Lebanese authorities prevented it from leaving port on the occasion of its highest state of readiness, and it eventually came to nothing.
So we reach June 2011, and the All-American/European anti-Israel flotilla. It’s worth noting just a couple of the activists who will be participating – as they did last year – in the 2011 flotilla. Dror Feiler, ubiquitous spokesman of the Swedish Free Gaza Movement, is a revolutionary- and musician-about-town who hangs out with IHH, Hamas, and the bloodthirsty terrorists of Colombia’s Marxist FARC insurgency. Douglas Farah reported a year ago that the Swedish-Israeli Feiler was on the board of FARC’s external propaganda agency, ANNCOL. When Paul Reyes, FARC’s chief ideologue, was killed in 2008, Feiler left a comment at the website of a news story – about US activists who were mourning Reyes – recalling his visits to FARC, expressing his sympathy, and posting the link to a music video he had made featuring FARC revolutionary songs.
Paul Larudee is a San Francisco Bay-area activist and piano tuner who participated in the 2010 flotilla under the aegis of ISM and his own Free Gaza Movement of Northern California. Larudee was photographed in 2008 with other activists receiving medals from Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, long-time terrorist and protégé of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin. Famous for writing up his moving opportunity to stay at the home of a successful suicide bomber, Larudee ran afoul of Israeli officials when he attempted to enter the West Bank in 2006 after years of conducting anti-Israel activity (Larudee’s reported objective: to “tune more than 40 pianos in the Palestinian Authority area”).
Blogger Lee Kaplan went undercover to attend an ISM training session sponsored by Larudee in San Francisco, at which he learned to deceive Israeli immigration authorities and help Palestinians confound IDF soldiers (see here for the ISM connection with terrorists who participated in the London tube bombing). Larudee is now planning to send an aircraft to break the blockade of Gaza, as discussed in his interview on Iranian television with British nutball politician George Galloway, the former MP who spoke candidly to Arab media of having given cars and cash to Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, and then lied about it to the English-language media.
So it’s down to the Western fringe leftists, who merit the title “useful idiots” as much as anyone ever has, and Hamas. That’s who is still planning, as of right now, to aim a gaggle of ships flying the flags of our nations at the Gaza coast and try to break the blockade, so that Israel can’t keep weapons from flowing to Hamas. If all the activists wanted to do was deliver humanitarian aid, they have two sound alternatives available: having it trucked in from Israel or having it trucked in from Egypt. But, of course, that’s not what their goal is, as they have already acknowledged.
J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.
via The All-American/European anti-Israel flotilla « The Greenroom.
TEL AVIV — Israel made clear on Thursday that if a new flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists sought to break its naval blockade of Gaza like the one a year ago when its commandos killed nine people, the Israeli military would use force again, including boarding the ships and confronting the activists.
“We will do anything we have to do to prevent a boat from breaking the blockade,” a top naval official said in a briefing for foreign journalists. “If there is the same violence against our forces on board, there is a pretty good chance there will be injuries.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under Israeli military rules.
On Israel Radio on Thursday, the military’s chief spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, said the army would stop any ship from entering Gaza. General Mordechai added, “There is an unequivocal directive from the government to enforce the naval blockade that is recognized by international law, and we will not allow it to be broken.”
The statements seemed part of a heightened effort to stop another flotilla and to pre-emptively explain Israel’s position if violence ensues.
Groups of Palestinian advocates in chartered vessels are scheduled to depart from a number of European ports this month and assemble into a flotilla heading toward Gaza to challenge Israel’s blockade and commemorate the deaths of a year ago.
Among those expected to participate is an American vessel with several dozen passengers, including the writer Alice Walker and an 86-year-old whose parents died in the Holocaust.
Because of insurance difficulties and political pressure, it remained unclear whether the ship on which last year’s deaths occurred, the Mavi Marmara of Turkey, would join the flotilla as planned. Israel, widely condemned for the commando operation, said that a year ago the ship was dominated by extremists who created the confrontations that resulted in the deaths.
A number of world leaders, including Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general; Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief; and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, have urged the flotilla organizers to drop their plans or wait and see how Gaza fares under changes in Egyptian and Israeli policies.
Four years ago, after Hamas took over in Gaza, Israel and Egypt closed off the territory, preventing most goods and nearly all people from going in and out. Israel began a naval blockade two and a half years ago when it invaded Gaza to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets into Israel.
But after the commando raid a year ago, international outrage over the deaths, along with the hardships in Gaza, contributed to a shift in Israeli policy. Israel eased its blockade, letting in more goods over land. After the revolution in Egypt this year, Egypt changed its policy toward Gaza, partly reopening its border to people. Today Gaza has plenty of goods available, but its economy remains devastated and unemployment is 40 to 45 percent.
Moreover, Israel continues the naval blockade. The government says its goal is to prevent Hamas from importing weapons by sea. In March, Israel stopped a vessel packed with weapons that it says were Gaza-bound.
This year an Israeli commission concluded that the blockade conformed with international law, as did Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara in international waters. The panel included two foreign legal experts who agreed with the conclusions. Turkey dismissed the report as lacking credibility.
Israel’s navy has been training for another flotilla and says it will use a number of tactics before boarding ships and do everything it can to avoid close contact with activists on board.
As it did last time, Israel says it will ask ships carrying aid to Gaza to dock in Israel or Egypt, unload the cargo and allow it to be driven in. Israeli officials say the flotillas’ goal is not to ship aid to the Palestinians, but to challenge and embarrass the Israelis.
The naval officer who briefed foreign journalists said that he did not believe that the coming flotilla would contain arms, but that Israel needed to enforce the blockade indiscriminately to defend against weapons imports by future flotillas. He said searches on board did not work because boats had many areas to conceal things, so the only reasonable way was for the cargo to be unloaded and driven to Gaza.
He said that many of those planning to take part in the flotilla were peace activists, but that they were naïve because “extremists will set the tone” if Israeli commandos board the ships.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 17, 2011, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Israel Warns Of Using Force If New Flotilla Heads to Gaza.
via Israel Warns Of Using Force If New Flotilla Heads to Gaza – NYTimes.com.
Free Gaza activist says Turkish participation desired, but not necessary, flotilla is about ‘Gaza occupation’ awareness, not humanitarian aid.
Photo by: Reuters/Emrah Dalkaya
The second Gaza flotilla will set sail in late June even without the support of Turkey’s IHH – the lead NGO in last year’s flotilla – which is reportedly considering pulling out of the initiative, an organizer told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
Speaking from Greece, Free Gaza member and International Solidarity Movement co-founder Adam Shapiro said the “Turkish participation is obviously something that we want to have as part of the overall flotilla but if tomorrow they decide to postpone [their participation] then we will continue.”
Shapiro said all of the other ships taking part in the flotilla are still finishing their preparations and are planning to set sail at the end of the month regardless of a report in the Turkish press on Wednesday that humanitarian relief foundation IHH is considering dropping out of the flotilla to concentrate on the Syrian refugee issue in southern Turkey.
Shapiro said that as opposed to reports that as many as 25 ships would take part in the flotilla, there are only 10 that are scheduled to sail later this month, with around 300 activists from dozens of countries taking part.
Meanwhile, Wednesday, the Israel Navy held a large-scale exercise to prepare its forces for the operation to stop the flotilla.
The exercise involved naval commandos from Flotilla 13 – better known as the Shayetet – as well as other naval units and special forces from throughout the defense establishment, who were being included in the operation as part of the lessons learned from the botched raid on the Mavi Marmara Turkish passenger ship last May.
The Israeli navy is under orders from the government to enforce the Israeli sea blockade over Gaza, which officials have said is crucial for preventing the flow of arms to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
In recent months, the Navy has reviewed the operation to stop last year’s flotilla and has drawn a number of operational conclusions that it hopes will improve the upcoming operation to stop the new flotilla and prevent or at least minimize the loss of human life.
The Navy has been preparing rigorously for the operation, enlisting all of its Flotilla 13 commandos from the reserves and running different training models with various scenarios, from passive resistance – such as sit-downs – to potential gunfights and booby-trapped ships.
It is also preparing for the possibilities that commandos will encounter passive resistance or mercenaries armed with knives, saws, bats, as well guns.
Shapiro said the final departure date for the flotilla is not known but they are planning to meet in international waters in the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the month and head towards Gaza.
Earlier on Wednesday, Turkish daily Hurriyet quoted IHH spokesman Huseyin Oruc as saying “we are reconsidering our plans. We cannot close our eyes to the developments on our doorstep.
“The international community is talking about an intervention in Syria, a development that would affect Turkey very much, as well as Palestine and peace in the region. All the factors are inter-linked and we must be looking at all of them,” Oruc told the newspaper.
“We will discuss the emerging conditions. Every country has its own balance. From our point of view, the developments in neighboring Syria are critically important,” he said.
Hurriyet also published that the IHH stated that the Turkish government did not force its hand in the decision, even though last week the paper quoted Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu as saying that “Israel should wait for a new Palestinian government to be set up and then lift the blockade on Gaza. The aid flotilla should also wait to see what happens with the Rafah border crossing being opened and to see how Israel perceives the new government.”
As of early this week, thousands of Syrian refugees had streamed into southern Turkey as the Assad regime stepped up its violent crackdown on the popular uprising that broke out in March.
Turkey has vowed to continue to help the refugees, but there are indications that they are anxious for the international community to help find a solution to the issue. The IHH’s reluctance puts into question whether the Mavi Marmara will sail for Gaza in late June as was originally planned.
Oruc said the IHH would make a decision by the end of the week.
When asked whether or not Egypt’s opening of the Rafah border crossing earlier this month has led to criticism of the flotilla, Shapiro said that Rafah “has not enabled any aid to actually get in. They’re allowing women and children and men over 40 to get out.”
He said the Rafah crossing “is not about aid, but then neither is our flotilla. It’s about raising awareness of the ongoing occupation in Gaza and the freedom of the Palestinians. The aid has always been secondary to the message of challenging the [Israeli] policy.”
Israeli human rights group Shurat Ha Din took credit for the cancelation of a French boat that was supposed to take part in the flotilla, but won’t sail because they were not able to secure insurance. French CMA CGM insurance and shipping company were going to insure the boat – the “Fleet of Freedom 2” but decided not to after recieving a letter from the group warning them of an impending lawsuit if they did.
via Organizer says flotilla to sail even if IH… JPost – Middle East.
Flotilla organizers ask Turkish Jews to tell Israeli government they are willing to subject vessels to international inspection before heading to Gaza in late June. Meanwhile, Turkish government officials vow to stop flotilla from departing
Itamar Eichner
Published: 06.14.11, 09:58 / Israel News
Sources linked to the Jewish community in Istanbul say that leaders of the IHH organization have approached them with a request to send a message to Israel saying they are not interested in a violent clash with the IDF, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Tuesday.
Senior elements within the Jewish community in Turkey have conveyed this message to Israeli representatives.
The IHH heads propose that the vessels taking part in the upcoming flotilla will be checked by an international team in a third country such as Cyprus. According to the proposal, the ships will be allowed to head for Gaza only after it is confirmed they are carrying nothing but humanitarian aid.
The IHH is thereby meeting a condition set by Israel stipulating that humanitarian aid can only be transferred to Gaza subject to inspection.
It should be noted that Israel considers the IHH a terrorist organization and has no known intention of negotiating with it directly. Jerusalem is trying to reach understandings with the Turkish government before the flotilla arrives.
It is unclear whether the IHH proposal had been coordinated with the Turkish government but it does fit it with the change in Ankara’s stance. Turkish government officials announced Monday that Ankara will try to stop the flotilla as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan prefers focusing on the Syrian crisis, rather the Palestinian issue. Earlier this week, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu urged the IHH to postpone the sail.
Message of reconciliation
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a message of reconciliation to Turkey on Monday. During a press conference with his Italian counterpart, Netanyahu said that Israel strives to rectify the relations with Ankara.
Meanwhile, the IDF is gearing for all possible scenarios. It is estimated that 11 ships will depart from various ports on June 25 and meet in the western Mediterranean. The flotilla organizers are planning to reach Gaza on the first week of July.
The defense establishment has meanwhile suspended procedures meant to outlaw several Turkish organizations for the purpose of arresting their members on board the ships. The freeze is meant to prevent what could appear as a provocation vis-à-vis Turkey and allow it to prevent the flotilla’s departure.
Alex Fishman contributed to this report
via IHH sends ‘no violence’ message to Israel – Israel News, Ynetnews.
