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Tag: Mavi Marmara

Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Nursema, 10, a daughter of Ali Haydar Bengi, who was among the nine Turks killed during an Israeli raid on a flotilla trying to run the Gaza blockade.

By DAN BILEFSKY and SEBNEM ARSU

Published: July 15, 2010

ISTANBUL — The Turkish charity that led the flotilla involved in a deadly Israeli raid has extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite, and the group’s efforts to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza received support at the top levels of the governing party, Turkish diplomats and government officials said.

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Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

An anti-Israel slogan in Istanbul reflects the rift in Israeli-Turkish relations after the raid. Turkey warns that relations could be irreparably damaged.

The charity, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, often called I.H.H., has come under attack in Israel and the West for offering financial support to groups accused of terrorism. But in Turkey the group has helped Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan shore up support from conservative Muslims ahead of critical elections next year and improve Turkey’s standing and influence in the Arab world.

According to a senior Turkish official close to the government, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the issue, as many as 10 Parliament members from Mr. Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development Party were considering boarding the Mavi Marmara, the ship where the deadly raid occurred, but were warned off at the last minute by senior Foreign Ministry officials concerned that their presence might escalate tensions too much.

When leaders of the charity returned home after nine Turks died in the Israeli raid, they were warmly embraced by top Turkish officials, said Huseyin Oruc, deputy director of the charity, who was aboard the flotilla.

“When we flew back to Turkey, I was afraid we would be in trouble for what happened, but the first thing we saw when the plane’s door opened in Istanbul was Bulent Arinc, the deputy prime minister, in tears,” he said in an interview. “We have good coordination with Mr. Erdogan,” he added. “But I am not sure he is happy with us now.”

The raid has caused a rupture between Turkey and Israel, and heightened alarm in the United States and Europe that Turkey, a large Muslim country and a major NATO member, is shifting allegiance toward the Arab world. Turkey has warned that its cooperative ties to Israel could be irreparably damaged unless the Israelis apologize and accept an international investigation, steps Israel has so far refused to take.

The charity’s mission, political analysts said, has advanced Mr. Erdogan’s aim of shifting Turkey’s focus to the Muslim east when its prospects for joining the European Union are dim.

The government “could have stopped the ship if it wanted to, but the mission to Gaza served both the I.H.H. and the government by making both heroes at home and in the Arab world,” said Ercan Citlioglu, a terrorism expert at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul.

Turkish officials said that the charity operated independently and that its leadership had refused to drop plans to break Israel’s naval blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza, despite requests from the government. The officials said they had no legal authority to stop the work of a private charity.

Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s minister for European affairs, said in an interview that the charity and the Justice and Development Party, called the AK Party, had no substantive ties, even if people in politics often became involved in charitable groups. “The I.H.H. has nothing to do with the AK Party, and we have no hidden agenda,” Mr. Bagis said.

But critics say such statements belie the close connections between the party and the charity, as well as the extent to which Turkish officials were closely attuned to the details of the flotilla’s mission before its departure.

“How can such a large country as Turkey, with interests in four continents, and with an export- and investment-driven economy requiring extra caution all around the globe, be dragged to the brink of war by a nongovernmental organization?” asked Semih Idiz, a columnist for the Hurriyet Daily News in Turkey, in a June 7 editorial. The answer, he added, is that the charity is a “GNGO” — a “governmental-nongovernmental-organization.”

Many of the 21 people listed on the charity’s board have or had close links to the AK Party. In January, Murat Mercan, chairman of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a senior party official, joined an overland aid convoy to Gaza organized by the charity that tried to force its way through the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza.

A trustee of the charity, Ali Yandir, is a senior manager at the Istanbul City Municipality Transportation Corporation. The corporation sold the Mavi Marmara, with a capacity for 1,090 passengers, to the charity for about $1.2 million. In 2004, Mr. Yandir was an AK Party candidate for the mayor’s office in Istanbul’s Esenler District.

The charity’s board includes Zeyid Aslan, an AK Party member of Parliament and the acting head of the Turkey-Palestine Interparliamentary Friendship Group; Ahmet Faruk Unsal, an AK Party member of Parliament from 2002 to 2007; and Mehmet Emin Sen, a former AK Party mayor in the central Anatolian township of Mihalgazi.

Those ties partly reflect the common agenda of the party and the charity. Both are involved in relief work among the poor and are bound by a common Islamic ideology. Many of the 60,000 people the charity claims as members come from the religious merchant class that helped Mr. Erdogan sweep to power.

The Humanitarian Relief Foundation was founded in the early 1990s, first as a charity for the poor in Istanbul, and later for Bosnian war victims. It works in more than 100 countries and sent 33 tons of aid to Haiti after its January earthquake. The charity has one branch in the West Bank and another in Gaza, where Turkish families help pay for the care and education of 9,000 orphans.

On Monday, Germany banned the charity’s offices there, citing its support for Hamas, which Germany considers a terrorist organization. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said the charity abused donors’ good intentions “to support a terrorist organization with money supposedly donated for charitable purposes.” The newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung said that from 2007 the charity collected $8.5 million and transferred money to six smaller organizations, two belonging directly to Hamas and four with close ties to it.

The charity called the ban a “disgrace” and “misanthropic” and said it would challenge it in court.

A June 21 letter signed by 87 United States senators urged the White House to investigate whether the charity should be designated a foreign terrorist organization. Israel has accused the charity of bolstering Hamas. It also says the group has links to Al Qaeda and has bought weapons, accusations the charity denies.

A senior Turkish government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called such allegations false and said they would not persuade politicians who supported the group’s causes to shun it.

“We are not trying to disengage ourselves from I.H.H. because of the current allegations on their terror links — we are simply not related with them,” the official said. “We consider Israeli efforts to link I.H.H. with terror in light of fake intelligence reports and hence hold AK Party government responsible for the killing of nine innocent people as extremely cheap and improper tactics.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 23, 2010

An article last Friday about the connections between Turkey’s political elite and I.H.H., the Turkish charity that organized the Gaza-bound aid flotilla stopped by a deadly Israeli raid on May 31, contained several errors.

Because of an editing error, the article misstated the effect of a ban on I.H.H. in Germany, where a charity that operates under the same name and was founded by the same people became legally separate in 1997. The ban applied only to the German charity, not the Turkish one.

The article also misstated the price paid by the Turkish charity for the lead flotilla vessel, the Mavi Marmara. It was $1.2 million, not $1.8 million.

And the article referred incorrectly to the relationship between Istanbul Fast Ferries, the municipal agency that sold the Mavi Marmara to the Turkish charity, and the Istanbul City Municipality Transportation Corporation, another city agency. While both are controlled by Turkey’s ruling AK party, the transportation corporation is responsible for land transit; it does not oversee the ferry agency.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 16, 2010, on page A4 of the New York edition.

July 24, 2010
Who is Recep Tayyip Erdogan and why he seeks suing Israel ?

(Translated from Spanish by Google)

by David Mandel

To answer the title question, we must first mention of Mustafa Kemal, better known as Ataturk (“Father of the Turks”), the general founder of the Republic of Turkey and its first president. Despite its short life (he died in 1938 at age 57 years) Ataturk is considered one of the great men of history. He freed his country in a war against the Allies who had defeated the Ottoman Empire. By wise political, economic, religious and social turned Turkey into a modern, secular and democratic. He abolished the caliphate, forced the Turks to adopt modern European clothing (including hats instead of fez). He changed the alphabet, which had been based in Arabic, an alphabet based on Latin letters. Transferred the capital from Istanbul to Ankara. He abolished the sect of dervishes and other extremist Islamic sects. He abolished Islamic courts of justice and adopted a penal code based on the Italian code. Established education for women, and gave them civil and political equality, before they did many European states. He founded the Museum of Art and Sculpture (arts that had been prohibited by Islam during the Ottoman Empire). He established the Academy of the Turkish language and Turkish Historical Society. He reorganized and modernized the University of Istanbul, and founded the University of Ankara. Promoted the industrialization of the country.

His legacy was supported mainly by the army, which, on more than one occasion, overthrew governments that did not follow the pattern inherited from Ataturk.
The current prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, (born in 1954, ruling from March 2003), is a devout Muslim who has managed to neutralize the army and, contrary to Ataturk’s policy is Islamized the country.
In the mid 70’s Erdogan began to turn in the Islamist party, MSP, which was banned by the military coup of 1980. In 1983 he returned to political life in the party Refah Partisi, founded by former members of the MSP. His party won the municipal elections in Istanbul. Erdogan tried to introduce Islamic measures such as separate places for men and women on public transport and schools.
In 1998, after being sentenced to prison for publicly reciting a poem by poet Islamic extremist Ziya Gokalp (“the mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers”), seeing that continue being openly fanatical Islamic not led to anything, Erdogan announced that he was in favor of a separation of religion and state.
In 2001 he founded the Party of Justice and Development Party (AKP) which, although did not get an absolute majority, won the most votes in the parliamentary election of 2002. Since then, gradually drew closer to the positions of other Islamic states, one of whose main expression is the antagonism to Israel, a country which was allied with Turkey for decades, especially in the aspect of military (Israel Air Force trained in the airspace of Turkey).
Their convictions to Israel by the Jewish state’s actions against Hamas, have a significant element of hypocrisy, since Turkey is embroiled in a bloody conflict with Kurdish separatists, (Turkey calls “terrorists”), and is illegally occupying the northern Cyprus.
Erdogan, despite his violent and insulting expressions against Israel, so far has not broken diplomatic relations, possibly due to the support that Israel still has among the Turkish military.
The concrete result of the anti-Israeli Erdogan is that hundreds of thousands of Israeli tourists visiting Turkey annually, and they do not, causing a low of 400 million dollars annually to the Turkish tourism industry.

¿Quién es Recep Tayyip Erdogán y por qué le busca pleito a Israel?

por David Mandel

Para poder contestar la pregunta del título, primero se debe mencionar a Mustafá Kemal, más conocido como Ataturk (“Padre de los turcos”), el general fundador de la república de Turquía, y su primer presidente. A pesar de su corta vida, (murió en 1938, a los 57 años de edad) Ataturk es considerado uno de los más grandes hombres de la historia. Liberó a su país en una guerra contra los aliados que habían derrotado al imperio otomano. Mediante sabias reformas políticas, económicas, religiosas y sociales convirtió a Turquía en un país moderno, secular y democrático. Abolió el califato, obligó a los turcos a adoptar la vestimenta europea moderna, (incluyendo sombreros en vez de fez). Cambió el alfabeto, que había estado basado en el árabe, a un alfabeto basado en letras latinas. Transfirió la capital de Estambul a Ankara. Abolió la secta de los derviches y otras sectas islámicas extremistas. Abolió las cortes islámicas de justicia y adoptó un código penal basado en el código italiano. Estableció la educación para las mujeres, y les dio igualdad civil y política, antes de que lo hicieran muchos estados europeos. Fundó el Museo de Arte y Escultura (artes que habían sido prohibidas por el Islam durante el imperio otomano). Estableció la academia de la lengua turca y la Sociedad Histórica turca. Reorganizó y modernizó la Universidad de Estambul, y fundó la Universidad de Ankara. Promovió la industrialización del país.

Su legado fue defendido principalmente por el ejército, que, en más de una ocasión, depuso a los gobiernos que no seguían las pautas heredadas de Ataturk.
El actual primer ministro de Turquía, Recep Tayyip Erdogán, (nacido en 1954, gobierna desde marzo del 2003), es un islámico devoto que ha logrado neutralizar al ejército y ―en contra de la política de Ataturk― está islamizando el país.
A mediados de la década de los 70 Erdogán empezó a activar en el partido islamista, MSP, que fue prohibido por el golpe militar de 1980. En 1983 retornó a la vida política en el partido Refah Partisi, fundado por ex miembros del MSP. Su partido ganó las elecciones municipales de Estambul. Erdogán trató de introducir medidas islámicas, tales como lugares separados para hombres y mujeres en el transporte público y en las escuelas.
En 1998, después de ser condenado a prisión, por recitar públicamente un poema islámico extremista del poeta Ziya Gokalp, (“las mezquitas son nuestros cuarteles, las cúpulas nuestros cascos, los minaretes nuestras bayonetas y los creyentes nuestros soldados”), viendo que continuar siendo abiertamente islámico fanático no le conducía a nada, Erdogán anunció que estaba favor de una separación de la religión y del estado.
En el año 2001 fundó el Partido de la Justicia y el Desarrollo (AKP) que, aunque no consiguió mayoría absoluta, logró la mayor cantidad de votos en la elección parlamentaria del 2002. Desde esa fecha, gradualmente, se fue acercando a las posiciones de otros estados islámicos, una de cuyas principales expresiones es el antagonismo a Israel, país que había sido aliado de Turquía durante décadas, especialmente en el aspecto militar (la fuerza aérea de Israel entrenaba en el espacio aéreo de Turquía).
Sus condenas a Israel, por las acciones del estado hebreo contra Hamás, tienen un apreciable elemento de hipocresía, ya que Turquía está envuelta en un sangriento conflicto con los separatistas kurdos, (Turquía los llama “terroristas”), y ocupa ilegalmente el norte de Chipre.
Erdogán, a pesar de sus violentas e insultantes expresiones contra Israel, hasta ahora no ha roto relaciones diplomáticas, debido, posiblemente, al apoyo que Israel aún tiene entre los militares turcos.
El resultado concreto de la política anti-israelí de Erdogán es que los cientos de miles de turistas israelíes que visitaban anualmente Turquía, ya no lo hacen, causando una baja de 400 millones de dólares anuales a la industria turística turca.

Fuente: Mi Enfoque

July 15, 2010
MESS Report / IDF probe of Gaza flotilla carefully avoided placing real blame

Giora Eiland’s conclusions on the takeover of the Gaza-bound flotilla are as ineffectual as those he provided four years ago after investigating the abduction of Gilad Shalit.

By Amos Harel

Every four years Maj. Gen. (res. ) Giora Eiland is called to the flag. He retrieves his general’s epaulets from storage, squeezes into his fatigues and sets out to investigate the army. The results are fairly similar.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland speaking to reporters in Tel Aviv, June 12, 2010.a

Photo by: Daniel Bar-On

His conclusions on the takeover of the Gaza-bound flotilla, released yesterday, recall those he provided four years ago this week after investigating the abduction of Gilad Shalit: a clear and detailed analysis identifying numerous mistakes, and no recommendations regarding the individuals involved.

Eiland describes a series of mistakes, but none reflecting dereliction of duty. There were not enough soldiers on deck to face off against the violence of the Turks and the unpredicted magnitude of their opposition.

The naval commandos who arrived by boat were met by violence (including live fire ) that stopped them from boarding, leaving the 15 commandos who had slid down ropes from a helicopter at a disadvantage.

Coordination problems among intelligence agencies created gaps in information before the operation started. The navy, according to Eiland, did not properly consider alternatives to the original plan. It was not clear under what circumstances a decision could be made to delay the operation (for instance, an encounter on deck with activists armed with axes and clubs ). After all, the operation was taking place a few miles from Israel’s shores. Tel Aviv was in no immediate danger.

The report also reveals that Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi had warned in a letter to government officials on May 13 – two and a half weeks before the operation – that the military option should be a last resort.

Should he have done more than that? Eiland did not say so.

Amazingly, a few hours after the report’s release, someone leaked to Channel 2 that Defense Minister Ehud Barak had warned the army of insufficient intelligence about the intentions of the flotilla’s participants. Barak’s office denies any connection to the report.

The Eiland report correctly praises the restraint and expertise of the commandos under difficult circumstances and the navy’s preparation efforts.

He determined – and in the international arena this is important – that the Turks fired first, apparently from weapons they later threw overboard. But the bottom line, four years after the Second Lebanon War, is that the entire defense establishment had planned for the wrong scenario in the flotilla affair, and this is something to worry about.

Eiland’s approach not to make recommendations about individuals may be right. Does every probe have to end with rolling heads? In any case, the head of the navy, Maj. Gen. Eliezer Marom, is ending his term soon. An impressive career should not be stained by a single incident.

And yet it is hard to align the harsh findings with the soft recommendations. Armed with a scalpel and kid gloves, Eiland chose his words carfully. There are mistakes; there are no guilty parties.

The story arrived half dead to the evening news. If the probes headed by Jacob Turkel and State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss do not resuscitate the saga, it seems the main party responsible for the failure, our political leaders (who were much slower than the chief of staff in its willingness to investigate themselves ) will also survive the flotilla affair.

July 14, 2010
ISRAEL: Army probe of flotilla raid finds mistakes; blogger finds a big one

July 12, 2010 | 12:09 pm

The committee appointed by the Israeli army to examine the military’s performance in the ill-fated takeover of the Mavi Marmara, part of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, submitted its report Monday. Giora Eiland, a former major general who headed Israel’s national security council and served in senior military posts, had been tapped by Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi to head an internal team of experts a few days after the high-profile operation.

The report cites faults in planning, intelligence and information integration, among other things, but also said commandos acted well under the circumstances. Eiland’s team found no negligence but did find mistakes, including at senior levels. He chose his words very carefully.
But really, instead of spending five weeks on a 100-page report, Eiland could have just published this instead:

The cartoon made the cyber-rounds June 1, reaching Israel even before Eiland’s appointment. It seems to have originated from Abu Muqawama, the nom-de-blog of an expert at the Center for New American Security with a blog on contemporary insurgency issues and a good sense of humor. He posted “Fast-Roping 101” the day after the raid, with a one-liner asking if it was “‘too soon.” Nope, not too soon, said one reader. Another commented it was too late, and others said the cartoon absolutely begged a T-shirt.

So, here it is again.

Now commandos may be waiting for the next commission to decide which decision-maker put them in the fast-roping-for-dummies situation to begin with.

— Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem
Image credit: Abu Muqawama

July 14, 2010
Analysis: Recep Erdogan’s strategy may soon backfire
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By Meir Javedanfar, July 8, 2010
The results of the recent poll conducted by the Israel Project in the United States must have come as great news to the Turks. According to its findings, only 34 per cent of Americans support the Israeli operation against the flotilla, and this is in a country where public opinion is very sympathetic to Israel. The Turks are also finding, to their surprise, that the Obama administration is not placing too much pressure on them. Apart from arranging the meeting between Israeli Minister of Trade Fuad Ben-Eliezer and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Brussels, Mr Obama seems to be in no great hurry to defend Israel's position. The Americans have their own fish to fry with the Turks, and that is Ankara's support for Iran in the UN Security Council. To them that is much more important and they want to keep focusing on that. Bibi's tense relations with Mr Obama could be another factor. The US president is waiting to see if Bibi will extend the settlement freeze. If he does, Mr Obama may place pressure on the Turks as a quid pro quo. For now, he seems to be in no hurry. As a result, the Erdogan government feels it can continue to push Israel, threatening to cut off diplomatic relations if Israel does not apologise for its actions on the flotilla. And why not? Recep Erdogan is fulfilling his aim of boosting Turkey's image in the Muslim world. If his gamble pays off, it could boost the position of his country even more. After all, which other Muslim country has managed to extract an apology and compensation from Israel? But although Mr Erdogan seems to have chosen the right subject and timing to pressure Israel, he will have to be careful. If he goes too far, he may find that his efforts will become counter-productive. This is especially true when it come to his threats to cut ties with Israel. If he does that, it would deprive him of a relationship which not only has military advantages for his country, but has also brought Ankara leverage in the Middle East, especially in the role of a mediator. By cutting ties with Jerusalem, his government will lose the important diplomatic equilibrium which has until now served its interests. The success of Erdogan's strategy to gain points from the flotilla affair depends on moderation and knowing when to stop. Everything should have its limits, and so should Mr Erdogan's current strategy of pressuring Israel. Meir Javedanfar is a MidEast analyst
Related:
Israeli coalition hit by secret Turkish meetings
July 13, 2010
THE ISRAEL TURKEY IMBROGLIO

The Israel-Turkey Imbroglio
By ROGER COHEN
Published: July 8, 2010

NEW YORK — Here’s an intriguing nugget, given Turkey’s recent decision to close its airspace to Israeli military planes: When Israel attacked a covert Syrian nuclear reactor on Sept. 6, 2007, its bombers overflew Turkey.
A former senior U.S. official who was intimately involved in handling the fallout from the raid told me Turkish officials raised the issue with Israel, were invited to discuss the matter, but in the end let it drop.

Those were different times, before Turkish-Israeli ties entered their current poisonous phase.

The biggest injection of poison was administered by Israel’s killing of nine Turkish activists (one of them also a U.S. citizen) on a Gaza aid ship on May 31. This was the immediate catalyst to the airspace exclusion. But well before that, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister who heads a party of Islamist bent, had hit the
(negative) reset button with Israel.

Erdogan was infuriated by Israel’s Gaza offensive of 2008-09, in which about 1,400 Palestinians, and 13 Israelis, were killed.

Spurned as a supplicant to the West — some European Union politicians have much to answer for with their notions of a “Christian club” — Erdogan has recast Turkey as a regional power with strong interests in Iran and Syria. Looking east has helped ignite the Turkish economy while Europe flounders. A novel role that turns history on its head has appealed to Erdogan: Turkish hero of the Arab street.

Given the military trade between Israel and Turkey ($1.8 billion in 2007), U.S. godfathering of the Turkish-Israeli relationship, and Turkey’s commitment to remaining inside the Western tent even while reaching outside it, I don’t expect cooperation to cease between Ankara and Jerusalem. But Israel has real reason for concern.

It could overfly Turkey in 2007 en route to taking out a Syrian facility of North Korean design because of the wink-and-nod nature of its military relationship with its best regional Muslim friend. That’s history.

Since then Israel’s actions, tactical bluster devoid of strategic sense, have left it far more isolated than before. I hear more hostility to Israel around the world than at any time I can recall.

The United States, traumatized, made mistakes after 9/11. Too often, it shunned prudence and rode roughshod. Israel is in some ways an extension of the United States. The line between what’s domestic and what’s international in the relationship is flimsy. It’s therefore not surprising that Israel, too, has erred on the side of warmongering this past decade.

The war on terror, an expression dropped by President Obama, was a catchall phrase that enabled Israeli leaders to bundle the Palestinian national struggle into the terror camp, where much of it did not belong. This has proved a terrible distorting lens.

I sense some Israeli realization at last that this course — the terror-propagating Gaza sardine can, the ad-hominem outrage of the reaction to the Goldstone report on Gaza, the facile recourse to disproportionate force, the repetitive “no Palestinian interlocutor”
complaints, the too spin-doctored slogans of constant existential threat — leads only to a dead end. Israel can do much better.

How else to interpret the prizing open, to some degree, of that Hamas sardine can? And the Israeli indictment of officers and soldiers for their roles in Gaza — precisely the possible war crimes of which Richard Goldstone wrote? And the dawning realization that in Salam Fayyad, the West Bank Palestinian prime minister, Israel has the last best interlocutor it will ever encounter? And a toning-down of the overdone Iran threat drumbeat?

I’ve long argued for such shifts. I’m pleased to see them. I’ve no idea how lasting they will be: Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government gives cause for doubt. Much will depend on whether Obama — this week’s pre-November love-fest with Netanyahu notwithstanding — is prepared to be tough.

The Mideast remains volatile. On the Iran drumbeat, some other nuggets from that former senior official are of interest. The Bush administration opposed the 2007 Israeli strike. It was worried the Syrians would respond and ignite a wider Middle East war. It believed tough U.S. diplomacy, backed by the threat of force, would ensure the Syrian reactor never became operational. President Bush’s line was:
Let me handle it.

Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister, was disappointed at American inaction. His line was: It’s now in our hands. No U.S. green light was asked for, and none given, as Israel bombed.

The fallout was contained through sleight of hand. Israel feigned ignorance. A tight collar was placed for several months around U.S.
intelligence. President Bashar al-Assad was not made to feel cornered.
It was as if the reactor had gone poof in the night.

Could Iran’s Natanz plant go poof in the night? Some people are thinking about it, an attack from “nowhere.” I think those are dangerous thoughts. Iran is not Syria.

The Obama-Netanyahu statement said: “The president told the prime minister he recognizes that Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats, and that only Israel can determine its security needs.”

Is that plain language or a hall of mirrors?

Hmmm.

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July 10, 2010