Turkish Jihadists Attack Israel

Turkish Jihadists Attack Israel

Posted By Phyllis Chesler On June 1, 2010 @ 12:10 am In FrontPage | 46 Comments

Visit NewsReal ^[1]

One may describe Hitler as a “vegetarian” (which he apparently was) but he was still a genocidally exterminationist Jew-hater whose relentless racism and imperial ambitions led to the death of more than 60 million people.

One may also describe the Turks on board the “freedom flotilla” (Orwell himself could not have suggested a better logo) as “humanitarian activists.” But they are still pro-terrorist Turkish jihadists whose mission was to kill Jews, one way or the other. This was a mission which aimed to further demonize the already shamefully tarnished reputation of the Jewish state. This mission planned to force a violent confrontation; were Israeli soldiers to dare defend themselves and if Muslims are therefore martyred—even better public relations, even better for international lawfare against the Israel.

The so-called “humanitarians,” at least on one boat, came armed with metal bars and knives. They were fighters, not pacifists, and they called out traditional Islamic battle cries: “[Remember] Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!” According to Palestinian Media Watch ^[2]:

“Khaibar is the name of the last Jewish village defeated by Muhammad’s army in 628. Many Jews were killed in that battle, which marked the end of Jewish presence in Arabia. There are Muslims who see that as a precursor for future wars against Jews. At gatherings and rallies of extremists, this chant is often heard as a threat to Jews to expect to be defeated and killed again by Muslims.”

“This video ^[3] shows Israeli soldiers being beaten with long and heavy metal rods on one of the Turkish boats. Jeff Dunetz (“YidWithLid ^[4]”) has a series of disturbing and informative videos in which we can see the planned nature and intensity of the Turkish-Palestinian violence against Israeli soldiers—an attack which involved stabbings, beatings, firebombing attempts, throwing soldiers overboard, etc.”

Earlier today, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon ^[5] said that the Turkish-led flotilla was: “An armada of hate and violence in support of Hamas’ terror organization and was a premeditated and outrageous provocation. The organizers are well known for their ties with global jihad, Al-Qaeda, and Hamas. They have a history of arms smuggling and deadly terror. On board the ship we found weapons prepared in advance and used against our forces. The organizers intent was violent, their method was violent, and the results were unfortunately violent. Israel regrets any loss of life and did everything to avoid this outcome.”

Indeed, the death count currently stands at an estimated nine (mainly Turkish) dead and 34 wounded. Predictably, the Arab, European, and liberal media are viewing Israel as the vicious aggressor; as committing “obscene ^[6]” acts. Al-Jazeera’s website ^[7] calls what happened “a massacre.” They refer to the dead as “martyrs.”

Some say that the Israeli commandos could have used taser guns, rubber bullets, or simply sent far more soldiers onto each boat. But the Israelis initially boarded the boats armed with paintball guns. And one wonders: How many Israeli soldiers can fit on a boat? One Israeli now suggests that Israel should have surrounded all the boats, stopped them dead in their tracks, shot out their motors.

Said I: And then done what with them?

Said he: Negotiate.

Said I: Are you crazy? Negotiate with terrorists? And then feed them, house them, coddle them—terrorists who would not even agree to bring food and a note to Gilad Shalit? Incredibly, Israel has been doing just that, treating the wounded terrorists in Israeli hospitals ^[8] and preparing to intern the remaining “activists” in air-conditioned tents ^[9] in Ashdod.

Said he: There should have been better military planning.

I am sure that Monday morning quarterbacking is always more ingenious than what happens in the moment of battle. The problem is that, once again, the Israelis are being attacked for having defended themselves and the jihadists are still being seen as “martyrs.”

Why did Turkey attack Israel? How much Iranian support did they have? Turkey was once a haven for Jews in flight from the Christian Inquisition.

Once, long ago, Muslim Turkey gave asylum to Dona Gracia HaNasi ^[10], the noble and generous leader of the Jews who had fled from Christian Spain and Portugal. Dona Gracia, a widow, was the wealthiest Jew of her time and, after living in Italy, found final refuge in Constantinople in 1552. Some wealthy Jews still live in Turkey today—yes, despite the bombing ^[11] of two Turkish synagogues in 2003. I wonder how safe they are and for how long.

As to women? Locked up in harems—but if they were lucky/most unlucky, perhaps in the Sultan’s own harem or seraglio. For example, in 1784, a French girl, Aimee Dubucq de Rivery, ^[12] was kidnapped on the open seas by Algerian pirates who sold her into the Turkish Sultan’s harem. Aimee became known as “Naksh,” The Beautiful One, for her fair skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair. Improbably, incredibly, Aimee became the mother of the next Sultan, whose name was Sultan Mahmoud II, the Reformer. Some see ^[13] the influence of the Sultan Valideh (The Veiled Sultan) in Selim’s letter of friendship to King Louis XVI—and in other pro-European gestures and customs.

Myths ^[14] die hard. People still believe that Jews, Christians and other infidels lived safe and happy lives in Muslims lands. This is a Big Lie ^[15].

As a matter of historical fact, the Turks have a long and bloody history of cruelty and genocide. They colonized the entire Middle East, forced conversions or murdered those who resisted. Islamic gender and religious apartheid flourished.

To this day, the Turks continue to deny the Armenian genocide. And, the days of Kemal Ataturk are long gone. In the early 1920s, Ataturk imposed a secular democracy upon the Islamists and unveiled the women. Now, the Islamists are winning again: Women are veiling, honor killings are on the rise (both in Turkey and among Turks in Europe). Recently, a father and grandfather heartlessly buried ^[16] a 16-year-old daughter and granddaughter alive for the “crime” of presumably talking to boys. I have also written about a great Turkish feminist hero, my friend Seyran Ates ^[17], here; Ates was shot for her work among Turkish immigrant girls and women in Berlin. Her 15-year-old client died. Ates, a lawyer, was left for dead—but miraculously survived.

And we nearly admitted Turkey into the European Union. One wonders if they would have intensified their anti-Israel Islamism had they been accepted as “Europeans,” or whether their candidacy was merely a calculated move in tandem with pre-existing pro-Iranian plans. For years, Turkey has opposed ^[18] sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program. Turkey was among the first to congratulate Ahmadinejad ^[19] on his re-election victory. During 2009, Turkey improved its economic ties to Iran.

I am waiting for the United Nations and for the United States to condemn this unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation.

Impeach the stonewalling Obama

June 1st, 2010

By Joseph Farah, WND

 Obama needs to be impeached

I can think of many reasons to impeach Barack Obama.

Of course, this House of Representatives is never going to do that between now and January, when many of the members will be leaving office, most of them against their wishes.

But it’s actually time to start calling for impeachment.

There are dozens of crimes and misdemeanors to consider, with the dozens of brazen extra-constitutional actions of this White House – from health care to auto-company takeovers to bank bailouts.

And, of course, there is the ever-present controversy over his total failure even to prove his constitutional eligibility for office.

But Obama’s stonewalling over the allegations of Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., is the most Nixonian reason of all.

Now the shoe is clearly on the other foot.

While Democrats were prepared to frog-march Richard Nixon out of the White House in the 1970s because of his refusal to allow an independent counsel to investigate Watergate, today’s Democrats expect the American people to take the administration’s word that Sestak, one of their own, is lying when he said he was offered a bribe to bow out of the U.S. Senate race against Sen. Arlen Specter.

Late last week, the White House finally released its explanation of the job offer. The claim is that Rahm Emanuel sent Bill Clinton to meet with Sestak to offer an unpaid advisory position – not the “high-ranking position” Sestak had claimed.

Read More:

Sarah Palin and the Multitude of Dummies===And they name names: Sarah Palin, taxpayers, Tea Party supporters, viewers turning away from the mainstream networks, newspaper and magazine readers canceling subscriptions, those without degrees from an elite university — all dumb.

Sarah Palin and the Multitude of Dummies

By Stuart Schwartz

We are dumb. So say the folks at the top of our leadership ladder.

And they name names: Sarah Palin, taxpayers, Tea Party supporters, viewers turning away from the mainstream networks, newspaper and magazine readers canceling subscriptions, those without degrees from an elite university — all dumb.

Stupidity is the face of American exceptionalism for Barack Obama and his media and university supporters. New York Times columnist David Brooks, a graduate of the elite University of Chicago, says the nation’s a “joke,” that Sarah Palin and ordinary Americans should shut up and let the “educated class” lead. Bill Maher, who practices his contempt at HBO and honed his arrogance at Yale, labels us a “stupid people.”

Meanwhile, Woody Allen says we are so clueless that Barack Obama needs to take his Harvard law degree in hand and become a “dictator for a few years.” Allen, who does not have an Ivy League degree, nevertheless burnished his elite cultural credentials with first an affair, and then a marriage to his stepdaughter a few years back. More recently, he dismissed the rape of a fourteen-year-old by fugitive director Roman Polanski with the observation “he’s an artist.”

We do not read what they want us to read, vote the way they want us to vote, buy what they want us to buy, or believe the way they want us to believe. The United States bounded by the Hudson River and Rodeo Drive is a black hole of intellect and culture desperately in need of guidance.

They are angry that 81% of us put the nation “on the wrong track” and that two-thirds are “outraged” with what the “educated class” is doing to us. Their response, however, is pushback. The Atlantic magazine, a favorite of our political and media elites, just this month explained the growing anger on Main Street: “It’s that you’re stupid.”

Sen. John Kerry (D-Martha’s Vineyard) said this past week he and others inside the Beltway are growing impatient with the average American’s failure to grasp the superior ways of elite Washington. We the people suffer from a “comprehension gap” because of our inability to see the “amazing resurgence” that our elites have delivered to a nation afflicted by more than 220 years of what the president calls a “flawed Constitution.”

“We’ve come back,” Kerry proclaims, proudly pointing to Wall Street, the economy, and the general state of the republic. The media applauded (with the exception of the Wall Street Journal, which warned that whatever Kerry was doing, he should “stop doing it in public”). If the poet Robert Browning (dead nineteenth-century white guy who originated political incorrectness when he gave up being an atheist and vegetarian and wrote soppy love poems to an individual of the opposite, not same, sex) had been a Washington Post editor, he would have gleefully slapped on the headline “Kerry Says Obama’s in His Heaven, All ‘s right With the world!”

Blink. Oh, okay — when you’re married to the notoriously ill-tempered heir to the Heinz foods fortune, I suppose all days away from her seem sunny. Or perhaps all those years encased in tight spandex while windsurfing achieved what fellow aristocrat, Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-OxyContin), did with drugs and alcohol: cut off the oxygen to his brain.

They are smart and we are dumb. End of story. Whether conservative or liberal, our elite journalists agree with Senator Kerry and the Times’ David Brooks, who sums it up this way: We’re smarter than you. Brooks then uses an entire thesaurus to describe the relief and optimism among the cultured media at having a fellow “intellectual in the White House.”

The intelligence of this educated class stands in stark contrast to those of us who think of a thesaurus as the slavering reptile with the big teeth that ate the lawyer cowering on a toilet in Jurassic Park. And wouldn’t mind if a few of the big guys were loosed to do the same on Capitol Hill.

Our traditional media, both left and right, regard this newly aroused dummy class (us) with disdain and anger topped with a heaping helping of arrogance. The deputy managing editor of National Review, even while defending Sarah Palin from vicious, gratuitous attacks (yawn), makes sure his brothers and sisters-in-brains on the right know that he agrees “quite intensely” with attacks on her rhetoric.

Sarah Palin is the anti-Harvard. She did not attend an elite university; doesn’t have a Kennedy, William F. Buckley, or Bush gene in her body; and offers cringe-worthy thoughts such as “I love my country” and that character counts.  

As such, she displays the “gleeful ignorance” that afflicts the vast majority of Americans disgusted at the mess our elites are making of the country. So says David Frum, a member of the conservative elite media; on the other side of the aisle at the Washington Post, editorial writer Ruth Marcus piles on, insisting that the angry nation represented by Palin is dumb, incapable of learning.

And so we need the guidance of our betters. Or so goes the thought processes, the critical thinking shaped by the identical exposure of Marcus and Frum to an education provided by Yale University and Harvard Law School. Harvard, especially, is where our current leadership has been drawn.

And Harvard is up to the task. Sure, once it was an explicitly Christian university actively engaged in graduating students of great character and education. Its first honorary degrees were awarded to Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

But over time, “transformative leadership” changed the school, much in the way Obama is doing for the United States. As later Harvard-trained historians would tell it, the Puritans who founded the college left to pursue other opportunities, such as raping the wilderness and establishing injustice. Meanwhile, university leadership realized the lack of social justice involved in honoring and thereby encouraging national leaders who believed in “God-given” rights and self-government. Besides, the latter were home-schooled, a condition that produces individuals, the Washington Post tells us, who are just not “very good at thinking.”

And now Harvard has come into its own, shaping a White House that even Yale graduate John Kerry praises for doing an awesomely “ship-shape” job. Look around you, he says proudly: This is what bringing Harvard to the White House does.

And at Harvard, the transformation just underway in the rest of the nation is complete. More representative of its values are recent honorary degree recipients that include Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), whom one London newspaper honored with the title of “the Senator of Sleaze.” On the cultural front, the university honored Ivy League art critic Dr. Leo Steinberg, who, we are told by the “most widely-read fine arts magazine in the world,” has thrilled the arts world with his studies of  “the prominent display of the genitals of the infant Christ [in art].”

From George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to Ted Kennedy and Leo Steinberg.

And they call us dummies?

Stuart Schwartz, a former retail and media executive, is on the faculty at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Morning Bell: Time to Change Course in the Middle East

Morning Bell: Time to Change Course in the Middle East

Posted By Conn Carroll On June 1, 2010 @ 9:43 am In American Leadership |

Early Monday morning in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea, helicopters lowered Israeli Commandos onto a Turkish-flagged ferry carrying 600 passengers determined to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Beset by activists armed with poles, knives and guns, the Israelis defended themselves, and the resulting violence left at least nine dead ^[1]. Hours later, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report claiming that Iran now has enough nuclear fuel, with further enrichment, to make two nuclear weapons ^[2]. These two stories are not unrelated. And they ought to serve as a signal to the Obama administration that it is time to change its approach to the region.

Israel is an important ally of the United States and the most important partner the U.S. has in an otherwise tough neighborhood. Unlike most of its neighbors, Israel shares our nation’s commitment to democracy and freedom. And also like us, it has every right to defend itself. When the United States supports Israel and makes that support clear on the international stage, Israel’s enemies are less likely to provoke. But when the United States distances itself from Israel, as the Obama administration has done ^[3], it makes confrontation and conflict in the region more likely, not less. When enemies see Israel as alone and isolated, they become more, not less, aggressive. When Israel feels alone and isolated, it feels compelled to be more aggressive – to act in its own defense.

What the incident in the Mediterranean Sea demonstrates is just how likely it is that Israel will make a preventive strike on Iran if Iran provokes Israel by further developing its nuclear weapon ambitions. If such an attack were to happen, the United States must recognize Israel’s right to self-defense against a hostile Iranian regime that repeatedly has called for its destruction. The United States must also veto any Security Council resolution that does not acknowledge Iran’s provocations and continued defiance of U.N. resolutions. ^[4]

Just this past Friday, the IAEA also leaked news that Iran may be hiding equipment capable of pyroprocessing ^[5], a procedure that can be used to purify uranium metal used in nuclear warheads. This is just the latest in a long line of Iranian deception about its nuclear program ^[6]. The Obama administration actually enabled this Kabuki with its engagement strategy last year ^[7], which culminated in last month’s nuclear deal between Iran, Turkey and Brazil ^[8] – a deal that was based off of President Obama’s own proposed deal with Iran.

And the Obama administration’s strengthening of Iran does not end there. In order to secure new toothless U.N. sanctions on Iran, the Obama administration agreed to allow the Russians to sell the Iranians S-300 anti-aircraft missiles – ^[9] the very weapon system that Iran would use against an Israeli air strike.

What is most troubling here is the Obama administration policy that has helped create the Middle East we have today. Israel feels increasingly alone. Iran feels increasingly empowered. The White House should have been working to achieve the opposite.

Quick Hits:

• The SEIU failed ^[10] to gather the 85,000 signatures needed to place a pro-Obamacare Democrat on the ballot to challenge Rep. Larry Kissell (D-NC), who voted against the bill.
• According to a Los Angeles Times poll ^[11], 50% of Californians support Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law while only 43% oppose it.
• New home sales in markets hardest hit by foreclosures are set to plunge ^[12] in June as federal tax subsidies expire.
• A Chinese central bank adviser tells Financial Times ^[13] that the problems in China’s housing market are more severe than those in the United States before the financial crisis.
• The European Central Bank warned on Monday that Euro zone banks face a “second wave” of potential loan losses ^[14] over the next 18 months due to the financial crisis.

The Smallest President

By Geoffrey P. Hunt

Would someone remind us again why the nation elected this man to be president? A man with no resume, a man with no experience in running anything other than a political campaign, a man who is ignorant of history, economics, and technology? A man who is shallow and lazy? A man who shares neither character nor temperament with the American people in this vast republic? How did this happen?

Voters were smitten by the ideological handmaidens of identity politics and the promise of big government. The identity politics substituted a cosmetic profile for character and experience. The promise was that big government has the benevolent power and enlightened expertise to remake America from the top down into a more capable, more caring, kinder, gentler, and more respected place.

What we’ve received instead was on display at the president’s long-awaited press conference in the last week of May. Only a partisan or a fool could deny the irredeemable failure of these ideological handmaidens, the genius of Obama’s shrinking presidency. No amount of posturing, buffing up, or Q&A briefing book drills could hide the reality that this man is on a raft at sea accompanied by an equally bewildered boatload of companions who have no idea how they arrived in such deep water, hundreds of miles from land, and with no clue that they are in trouble, let alone what to do about it.

What we’ve received instead from the ideology of identity politics and big government has been the spread of competency and accountability so thin that the federal government is utterly incapable of defending our shores and borders from invasion — one by sea in the form of a massive crude oil slick, the other by land in the waves of illegal immigrants flooding Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. In utter exasperation, the citizens of Arizona finally took matters into their own hands, only to be vilified by Obama and his cohorts, who have neither the will nor the capacity to do anything about it.

Identity politics is where grievance-mongering and class resentment intersect with entitlement agitation and representational profiling. Those who use the currency of identity politics appeal to the ideals of justice and fair distribution of resources and outcomes. But in reality they prey on those who are underprivileged and dependent, making claims of dispossession against those who have enjoyed success and independence derived from their own sweat, equity, and competence. 

Leaders who devote all of their energy and emotional capital to identity politics instead of  creating a competent, skills-based organization soon discover that when critical decisions need to be made and highly skilled resources need to be mobilized, nobody is around who knows how to do it. Such leaders, eventually tuned out and abandoned by even their former acolytes, become irrelevant, easily overwhelmed by events and rivals, taking their organizations — even a nation — down with them.

ObamaCare was the progeny of a shrinking president preoccupied with identity politics accompanied by big government ideology and not much else, floated on the emotional chaise of justice and fair distribution. Yet its proponents thoroughly disregarded the vast, complex, and highly skilled bureaucracy needed to attain those ideals in a brand new, centralized, top-down social engineering monstrosity. It will require a bureaucracy ten times the size of the Pentagon.

And now we are watching in slow-motion agony the failure of identity politics and big government unwilling and unable to cope with the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, gradually revealed like a developing image from a Polaroid instant print. Identity politics assured that no one with any skills or experience would occupy the top jobs in Obama’s administration needed to navigate a crisis of this magnitude.

And where oh where is the president, anyhow? Playing another round of golf and hosting the Duke University women’s basketball team.

Obama’s presidency is finished because identity trumped competency. And without competency, his big government is dysfunctional and destructive.

So what’s the alternative? Simple. The ideology of limited government. Why? Because limited government is the antithesis of identity politics. The ideology of limited government wouldn’t need to rely on overextended organization competencies to manage vast and complex bureaucracies because those bureaucracies would be unnecessary and wouldn’t exist. Without identity politics, people who actually know what they’re doing could occupy key jobs.

Limited government has to assemble and target just those competencies needed to carry out the limited duties envisioned in the U.S. Constitution, such as providing for the common defense, facilitating interstate commerce and a monetary system, and defending the rights reserved to the people. Everything else can be better-managed by private enterprise, where distributed self interest can gather competencies in units small enough to accomplish something useful.

Identity politics combined with incompetence have exposed the absurdity in the ambitions of big government and made Obama the weakest, most anemic and flaccid president in the modern era. The Latinate word would be diminutive. In simple Saxon tongue, the word is small. This is Obama’s presidency.