Do Jews Owe Anything to the US Democratic Party? -- Part 2

We have shown that Roosevelt [Saint FDR, in the bon mot of Lawrence Lipton in the LA Free Press circa 1963] was a silent partner in the Shoah. Of course young people may think that that was a long time ago. But the Democrats still honor Roosevelt with yearly memorial dinners and such. 

Nevertheless,  do we have more recent evidence that the Democratic Party is hostile to Jews, maybe to the point of collaborating in  a future Holoaust? Just two years ago, the Party nominated Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to the House of Representatives. And these two Muslim women were both elected. Of the two, Omar, a Somali immigrant to the USA, was the more blatantly Judeophobic, although Tlaib was of palestinian Arab background. 

Omar had written a few years years before that, in 2012: "Israel hypnotized the world. May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel." 

This is not only a specimen of traditional anti-Jewish bigotry but an expression of magical thinking. Omar showed that she had a loose grip on reality. She also expressed Muslim loyalty and Muslim beliefs including the several and sundry prejudices against other religions and  nations that abound in the Quran and the Hadiths and so on. Hence, one would  think that when committee assignments were given out by the Democratic Party leadership in the House of Representatives, care would be taken to place Omar on a committee where she could do little harm. Yet instead, Omar was assigned to the highly prestigious House Foreign Affairs Committee which actually does influence the foreign relations of the United States, a committee to which first-term congressmen are not ordinarily assigned. Maybe she could have been assigned instead to the committee in charge of national parks and/or fisheries or education. Or perhaps the committee in charge of  Housing and Urban Development where maybe --not necessarily-- she might have been able to make a contribution. Instead she is dealing with issues of war and peace, or which foreign countries to befriend and which to harm or be indifferent to.

While a member of the House, Rashida Tlaib put forth a more hypocritical, subtler expression of Judeophobia. She expressed sorrow over the Shoah while claiming that the Palestinian Arabs were victims of the Shoah, whereas their leaders were among the perpetrators of the crime of genocide against the Jews.

In early 2019 when Omar and Tlaib took their seats in Congress, their views gained attention and angry criticism. After she was already a member of the House, this Islamic supremacist [she voted merely "present" on a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, perhaps fulfilling a commitment she had made when she met with Turkish tyrant Erdogan before entering Congress] came out with another hypocritical assault on Jews:

Ms. Omar said that pro-Israel activists were pushing “for allegiance to a foreign country” — a remark that critics in both parties said played into the anti-Semitic trope of “dual loyalty.” [NY Times 7 March 2019]

These Judeophobic remarks did elicit public unease and criticism. The Democrats running the House did prepare a resolution condemning antisemitism.  But then . . .

It started as a resolution condemning anti-Semitism. Then, anti-Muslim bias was added in. After that came white supremacy. And by the end, it cited “African-Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, immigrants and others” victimized by bigotry.  [NY Times, 7 March 2019]

So a resolution originally meant to condemn Judeophobia was watered down to become a general statement against bigotry of all sorts. The message against antisemitism was lost and no acknowledgement was made that at least one of the groups that the resolution spread its protective wings over was a group, Muslims, that has been long imbued with Judeophobia, going back to the Quran, the hadiths and other medieval Islamic writings. Nor was either Rep. Omar or Rep. Tlaib mentioned by name. Thus the resolution defeated its ostensible original purpose. 

The refusal of the Democratic Party to clearly and unequivocally condemn Judeophobia/antisemitism, instead substituting a much watered down, nearly meaningless resolution, without naming its own who were complicit in promoting Judeophobia, shows that the US Democratic Party is now home to antisemites and is complicit in their doings. American Jews should not trust this morally corrupt and hypocritical party.

References

https://nypost.com/2019/03/07/house-overwhelmingly-approves-resolution-condemning-hate/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/us/politics/anti-semitism-resolution.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/politics/ilhan-omar-anti-semitism-vote.html

Turkey Still Getting away with Murder -- The Next Iran?

Turkey in World War I carried out mass murder of Armenians who were numerous, even in the majority, in several areas of what is now the Turkish Republic. What is less known is that hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks and Assyrians --both Christian peoples-- were also slaughtered and driven from their homes during that war. After the war, when the new regime of Kemal Ataturk had taken over from the Ottoman Empire which --under the leadership of the so-called Young Turks, the Committtee for Unity and Progress -- had carried out genocide during the war, the new regime too carried out genocide and ethnic cleansing. For this service to Islam, so it was seen in Turkey at the time, Ataturk was given the title of Ghazi, glorious victor in jihad, in a holy war.* These post-war massacres and expulsions took place mainly in 1922, as from Smyrna. Before WW I, millions of non-Muslims who were not Turks lived in what was then called Asia Minor, or Anatolia or Turkey in Asia. By 1923, this large population was almost all gone. The Armenians were almost totally gone while some tens of thousands of ethnic Greeks still lived in Constantinople, known today under its Turkish name, Istanbul, and thousands of Assyrians kept on living in the southeast.

Turkey never had to pay for its crimes during WW I and the 1920s. It was believed to contain oil, petroleum, and for that reason or others, it was thought best not to bother or harass the Turks with accusations or punishments for their crimes. And when Ataturk imposed or tried to impose some secularizing reforms later in the 1920s, his position became firm in most Western public opinion. He was an admired figure in the West, including the USA. Turkey as such was admired too [a popular American song around 1950 featured the line: It's nobody's business but the Turks']. His successors in the late 1930s and in the 1940s were wise enough to keep out of WW II, although pro-German sentiment was strong. Hence, the new, supposedly secular Turkey was accepted into NATO in 1952 at the same time as Greece. Yet old habits die hard. In 1955, while both Turkey and Greece belonged to NATO, tens of thousands of ethnic Greeks were driven out of Istanbul and taken in by Greece.** Here we had a NATO member state performing ethnic cleansing on people who shared ethnicidentity with the people of another NATO member state. And NATO did nothing about it. Indeed, the Turks got away with murder both figuratively and literally.

With the rise to power of Rejep Tayyip Erdogan in late 2002, Islamist, jihadist inclinations were once again overt in the Turkish Republic. Ambitions of Ottoman imperial revival, called neo-Ottomanism, were revived and Erdogan's Turkey took a special interest in the Islamist, jihadist Hamas movement that took over the Gaza Strip in 2007. In 2010 he joined forces with Western partisans of Hamas and the Arab anti-Israel cause, including the American feminine outfit called Code Pink. They organized a so-called "Free Gaza" convoy of seven boats to supposedly bring needed goods to Gaza kept out by Israel's partial blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza. This was a pretense for a  pro-Hamas undertaking. The supposedly needed goods in Gaza carried by the convoy included medications near to or past their expiration dates and assorted equipment, much of it what some Turkish businesses were willing to get rid of. The largest of the seven boats was a Turkish ferry that customarily crossed the Turkish straits.

As the convoy approached the coast of Gaza, Israel's navy warned it not to go further. Since the warning was not heeded, Israeli commandos landed from a helicopter on the ferry boat, the Mavi Marmara. But they were not prepared for the reception they got from the scores of jihadis on the craft, Turks and others. They were attacked with knives and clubs and a few guns. When more commandos got involved, the jihadis were overcome and ten Turkish jihadis were dead, one of them a dual Turkish-US citizen, Although the jihadis were violating a legitimate blockade, President Obama acted and spoke as it were Israel doing wrong. The story of the convoy and Obama's interference is a long, detailed one that will be skipped for now.

In following years, Turkey has claimed ownership of Greek territorial waters and successfully interfered in oil and gas exploration in those waters by Italian companies working with the Greeks. Likewise, Turkey has interfered in oil and gas exploration in Cypriot territorial waters, whereas it had already occupied northern Cyprus in 1974. About a month or so ago, Turkish warships chased away from Cypriot waters an Israeli scientific research ship working in cooperation with the Greek Cypriot Republic of Cyprus authorities.

Again, Turkey, falsely seen as a democratic Western country, has been getting away with murder. But  its offenses have gotten much less attention in the American press than they deserved. The commentator Yohanan Visser argues that Turkey is the next Iran. Here is part of his article bringing the story up to date:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), for the first time ever, added Turkey to the list of security threats in the annual national security assessment.
At the same time the IDF doesn’t see a confrontation with the Turkish army in 2020.
The addition of Turkey - a country that maintains diplomatic relations with Israel and once was an ally of the Jewish state - to the list of security threats is related to the bellicose actions by Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Middle East the IDF said in the assessment.
Erdogan routinely denounces Israel for its policies toward the Palestinian Arabs and uses to compare [= often compares] the country to Nazi-Germany while also threatening Israel over a plan to build a pipeline in the Mediterranean Sea that would bring Israeli gas from the Leviathan gas field to Europe.
The Turkish leader last month signed a memorandum with Libya about the linking of their so-called economic zones in the Mediterranean Sea.
The deal that was clearly meant to prevent Israel, Greece and Cyprus from realizing their plan for the construction of the pipeline and to claim the expected gas reserves in these zones.
"Other international actors cannot conduct exploration activities in the areas marked in the Turkish-Libyan memorandum. Greek Cypriots, Egypt, Greece and Israel cannot establish a natural gas transmission line without Turkey's consent," Erdogan said after Israel signed the gas pipe deal with Greece and Cyprus.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry later summoned the Israeli ambassador in Ankara to tell him that the construction of the gas pipeline required Turkey’s approval and that there was no need for the pipe since there is already a similar pipe line from Azerbaijan to Turkey and from there to Europe. [Israel National News, 15 January 2020]

It may be needless to say, but if anyone is not aware, there is no legal substance to Turkey's claim to ownership of the maritime territory of the eastern Mediterranean or to hegemony over it. But apparently NATO is still letting Turkey, now under the Islamist tyrant Erdogan, get away with murder.

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References
For more info on the expulsions of 1922-23, see:
Ernest Hemingway, "On the Quai at Smyrna" and the epigraph to Chapter II, both in the collection In Our Time
George Horton, The Blight of Asia
Marjorie Housepian, The Smyrna Affair

** For info on the pogroms and expulsion of the ethnic Greeks from Istanbul [Constantinople] in 1955:
Called Eylul Olaylari in Turkish, these pogroms took place on 6-7 September 1955, and were staged by the government of Adnan Menderes.
Pappas Post [here]
wikipedia in English [here]
wikipedia in Hebrew [here]
Alfred de Zayas, the events according to international law [here]
Kathimerini [newspaper] [here]
youtube, still photos from the events [here]
Aykan Erdemir in Politico.eu [here]
Greek Reporter [here]
European Journal of Turkish Studies [here]
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* On Ataturk's victories as Islamic victories & on the title of Ghazi, see:
Albert Avakian, "Pouvoir et Islam en Turquie  de 1919 a` 1960," Revue d'Histoire de la deuxie`me Guerre Mondiale et des Conflits Contemporains (vol 35, no. 137; 1985), pp90-91
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Previous posts on Emet m'Tsiyon on modern Greek-Turkish events & the indulgent Western policy towards Turkey
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2011/02/more-on-us-pro-islam-pro-arab-policy.html

http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2007/10/gem-of-absurdity-from-walt-mearsheimer.html
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2010/06/euro-hypocrites-forget-turkish-mass.html

http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2018/01/mahmoud-abbas-tells-european-union-that.html
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2005/10/bolsheviks-for-jihad-genocide-stalins.html

Two Aspects of the Holocaust to Keep in MInd

Israel commemorates the Holocaust in several days on the 28th of the month of Nisan, the month of Spring, which falls this year on the 28th of April, actually starting on the evening before, the evening of the 27th. This year, interestingly, it falls close in time to the Armenian commemoration of their genocide, which is on 24 April every year. Israel Radio [Qol Yisrael] discussed the Armenian genocide today on several programs. Right now Israel TV [channel 1] is running Claude Lanzmann's film, The Last of the Unjust.

First, an observation about the earlier genocide, the Armenian at the hands of Ottoman Empire, ruled during WW One by the Young Turks, a group of revolutionaries, supposed progressives. In fact, the formal name of the Young Turks' party was the Committee for Unity and Progress. Many Arab nationalists took inspiration from the Young Turks. Anwar Sadat's parents even named him after one of the Young Turks' leaders, Enver Pasha [Enver = the Turkish form of the Arabic name Anwar].

Although progressives, the Young Turks were imbued in their education with the values of Islam, especially the need for Islam and Muslims to dominate non-Muslims. To be sure, one Armenian historian, Raymond Kevorkian, located in France, wants to believe that the motive for the genocide was Turkish or Pan-Turanian nationalism, rather than Islam. This is very short-sighted but this is not the time to go into my reasoning.

Much has been written about the Jewish Holocaust. I now want to just stress two aspects.
1) The Holocaust was not restricted to Jews living in Europe. Thousands of Jews were sent to death camps in Europe from the North African countries of Libya and Tunisia. And the Germans set up labor camps for Jews in those countries. Pro-Nazi pogromists in Baghdad slaughtered local Jews in the Spring of 1941 in an orgy of violence and brutality called the Farhud. The numbers of Jews murdered range from 179 to 600 or more. It is a common mistake that the Holocaust was restricted to European Jews, or Jews living in Europe. However, Leon Poliakov, one of the most important Holocaust historians wrote long ago about the North African Jews caught up in the Holocaust crimes. Yet, the mistake is still made.

2) The Arab nationalist movement in its  majority was pro-Nazi. The Arab intellectuals who set up the Arab Socialist Ba`ath Party and the Syrian National Socialist Party [often called the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in order to hide its Nazi inspiration] were much interested in and great admirers of Nazi ideology, policies, power, and organization.

The chief leader of the Palestinian Arabs in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Haj Amin el-Husseini, instigated the Farhud in Baghdad, according to an Iraqi investigating committee. After two days of Farhud massacres, British troops occupied Baghdad and finally suppressed the pogrom after waiting outside the city for two days. At this point Husseini fled Baghdad and made his way through Iran and Turkey to the Nazi-fascist domain in Europe. Greece, bordering on Turkey, was already occupied. While still in Baghdad, Husseini and a small group of other Arab nationalist leaders drew up a draft political statement which they wanted Hitler to make in favor of Arab nationalist ambitions. In essence, this was really a petition to Hitler to recognize what these Arab leaders saw as their rights and interests, including the right to solve the Jewish Question in the Arab lands as it was being solved in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Bernard Lewis supplies a thorough discussion of the several versions of their petition to Hitler in his book, Semites and Anti-Semites.
While in Baghdad Husseini may not have understood the full meaning of "the Final Solution." However, after speaking with Hitler in Berlin, or before, he knew that it meant genocide of the Jews. On his visit or visits to Auschwitz he was able to observe just how this Final Solution was being carried out. The Germans provided Husseini, the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem [1922], with a headquarters and money to support a large entourage and used him to make pro-Nazi, pro-Arab nationalist, anti-Jewish propaganda over Radio Berlin. [such as: Kill Jews wherever you find them (see Lukasz Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East)].

In their discussion at Hitler's headquarters Hitler promised Husseini that "solving"  the Jewish Question in  the Arab lands was part of Nazi Germany's plan. Husseini, the Mufti, was "fully reassured and satisfied by the words which he had heard from the Chief of the German State. . ."  He was pleased with Hitler's promise.

Later in the war, Husseini addressed the Bosnian Muslim SS division [the Handschar, khanjar]. He told them that Nazi ideology, National Socialism, had much in common with Islam (see Joseph Schechtman's biography of Husseini, The Mufti and the Fuehrer).
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24 April 2014 -- Obama continues to evade recognizing the Armenian genocide as genocide. He issued  a statement that danced around a frank statement of the issue [here]. He still wants to protect Erdogan and Turkey and Islam in general.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan --Israel's Enemy, Hamas' Friend-- Mocks Turkish-Armenian Friendship

Turkey's Islamist prime minister, Erdogan, is not satisfied with continuing to deny the Ottoman Empire's genocide of Armenians during WW One. He has now demanded destruction of a statue celebrating Turkish-Armenian friendship. Erdung recently visited the Kars region, part of historic Armenia and near the present Turkish border with Armenia. He called the monument a monstrosity, and pointed to its location near the tomb of a Muslim scholar. Of course, Erdung can get away with saying and doing almost anything, since he enjoys the favor of America's WonderBoy President, the highly cynical Barack Hussein Obama who --before his election in 2008-- had promised the Armenian-American community that he would recognize the Armenian genocide. Since then, of course, Obama has curried favor with the Erdung govt in Turkey, used Turkey against Israel in the "Free Gaza" Turkish armada, and refused to call the Armenian genocide a genocide.

The statue's sculptor, a Turk named Mehmet Aksoy, warned that destruction of his work would remind the world of the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, and would harm Turkey's candidacy for membership in the European Union.

"La Turquie détruit une statue célébrant l'amitié avec l'Arménie La Turquie a entamé mardi le démontage d'un imposant monument célébrant l'amitié avec l'Arménie près de la frontière entre les deux pays, après que le Premier ministre eut tourné en dérision la statue et demandé son enlèvement. Recep Tayyip Erdogan avait déclenché un torrent de critiques lors d'une visite à Kars en janvier au cours de laquelle il avait fustigé la statue comme une monstruosité... une drôle de chose érigée à proximité de la tombe d'un érudit musulman. Les critiques avaient vu notamment dans ses propos des accents islamiques orthodoxes: les statues considérées comme idolâtres sont souvent rejetées par l'islam. Le sculpteur Mehmet Aksoy a averti que la démolition de son oeuvre rappellerait la destruction des Bouddhas de Bamiyan en Afghanistan par les talibans et gênerait la candidature d'Ankara à l'entrée dans l'Union européenne." [Guysen News 26 IV 2011]

Since we're on the subject of Armenian-Turkish relations, there are still scholars who seek to deny or minimize the genocide or claim that it was just part of the war, etc. Yet, Eitan Belkind, an activist in the NILI group led by Aaron Aaronsohn, was an eyewitnes to massacres of Armenian civilians during WW I. Aaronsohn's sister, Sarah, was an eyewitness to the cruel deportation of Armenians from their homes in Anatolia toward the area of Dayr az-Zur [Deir ez-Zor] in the Syrian Desert where many of the mass murder acts were actually committed. Ironically, a Syrian ruler has lately killed many of his fellow Arabs in Dayr az-Zur who were protesting his despotic rule.
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Earlier posts about the Armenian genocide on this blog, also Aaron & Sarah Aaronsohn, Eitan Belkind: here & here & here & here & here.
4-28-2011 Syrian oppositionist Farid Ghadry asks Erdogan why he doesn't send a "freedom flotilla" to Syria, while Erdogan noisily and actively demonstrates concern for Gaza [here]

Armenian Spokesman Tells Us that Erdogan is a Hypocrite, then flips to the Arab Side

An Armenian spokesman tells us that Erdogan of Turkey is a hypocrite. That's an important acknowledgment. Then he tries to get back on the Arabs' good side by telling Erdogan what to do if he really wanted to support the "palestinians" and hurt Israel [shut down the Israeli embassy in Ankara, call back the Turkish ambassador to Israel, etc]. These measures have partly come to pass and the rest may come in the future.

In the past week the world witnessed an amazing performance by a government leader that even the most accomplished Hollywood actor could not match!

Turkey’s Prime Minister deserves an Oscar for presenting himself as a great humanitarian and protector of Palestinians. The people of Gaza are certainly oppressed and deprived, but Erdogan is not their knight in shining armor! One cannot champion human rights with unclean hands!
This is the height of hypocrisy!

- How could Turkey blockade Armenia for 17 years and credibly call on Israel to lift its blockade of Gaza? [see here]

But the writer's primary hatred is reserved for Israel, not for Turkey. Maybe "Christkillers" are still "Christkillers" even in the 21st century. But if the writer wants to keep the world "Left" from putting a halo on Erdung's head --and through him on Turkish history, making Turkish history nearly sacred-- then he will have to focus more on Erdung's faults, on the IHH, and on Turkey's other historical offenses, expelling Anatolian Greeks in 1922, massacres of Kurds today, the 1955 Constantinople pogrom, the 1974 invasion of Cyprus, including "ethnic cleansing" of the north of the island, offenses against Jews during the Ottoman conquest. Of course, some Jews see Turkey as rather liberal and tolerant of Jews when the Christian West was blatantly intolerant towards Jews. Let him deal with that too.

How could Turkey claim to be champion of the Palestinian cause and leader of the Islamic world, while being Israel’s closest military ally in the Middle East for over a half century, and allowing Israeli jets to carry out practice bombing runs in Turkish airspace against Arab countries and Iran?

- How could Syria, Iraq and Iran trust Turkey, when it jeopardizes their national security by permitting Israeli listening posts along the border to collect intelligence on their countries.

. . . . .

How could Turkish leaders claim that Israel is a "terrorist state," while continuing to maintain a military alliance and multi-billion dollar trade with the Jewish state? Turkey pretended to side with Arab states, all the while conspiring with Israel to damage their national security!

Israel and the United States share responsibility for Turkey’s hypocritical behavior -- they joined in supporting, defending and covering up numerous Turkish violations of human rights, denial of the Armenian Genocide, and suppression and ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish minority. In the past 60 years, the United States and other NATO members gave billions of dollars in foreign aid and military assistance to Turkey, vainly expecting to win its loyalty. This was a massive waste of U.S. resources, as Turkey did not even allow American troops to go across its border at the start of the Iraq war!

Turkey cleverly exploited Israel’s ill-advised attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, and sought to fill the vacuum created by the irresponsible inaction of Arab states. Erdogan is just as guilty as Israel’s leaders for causing the killing and wounding of the aid activists. He tacitly encouraged them to set sail to Gaza, knowing full well that there would be a bloody confrontation which would boost his own standing at home and abroad. Turkey’s junior brother, Azerbaijan, also gets a medal for hypocrisy as it issued a timid condemnation of Israel, so it could continue to buy arms and sell oil to that country. So much for Turkish-Azeri solidarity!

Of course, over the years, the Israeli government has acted just as hypocritically as Turkey’s leaders. While countering any and all manifestations of Holocaust revisionism, Israeli officials have shown no reluctance in supporting Turkey’s denials of the Armenian Genocide. But now that Erdogan has raised his voice against Israel to a fever pitch, Israelis have jumped at the opportunity of using the possibility of recognizing the Armenian Genocide as a weapon against
Turkey. Armenians must reject such dishonesty. The Israeli government was not sincere when it denied the Armenian Genocide, and it is not sincere now in supporting its recognition! It is shameful to play cheap political games with an issue as horrendous and devastating as genocide. Israel and others should recognize the Armenian Genocide for only one reason: It is the absolute truth!

So far, Turkey has been all talk and no action on the Palestinian issue. Erdogan has not gone beyond giving fiery speeches against Israel. If he is honest about defending the Palestinians, he might consider:

1. Canceling all military contacts and contracts with Israel;
2. Abrogating all public and secret military and strategic agreements with Israel, including intelligence-sharing; and
3. Closing down the Turkish Embassy in Tel Aviv and Israel’s Embassy in Ankara. [The author is Harut Sassounian, publisher of the California Courier, see here]

This Armenian author goes so far as to recommend to the Turks what to do in order to really hurt Israel and show loyalty to the "palestinian" cause. Patience, creep, it is all coming.

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Here is another article on Turkey's role in regard to Armenian genocide recognition and to the recent provocation by the break the blockade pro-terrorist auxiliary Turkish armada [here]. This one is by a rabbi and displayed on an Armenian site.

Passengers and leaders of the Turkish Armada Tell that They Sought "Martyrdom"

UPDATING 6-7 & 7-16-2010

Here are two videos from the Arab TV media. Speaking to their fellow Muslims, Arab and Turkish friends and practitioners of terrorism tell the truth. Those who died were hoping to die, for the sake of Allah, in the path of jihad, and all that.

Several interviews in the Arab and Iranian press tell the true aims and practices of the jihadis on the ship Mavi Marmara. These jihadis were both Turks and Arabs, the Turks having been organized by the IHH, a terrorist aid body that was connected to the 2000 attempt to bomb the LAX [LA airport]. One of the interviews has two voices speaking at the same time. The interviewee was speaking Turkish which was translated into an Arabic voiceover. See interviews [video here].

The second video is of Bulent Yildirim, head of the IHH Islamic fake "charity." He tells the enthusiastically admiring mob in Gaza that he brings greetings from Saladin & Sultan Abdul Hamid. Abdul Hamid was the sultan who organized slaughter of Armenians in the late 19th century. Then he tells the mob, imbued with enthusiasm like Germans at one of Hitler's Nuremberg rallies, that there are 70 million Abdul-Hamid's in Turkey. That is just about the whole population of Turkey. Armenian spokesmen have been strangely quiet over the past two weeks as Turkish prime minister Erdogan picked up brownie points from the "left" and "humanitarian" and "human rights" crowds. If Erdung is indeed bestowed with the halo that the humano fakers are trying to place on his head, then Armenian claims for justice vis-a-vis the Turks will be forgotten and/or considered petty or trivial. The Armenians will be seen as nags at best. Their demands for recognition of the Armenian genocide will be routinely dismissed. After all, the Turks wear a halo. They support the "palestinians," seen in much of the West as a collective Jesus figure, while Israel, the collective Jew, is still blamed for the crucifixion. Hence, the Turks are now the Christian good guys, the Crusaders for the faith against the "Christkillers," the Jews. How many in the West will care about the Armenians in that situation?? Or about the Greeks for that matter, given that Greeks too have a list of historical grievances against the Turks?? See Yildirim's rabble rousing speech here [video].

For more on the Phoney Humano Flotilla see our several previous posts preceding this one.
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UPDATING 6-7-2010 It's funny that Arab & Turkish jihadis can be frank and say where they stand, at least when speaking Arabic & Turkish. However, Western "news" agencies embellish their words and the photos that show them in their bloodthirsty mode, carrying knives and ranting and chanting for bloodshed. Little Green Footballs discovered that Reuters was working hard to cover up for the IHH jihadis. See here.
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UPDATING 7-16-2010 The New York Times finally tells of the terrorist ties of the IHH, the Turkish group behind the Turkish Thug Armada, and of its ties to high Turkish officials [here]

Euro Hypocrites Forget Turkish Mass Murder of Armenians -- Israelis Remember - Photos of a Tel Aviv Demonstration

UPDATING 6-7-2010 see at bottom

Western & Islamic Hypocrites forget the Turkish crime of the Armenian genocide. Israelis remembered at a Tel Aviv demonstration on Monday night, May 31, 2010 [photos below].

It seems that Judeophobia/Israelophobia is a magic glue that brings Christian and Muslim, Greek and Turk, Arab and Irish together [& here]. It is also a narcotic that makes Western "liberals" and "humanitarians" forget all of Turkey's past and present injustices -- because Turkey is now on the right side against the "Christkillers" and for the poor, innocent, innocuous, persecuted, collective Jesus, the "palestinians", merely the sub-group of Arabs living in the Land of Israel. Indeed, in the midst of Greece's economic difficulties, the prime minister found time to criticize Israel while Greek "humanitarians" sailed with Turkish Islamists to besmirch Israel and bring succor to "crucified" Arabs. While doing so, these Greeks forget the Smyrna Affair of 1922 when Ataturk's Turkish army literally drove the Anatolian Greeks into the sea at the port of Smyrna, massacring the Armenian remnant in Smyrna at the same time. The Greek embrace of their old enemies in a common struggle, a crusade-cum-crescentade against the Jews shows the power of the Judeophobic narcotic in the benighted 21st century.

Euro progressives are eager to open the sea route to Gaza so that very large, more advanced weapons can be brought in to use against the "Christkillers." Prime Minister Brian Cowen of the Republic of Eire wants ships from his far off misty isle to land in Gaza without any Israeli inspection of what their contents may be. As the French used to say when they were wiser: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. In Hebrew, אין חדש תחת השמש [There is nothing new under the sun]. Old wine in new bottles. But the new progressive, Western humano, liberal Judeophobia can be resisted.

Meanwhile, look at these beautiful demonstrators in Tel Aviv Monday night.





















Photos from the Muqata blog [here]. Photos taken by M Brener. - - - - - - - - - - -
Our previous posts on the fake "humanitarian" flotilla [here & here]
Robert Pollock in the Wall Street Journal describes the sick thinking of Erdogan [here]. Erdo is much more dangerous than Washington would like to imagine.
A Catholic bishop was stabbed to death in southeastern Turkey by his own driver [here]. This follows a series of murders of Christian religious personalities since Erdogan came to power in 2002. Erdogan has highly exacerbated the climate of hate already existing in Turkey for non-Muslims.

UPDATING June 7, 2010 Gilles William Goldnadel, leader of the Association France-Israel, answers Le Figaro magazine [4 juin 2010]:
LeF: . . . Israel has lost its principal ally in the region, Turkey.

GWF: Things were only getting worse with the Islamist Turkey of Erdogan. He succeeded in his coup d'etat against the Turkish army and is in the process of changing that country. I would have liked Netanyahu to say before the Israeli parliament [in his speech of Wednesday, 6-2-2010] that he does not accept any lessons in humanity from a state that denies the Armenian genocide, that bombards the Kurds, and that occupies the northern part of Cyprus, a member of the European Union.

. . . Israël a perdu son principal allié dans la région, la Turquie.

Avec la Turquie islamiste d'Erdogan, les choses n'ont fait qu'empirer. Il a réussi son coup d'Etat contre l'armée turque et il est en train de changer ce pays. J'aurais aimé que Netanyahou dise devant le Parlement israélien qu'il n'accepte aucune leçon d'humanité de la part d'un Etat qui nie le génocide arménien, qui bombarde les Kurdes et qui occupe la partie nord de Chypre, un membre de l'Union européenne

Turkish Islamist Fanatics Send "Freedom" Flotilla to Gaza to Help Islamist Brethren of Hamas -- Euro "leftist" Fascists/Judeophobes Eager to Help Out

UPDATINGS 5-31 & 6-2&3-2010

Should the Turks succeed in their
efforts to open a sea line to Gaza as
a result of the precedent which may
be created by the current sail, the
southern part of the State of Israel
will be under clear and immediate
danger, similar to the situation in the north.
Ron Ben-Yishai, ynet 30 May 2010

Erdogan, the hate-ridden Islamist prime minister of Turkey, has found a way to international acceptance for his retrograde regime. Work to sabotage Israel. That's the key to successful diplomacy with the Euro Judeophobes, left, right and center. All Turkish offenses of the past are forgiven. Turkey has a very bad human rights record in the past and present!! Turkey still refuses to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. Indeed, not long ago Erdogan himself threatened to expel 100,000 Armenians from Turkey. Also, Turkey is brutally repressing the Kurds, fabricating evidence against his domestic opposition for show trials [see article by Dogan and Rodrik in The New Republic], harassing Turkish Jews, conducting a hate campaign against Israel, broadcasting blood libels against Israel and Jews on TV, etc.

Erdogan was very clever to pick Israel as a target. All the superficial Euro concern over recognition of the Armenian genocide is left behind as well as honest acknowledgment of the bloody war to suppress the Kurdish insurgents, often terrorists themselves, to be sure. The war against the Kurdish rebels has killed many civilians that all the Gaza worshipers are supposedly so keen to protect. He has also corrupted the judiciary, etc.

But he seized the right enemy to strike moralistic postures against. He seems to have found the right formula to endear himself to bien-pensants Europeans. He is making himself ever more worthy of being accepted as a true European and even joining the EU. And the alleged Turkish "humanitarian" body, the IHH, which is behind this propaganda flotilla, has raised funds for al-Qa`ida terrorism. At the same time, IHH officials are sophisticated enough about the advantageous instrumentalization of "human rights" rhetoric and gestures that they sought to procure immunity for the flotilla by appealing to the vanity, hypocrisy and Judeophobia of Euro Judeophobes:

Members of IHH, the Turkish organization which funded and organized the sail, insisted on the inclusion of European parliament members, whom they view as an "insurance policy" against the Israeli Navy's firm hand. [Ron Ben-Yishai, ynet 5-30-2010]

In 2010, anti-Zionism and Israelophobia are the last refuge of the scoundrels.

For the "Left," Turkey’s continuing membership in NATO may now be forgiven since Turkey is anti-Israel. Maybe the Armenian genocide will be finally recognized as a fundamentally progressive accomplishment since those Armenians were really all middle class anyway. Be that as it may, the Armenian genocide cleared eastern Anatolia of its most sizable civilized and civilizing element. So shouldn’t it be heralded the way the Narodnaya Volya hailed the pogroms against Jews??

Once upon a time, Turks and the Ottoman empire had a bad reputation for cruelty, brutality, barbarism, and what have you, etc. Isn’t it wonderful what a little anti-Zionism can do?? Here Erdogan has purified the Turkish rep with a few mendacious smears on Israel to hide his own nation’s record and his very own. I forecast that anti-Zionism and Israelophobia will give the Turks a new, fresh, innocent squeaky clean image, all those ugly hostile tales of 19th and 20th century massacres will be forgotten. The forecast is coming true. Note how a horde of Western would-be do-gooders, some of them Greeks, are happily embarking for Hamas-ruled Gaza with their boats full of “humanitarian aid,” oblivious to or in sympathy with what Hamas really represents. Note how Greeks are getting into the act too, as if the Anatolian Greeks had not been almost literally driven into the sea in 1922, as they were ethnically cleansed by Comrade Ataturk, the Islamic ghazi, before he declared himself a secularist reformer and abolished the caliphate. The Greeks of Greece seem to have forgotten 1922 and the anti-Greek pogrom of 1955 in Constantinople that reduced the Greeks in the city where they had once been a majority to a small minority. But the Cypriot Greeks may have the memory of ethnic cleansing on that island [1974] more freshly in mind.

There is no doubt that Israel's greatest success in this affair was the way the Cypriot authorities were convinced not to let the ships gather in its territorial waters and use its ports as the sail's meeting and fueling point.
The island's leaders realized that the sail was in fact a move orchestrated by the hostile Turkish government and decided not to play along with it. [Ron Ben-Yishai, ynet 5-30-10]

Let us recall that bourgeois governments and Leftist movements alike demonstrate historical forgetfulness when it is convenient.

In 2010, anti-Zionism and Israelophobia are the last refuge of the scoundrels.

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Excerpts from two separate pieces by Fiamma Nirenstein on the Turkish-sponsored Gaza Freedom Flotilla:

Dear Friends,

Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister . . . [is sending] a number of boats, especially from Turkey, that want to reach Gaza in order “to bring humanitarian aid.” This is a totally anti-Israel enterprise: Gaza is in difficulties because of its cruel, authoritarian, hyper-religious government by Hamas. These international humanitarian movements are political movements for delegitimizing that intend, in fact, to help the Hamas terrorist organization. We too ask Erdogan to not involve Israel, assaulting it in words and deeds at every moment, in his management of power in Turkey which is becoming ever more Islamist. . . . [20 May 2010]

http://www.fiammanirenstein.com/articoli.asp?Categoria=6&Id=2376

The Turkish Fleet on the way to Gaza Helps Iran

Il Giornale, 22 May 2010

Israel now has a perfect right to cry out, “Mommy, the Turks are coming.” Ten Turkish vessels want to reach the coast of Gaza next week in order to bring what they call humanitarian aid. In reality, they are bringing a gesture of solidarity and legitimization to Hamas. The latter dominates Gaza by fundamentalist violence against its own people and Israel, that it has sworn to destroy. . . . Turkey is the only country that is helping organize the boats [going to Gaza]. The flotilla is being prepared by the IHH (Turkish humanitarian aid Foundation). Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met the organizers and publicly announced his “support for breaking the siege of Gaza.” Members of the Turkish government are traveling on those boats, as well as artists and journalists, all those who serve to make the expedition untouchable.

Israel is in a seriously awkward position: stopping such a large group of ships would require a true naval battle, and the Jewish State has no desire for that. In Israeli ports, they are reluctantly getting ready, without knowing very well what can be done beyond cruising through the country’s territorial waters. . . . Israel cannot allow them [Hamas] freedom of movement, nor can Egypt either.

Naor Gilad, deputy director of the [Israeli] foreign ministry’s Europe division, tried to tell this to the Turkish ambassador, asking him to stop the violations of Israeli law and to ask Turkish citizens not to sail. But matters are going ahead. No humanitarian aid was ever offered by the same organizations leaving today for Gaza to the population of Sderot and Ashqelon, bombarded for years by Qassam missiles coming from the Strip. Nor did they ever concern themselves with the Fatah men driven from Gaza with their families or killed there. Even less with the Christians persecuted and killed there. But Turkey has now taken an Islamist turn which makes it a natural partner for Hamas, and this is disturbing at the moment when the world must trust it after, together with Brazil, it contracted an agreement with Iran to transfer to Turkey almost one and a half tons of uranium enriched at 3.5%, ignoring the decisions of the IAEA [international atomic energy agency] and the Security Council.

But why has Turkey, from the day when Erdogan attacked Shimon Peres at Davos, set in motion an escalation of anti-Israeli actions up to the point of supporting Hamas in many circumstances? The answer is in the frequent visits to Teheran and Damascus . . . [by] Erdogan . . . .

. . . . [pro-Hamas politicians of Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Russia,] In their recent meeting[s] they repeated in unison that Hamas is an elected force without which nothing can go anywhere. And here the flotilla is sailing from Turkey: Israel chews its fingernails, Erdogan and Hamas are happy, and the sky is still blue.

http://www.fiammanirenstein.com/articoli.asp?Categoria=3&Id=2377

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IHH = The Foundation for Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief [the initials IHH are based on the Turkish name]

When Turkish police raided its premises in Istanbul more than 10 years ago, weapons were found as well as links tying the group to al-Qa`ida. See links:

To Danish research group report -

http://www.diis.dk/graphics/Publications/WP2006/DIIS%20WP%202006-7.web.pdf

To a report by The Investigative Project -

http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/312.pdf#page=17

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AP shows that "freedom flotilla" spokesperson is Huwaida Arraf, a leader of the pro-terrorist ISM [here]. The ISM is a CommuNazi group that specializes in dehumanizing Jews.

CAMERA: Supplies are going into Gaza all the time [here]

UPDATING 5-31-2010 Danny Ayalon, deputy foreign minister, protested the clearly Judeophobic chant chanted by some of the passengers on the flotilla. See the JPost article [here]. Many of the passengers are wearing Islamic garb. Here is the chant, a traditional Arab chant against Jews:

Khaybar Khaybar ya Yahud

Jaysh Muhammad sa ya`ud

Khaybar Khaybar O Jews,

The army of Muhammad will return.

This is an Islamic triumphalist chant against Jews. It refers to the conquest, occupation and destruction of the Jewish-populated Khaybar oasis in northern Arabia that was conquered by Muhammad's forces. The Jews fought but were defeated. Their property was usurped, and they were either killed or enslaved. Their wives were seized by the Arabs/Muslims.
The article in the Jerusalem Post incorrectly confuses the name "Khaybar" in this not so charming little ditty with the name "Haifa."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -UPDATING 6-2-2010- - - - - - - - - - -

Lee Smith explains Israel's strategic dilemma in regard to blockading Hamas-misruled Gaza:

"UNIFIL is supposed to be preventing arms shipments to Hezbollah [in Lebanon according to Security Council resolution 1701], but is not doing the job or else the Israeli navy would not have had to apprehend the Francop [a weapons-carrying ship from Iran to Hizbullah]. There is no UNIFIL for Gaza and hence wiithout a blockade the Iranians and Syrians could send basically anything they wanted, including many weapons they can't get through the tunnels, not least of all because the Egyptians don't want, for instance, scuds on their border either. Moreover, the blockade is what will ensure that Iran cannot harden its nuclear program by sending nuclear material to Gaza - as it may very well to Lebanon."

Lee Smith is author of the new book about the Middle East, The Strong Horse.

UPDATING 6-3-2010 Robert Pollock describes Erdogan's sick way of thinking in the WSJ [here] A Catholic bishop was stabbed to death in southeastern Turkey by his own driver [here]. This follows a series of murders of Christian religious personalities since Erdogan came to power in 2002. Erdogan has highly exacerbated the climate of hate already existing in Turkey for non-Muslims.

The Armenian Genocide: The German Role in It as Seen by Eitan Belkind & Aaron Aaronsohn

Writing from neutral Denmark in 1916 during WW I to Judge Julian Mack, a prominent American Zionist, Aaron Aaronsohn stated:

Did I not in private talks and public lectures [in the USA before WW I], warn against the German danger?
[Shmuel Katz, The Aaronsohn Saga (Jerusalem: Gefen 2007), p 73]

Aaronsohn understood that Germany [and Austria-Hungary] were making possible the Armenian massacres, which he feared would eventually be extended to the Jews. Indeed, recent research has shown how deeply involved German forces were in the massacres. But Aaronsohn was aware of German collaboration in the Ottoman Empire's genocide of the Armenians as it was happening. He submitted a report to the British entitled Pro-Armenia. Here he referred to Sarah Aaronsohn's eyewitness experiences of the massacres. His report or memorandum was distributed by the British among their officials who were involved in the war with the Ottoman Empire and with the Middle East. But curiously, the British left out two passages:
1-- Aaronsohn's criticism of the Germans for not pressuring the Ottoman government to stop the massacres; and
2-- his forecasts that the Ottoman state might do the same to other Christian subject peoples in the empire as well as to the Jews. [S Katz, p119]
Ronald Florence's account, Lawrence and Aaronsohn (New York: Viking 2007), agrees with Katz's account of Aaronsohn's attitude towards the Germans and German collaboration with the Ottoman state in the genocide. Katz is well known for his excellent, extensive biography of Ze'ev Jabotinsky. However, before writing about stirring events Katz was active in the Jewish nationalist Zionist movement led by Jabotinsky up until 1940, when he died, and later by Menahem Begin. Katz was part of the high command of the Irgun Tsva'i Le'umi, National Military Organization, an underground body that fought the British and drove them out of Israel, at least out of that part of the Land of Israel that became the State of Israel in the 1947-1949 War of Independence.

It is not clear why those two passages were omitted from the distributed version of Aaronsohn's report by British officials. But Aaronsohn clearly feared the extension of the Armenian genocide to the Jews. The expulsion of 9,000 Jews from homes in Jaffa and Tel Aviv in 1917 only confirmed this fear. Both Katz' and Florence's books make clear that the Jews in the Land of Israel at the time lived in fear. It was a fear shared by Eitan Belkind, whose eyewitness account of the genocide we have been quoting in instalments on Emet m'Tsiyon. This fear was the prime reason for formation of the NILI underground.

We now go on to the last instalment of passages from Belkind's book about the Armenian genocide. This passage shows how Belkind too saw the German attitude towards the genocide.

I sent a letter to my niece, Tsilya,who was a student in Berlin. . . . my letter [was] sent by German military mail, where I described everything that had happened to the Armenians.I got my letter back with a request never to write to her about such things again, to beware of the German military mail, because my letters might get opened by censors. , , ,
In Deir ez-Zor, I stayed with the pharmacist Arto, who now had five Armenian wives whom he married so as to save their lives. He told me that about 30 Armenian women were working in the military hospital. This had been Doctor Bekhor's way of rescuing them.
I must mention that all the time I was in Aram-Naharayim, I was unable to eat the splendid fish from the Euphrates, which I liked very much, remembering that those fish had fed off the corpses of murdered Armenians, including young children. . . .
While still in Damascus. . . I gave my records about the Armenian massacres to Yosef Lishansky.
When we returned [to the agricultural] testing station [in Atlit, Israel, near Zikhron Ya`aqov], I stayed with Sarah [Aaronsohn, sister of Aaron]. She told me that my records of Armenian massacres, which she had sent to Egypt [to the British], had made a great impression.
In my trips in the south of Syria and Iraq I saw with my own eyes the extermination of the Armenian nation. I watched the atrocious murders and saw children's heads cut off and watched the burning of innocent people whose only wrongdoing was to be Armenian. . . .
On the advice of the Germans, the Turks perpetrated brutal massacres of the Armenians by the hands of the Circassian Muslim fanatics.
Eitan Belkind's book, That's How It Was, the Story of a Member of Nili (Tel Aviv: 1977),
[ כך זה היה : סיפורו של איש ניל''י [תל אביב: משרד הבטחון 1977]

Aaronsohn seems to have been prophetic about the coming Holocaust in his remarks about the Germans.
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Coming: More on Obama the war candidate -- his mask drops with a loud bang, More on the anti-Jewish racism of the "Peace Process," Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, the Land of Israel, archeological updates, peace follies, propaganda, etc.

Jews Caught Up in the Armenian Genocide -- Part 3

The roads were strewn with the corpses of murdered Armenians.

That's how the previous instalment of Eitan Belkind's account of the Armenian genocide [part 2] ended. Belkind traveled north on the road to Urfa and "witnessed several mass exterminations of the Armenians." [Urfa was the Biblical Ur of the Chaldees, now in southeastern Turkey. Nowadays, the Biblical Ur Kasdim, אור כסדים Ur of the Chaldees, is usually mistakenly identified with the Ur in southern Mesopotamia dug up by Woolley. In fact, several ancient cities in the region have Ur as part of their name]. In another passage, Belkind describes Jews caught up in the Armenian genocide.

. . . I went to the sheikh's tent and was very happy to find my friend Jacob Baker. . . I told him [speaking French for security] about these things that happened to me in Urfa and about Armenian pogroms that I saw on my way and he told me about his work in Mosul. We sat talking late in the night, when suddenly the child whom we mistook for a Bedouin told us in French that he and his mother are Armenians and the chief of the tribe had saved them from extermination. His mother became the sheikh's wife and he helped welcoming guests. The child went on and told us that the chief of the other tribe had a Jewish wife taken from a family of the city of Caesarea in Anatolia. Her husband had been killed and the sheikh took her.

We were shocked upon hearing this and asked the boy whether we could meet the woman. In spite of the danger, the child got into the tent where the Jewess was. Everyone in the tent was asleep and the woman managed to get out unnoticed. She was 25 and very beautiful. She told us her surname was Biram, a typical Turkish name. Her family lived in the Armenian quarter of the city and when they were taking the Armenians, they also took this woman with her husband and child despite all their protests. Her husband and child had been killed but she was rescued by the Arab sheikh who took her as his wife. We promised to take care of her.
[grammatical and spelling corrections made by Eliyahu to the translated quotes from Eitan Belkind's book, That's How It Was, the Story of a Member of Nili (Tel Aviv: 1977; in Hebrew; translation by the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute).
כך זה היה : סיפורו של
איש ניל''י [תל אביב:
משרד הבטחון [

As we have commented before, what Belkind is describing is genocide. Here he shows that Jews too were caught up in the Armenian genocide. It was apparently convenient to take this family since they lived in the Armenian quarter of their town. Their protests did them no good. The Jewish and Armenian women were grateful to be saved even at the cost of becoming an Arab sheik's subservient wives. The next instalment will indicate how Imperial Germany felt about the mass murder of their fellow Christians. Aaron Aaronsohn also mentions the German attitude and participation in the genocide, as quoted by Ronald Florence in Lawrence and Aaronsohn.
Can we have less silly chatter from academics that there was no Armenian genocide??
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Coming: more on Jews caught up in the Armenian genocide, peace follies, propaganda, Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, etc., How Israel should have handled the hostage-takings, etc.

Activist Zionists & the Armenian Genocide in WW I -- Part One

During the recent controversy over a congressional resolution acknowledging the Armenian genocide during WW I, certain Jews spoke against the resolution and/or against agreeing that there was such a genocide. Moreover, there are certain Jewish historians and Middle East specialists, in the US, Israel, and France, who argue that there was not an Armenian genocide. Some of these writers are rabid Islamophiles for whom Muslims, whether Turks or Arabs, can do no wrong. These cannot be considered friends of the Jewish people. Others may think that they are helping Israel or the Jews keep good relations with Turkey by rejecting the real history.

Be that as it may, while the genocide was going on Jews in Israel and elsewhere were witnesses to the events and sent this information to the world outside of the Ottoman Empire. These included Aaron and Sarah Aaronsohn, and Eitan Belkind. The genocidal events so terrified them and their friends that they set up the NILI group to spy on the Ottoman war effort and send info to the British. This reversed the policy of most Zionists in Israel who were content to be loyal Ottoman subjects, participating in its institutions, before WW I. Aaron Aaronsohn was so desirous to help the Armenians, that he sought out Armenian political leaders in France after the war during the Versailles Conference to give them advice. He advised them, correctly I believe, to declare independence at that time, even though they were in a weak military position.

Aaronsohn and Belkind left testimonies that have been published of the massacres and persecutions. First Eitan Belkind's accounts from a book in Hebrew, apparently translated under the auspices of the Armenian Museum in Jerusalem. Here are translated quotes from Eitan Belkind's book, That's How It Was, the Story of a Member of Nili (Tel Aviv: 1977),
[ כך זה היה : סיפורו של איש ניל''י [תל אביב: משרד הבטחון 1977

Belkind belonged to a locust eradication team appointed by the Ottoman government, which gave him the opportunity to travel about fighting the locusts.

. . . On the second day of our journey, we saw a corpse floating in the Euphrates. We were surprised but the soldier accompanying us reassured us that this was a body of an Armenian. We found out that there was a camp nearby, on the other side of the Euphrates where Armenians deported from Armenia were being held. Our friend Shirinyan turned white and asked to cross the Euphrates and go to the Armenian camp.

We found several hundred people in the camp living in small handmade huts. The territory was clean; the huts were built on one line . We passed by huts and looked inside. We say women and children. In one of the huts, Shirinyan found one of his aunts, who told him that all men had been killed; only women and children remained. Shirinyan had no idea what had happened to his nation. Shocked he began to cry on his aunt's shoulder. . . We went on the further we traveled the more more floating corpses of Armenians we saw. . .

Deir ez-Zor [Dayr az-Zur] was a military center, so it had a military hospital lead by a Jewish doctor Bekhor and Jewish pharmacist Arto. There we found out that Ahmad Bey was the commander of Circassian troops mobilized for exterminating. . . The doctor and the pharmacist invited us to their roomy house, told us that all Armenian men had been killed on the way from their homes in Anatolia, and the beautiful women and girls were left to the mercy of Bedouin. . .

At night before departure, we heard terrible, heart-rending female screams. The Armenian camp was one kilometer from our house. The screaming continued all night. We asked what was happening; they told us that children were being taken from their mothers to continue their education. However, in the morning when we set off and crossed the bridge across the Euphrates, I was shocked to see the river red with blood and beheaded corpses of children floating on the water. The scene was horrible, as there was nothing we could do.
[to be continued]

Now, is there anyone who can honestly claim that Belkind is not describing genocide? Note the massacre of children. Yet there are many throughout the world, not only Turks or other Muslims, who seek to deny the true character of these massacres. To be sure, some of the beautiful women were taken for sexual purposes. Nonetheless, that does not change the genocidal character of these events.

We should be proud to state that Zionist activists left accounts of the genocide and sought to help the Armenians at that time.

By the way, among those opposing the congressional resolution acknowledging the reality of the Armenian genocide was the US State Department, as well as its head, Condoleezza Rice, no friends of the Jews. The State Dept's hostility to the right of Jews to live in parts of the Land of Israel under Jordanian or Egyptian control before the Six Day War of 1967 is anti-Jewish racist in character and unsupported by international law, except as international law is deliberately misrepresented by the USA, UK, other governments, and the UN.
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see earlier post on related matters.
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Coming: Zionist Activists and the Armenian Genocide, Part Two; Jews in Israel, Jerusalem, Hebron; peace follies; the anti-Jewish racism of the "peace process" and the drive against Jewish settlements; propaganda; part of the British press descends into the Nazi cesspool [Johan Hari, et al.], etc.

Professor Biger's Turkophilic Fantasies -- More Distortion of History

UPDATING 7-22-2008, see bottom

Gid`on Biger is indeed an expert on the internal adminstrative boundaries in the Land of Israel during the Ottoman period [see previous post]. However, he has an unfortunate proclivity to apologize for Muslim misdeeds. Hence, he has been taken to the bosom of a Turkish apologist website, "Tall Armenian Tale." Remarks that he made several years ago at an Israeli-Turkish conference of historians at Tel Aviv University were recorded and summarized by Abraham Rabinovich, for many years a correspondent of the Jerusalem Post.

Prof. Gideon Biger of Tel Aviv University said that Israeli and other Jewish historians have been distinctly ungenerous to the Turks in making them out to be "the big bad wolf."

Acts of villainy attributed to the Turks during the World War I in fact constituted moderate, even civilized, behavior in the context of war, he said.

WHEN fighting broke out in 1914, there were 85,000 Jews in Palestine, most of whom had arrived in the decades after 1882. Most did not adopt Ottoman citizenship, preferring to retain citizenship of their home country, with the protection that offered.

With the outbreak of war, some of these home countries — like Britain, France and Russia — became enemies of Turkey. Their nationals were given a choice of becoming Ottoman subjects or leaving the Ottoman Empire. If they became subjects, they would be liable to draft but, as a gesture, the Turks said they would defer draft for a year.

About 15,000 foreign Jews who refused to take Ottoman citizenship were forced to leave the country. Noting that Israeli history books refer to this as "the cruel deportation," Biger said that no country behaved more gently to citizens of enemy states during a war. [report of lecture by Abraham Rabinovich]

What Biger doesn't ask is why Jewish immigrants into the Land of Israel --which did not exist as a political or administrative-territorial entity under any name under the Mamluk and Ottoman empires-- preferred "to retain citizenship of their home country, with the protection that offered," rather than take on Ottoman subjecthood. We say subjecthood, since the Ottoman Empire had subjects not citizens. Actually, Biger errs. The bulk of the immigrants were Russian Jews. The Russian Empire provided minimal "protection" --if at all-- to their Jewish subjects in the Ottoman Empire. The Russian Empire hated Jews and the Russian Jews generally hated that empire. The tsar's empire did not "protect" or represent the Russian Jews in Jerusalem, for example, except minimally and sporadically perhaps. The Russian tsars wanted to renew Greek Orthodox domination of the Land, as embodied in the Byzantine Empire before the Arab conquest, and in the future to be embodied in Russian leadership or domination. For this purpose, Jews in the Holy Land were seen as a hindrance.

It is reasonable to conclude that most Russian Jews in the Land of Israel would have been happy to take on Ottoman subjecthood ["nationality"] if it had been better than, an improvement over, Russian subjecthood. The Russian Empire was notorious before WW1 for persecution and harassment of Jews, particularly in areas of thick Jewish settlement, Russian Poland, Belarus and the Ukraine [in outlying, non-Slavic, areas like Bukhara, Russian rule was an improvement for the Jews over previous Muslim oppression]. Actually, one of the ways in which the Russian Empire oppressed Jews early in the 19th century was to impose on them a practice copied from the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans for hundreds of years confiscated children from the Christian natives in the Balkans, Serbs, Greeks, Rumanians [then called Vlakhs or Wallachs] in a system called devshirme and forced them to convert to Islam and serve in the army or other state agencies. The comparable Russian practice was called the Cantonist policy, which was in fact milder than devshirme, since it gave the Jewish child recruits a chance to return to their families if they had not converted after 25 years of service. The policy was discontinued in the mid-19th century. Given the loathing of most Jews in the Russian Empire for their oppressors, Jews from Russia in Israel would have gladly taken up Ottoman subjecthood, if it had been an improvement. Indeed, during the Crimean War against Russia, the local Ottoman officials in Jerusalem enlisted local rabbis of both the Sefardim and the Ashkenazim [many of them from the Russian Empire] to lead prayers for an Ottoman victory in the war [actually, French and British forces defended the Ottoman Empire against Russia] at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount.

The question that we would ask Biger is: Why did so many non-Muslim natives of the empire, Christians as well as Jews (especially Christians), take on the protection and citizenship [sometimes called then "nationality"] of Western powers? Their purpose was to avoid the disabilities, the social and juridical inferiority imposed on non-Muslims under Muslim dominion.
Moreover, the historian George Clark tells us of the Ottomans:

It has often been said that their empire was an army of occupation and not a political power.
[G Clark, The Seventeenth Century ( 1st ed. 1929; 5th printing: New York: Oxford Univ Press 1961), p 172].

For the same reasons, the same could be said about the early, pre-Crusades Arab empires. For related reasons, I would accept in some ways Biger's defense of the Ottoman state. The oppression of non-Muslims as dhimmis that so many wanted to escape was carried out not only by the Ottoman state but by local Muslims. Indeed, sometimes the Ottoman state protected dhimmis from oppression and persecution by local Muslims that went beyond the commands of Muslim law [shari`ah]. When the Ottoman state was strong it could supply such protection. But when it was weak local Muslim notables and strongmen felt that they could act without restraint. This was why many or most Jewish immigrants did not seek Ottoman subjecthood, Professor Biger, especially after it became possible to take on a Western citizenship or "nationality."

The Turkish apologist website then goes on to falsify Ottoman imperial history:

Here's the deal: after centuries of prosperity, practically all the minorities of the Ottoman Empire decided to take advantage of the weakened Ottoman Empire and stabbed their nation in the back. Years later, groups from Armenians to Greeks to Assyrians would dishonorably present the reaction to their treachery as "genocide."

It's too funny --"after centuries of prosperity." So the oppressed dhimmi subject peoples "stabbed their nation in the back." Their "nation" or their state? As if they owed something to the Ottoman Empire. It should be needless to say that the above is asinine but in the 21st century no knowledge or understanding --on the part of the uneducated or the university- educated alike-- can be taken for granted. That is, historical knowledge is so meager among ordinary people and "intellectuals" and academics, even regarding events within living memory, like the Holocaust, like Palestinian Arab collaboration in the Holocaust, that one cannot take it for granted that people know anything.

Be that as it may, after blaming Jews for not taking Ottoman subjecthood, Prof Biger gets to another related issue.

THE MOST emotion-laden grievance against the Turks [on the part of Jews in Israel] involved their crackdown on the Nili spy ring, founded by a group of young Jews in Zichron Ya'acov to help the Allied war effort [during World War 1]. The ringleader, Aaron Aaronson, managed to escape but the Turks hanged other members of the ring and tortured Aaronson's sister, Sara, who finally shot herself.

The known facts are correct, said Biger, but the prevailing Jewish attitude is too narrow.

The only people punished by the Turks, he noted, were those actually involved in the ring — and only after a military trial. There was no collective punishment against the Jews of Palestine or even of Zichron Ya'acov. "No house was burned and anyone can visit today the original house of the Aaronson family. The woman who committed suicide was actually a spy who received the 'usual treatment' of spies during war."
[Abraham Rabinovich, "The Secret Crescent Cause"]

Yes, many other countries have executed spies. The United States executed --during peacetime-- the Rosenbergs, husband and wife, who indeed spied for the Soviet Union (the wife's activity was marginal). The press of the time charged the Rosenbergs with giving the secrets of the atomic bomb to the Communist USSR during WW2, while the USA and USSR were allies. In fact, Harry Hopkins, a White House advisor of FDR, has been accused of seeing to the transport to the USSR of cartons of documents produced by the Manhattan Project to produce the atomic bomb, in addition to having heavy water shipped there. Furthermore, certain atomic scientists who actually worked on the bomb and knew much more about it than Rosenberg did, and gave information about it to the USSR, were sentenced to only light terms [i.e., Klaus Fuchs]. So even the USA executed spies. By executing members of the NILI, the Ottoman government was doing nothing exceptional, as Biger says. However, he does not ask WHY the NILI group spied for the British on the Ottoman Empire.

In fact, they were well aware of the Armenian genocide. Sarah Aaronsohn had seen how the Armenians were being herded toward their death, suffering abuse, as she watched from her train window on a trip from Kusta [the Hebrew name; it was then called Constantinople in the West, now Istanbul] in 1915. Jews in the NILI group spied for Britain out of fear that the Armenian massacre might be applied to Jews in Israel. The Jews had no special loyalty to Russia, the UK's ally in the war. The NILI group were well aware of the Armenian genocide. Zionists and other Jews outside of Israel were well aware of the Armenian genocide and worried that it might be extended to the Jews. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Max Nordau and Prof. A.S. Yahuda wrote during WW I about the concern for the survival of the Jews in Israel during the war. The Turkish/Ottoman apologist quoted above supplies the name of another Zionist writer on this matter, Alfred Boehm, through a quote from an Ottoman Jewish subject of that time. I am not familiar with Boehm's writings.

As Mustafa Kemal Ataturk pointed out, however, there was one exception among the different millets [subject ethno-religious groups with autonomy as dhimmi peoples]: Ottoman Jews remained loyal. In an emotional encounter, one summed it up:

"So now the unethical genocide industry has gotten wind of this episode. Creepy Zionists like Alfred Boehm have written books making ugly statements such as, If Palestine had not been freed by the English at the end of 1917, the Jewish Yishuv (settlement) [Yishuv= the Jewish population in Israel] would have been exterminated by Djemal."

Jamal Pasha was part of the triumvirate ruling the Ottoman Empire during WW I. He and his friends took power in 1908 through the Young Turk movement, formally known as the Committee for Unity and Progress. Nasser's Free Officers were much like the Young Turks when they took over in 1952. They too were seen as "progressives," "reformers," "uncorruptible," etc.

Getting back to the threat to the Yishuv in Israel. Jabotinsky discussed the threat in an article in Yiddish entitled "Activism," which he published in 1915 in Copenhagen in neutral Denmark [in Di Tribune, 10 October 1915]. This article was influential at the time, although it is barely remembered today. It may never have been published in English, although I am personally aware that the bulk of it was translated into English. Jabotinsky in 1915 was well aware of the Armenian genocide but believed that Jewish influence in the capitals of the Ottomans' major allies, Berlin, Vienna and Budapest, would prevent the Committee of Unity and Progress, the Ittihad government, from bringing upon the Jews in Israel the same fate as the Armenians were suffering.

Prof Yahuda was concerned about the fate of the Jews in Israel from the very beginning of WW I. He wrote [in German] to Oscar S Straus, a prominent Jewish leader in New York. Straus answered him [in English] on 23 October 1914:

I am in receipt of your letter of October 5th in regard to the condition of the Jews in Palestine, and a foreshadowing of what may happen to them should war break out between Turkey and Russia.

Straus wrote on 30 October 1914 to Nordau, who had also written to him of his concerns:

I also communicated with the German Ambassador, informing him that should Turkey enter the war on the German side and a massacre occur in Palestine, the civilized world would hold Germany, the dominant power, responsible.

A.S. Yahuda's background is of interest. He was born in Israel in 1877 (d. 1951) of a family that had come from Iraq. He was educated in Israel and later went to study in Europe, eventually becoming a professor at the Higher School of Jewish Studies in Berlin [Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums], and later at the University of Madrid. His book on parallels between the Biblical accounts of Egypt and archeological findings there --The Accuracy of the Bible-- seems to have been a major influence on Immanuel Velikovsky and his citation of Egyptian documents confirming the story of the Exodus [in Worlds in Collision, Ages in Chaos, etc]. Yahuda also purchased personal papers of Isaac Newton, the famous physicist. These papers demonstrate Newton's interest in the Bible and the Jewish role in history, papers that the British universities were not interested in purchasing from Newton's family. These papers are now in Jerusalem at the Hebrew National and University Library.
The letters quoted above are in Yahuda's article in Hebrew, "The Effort to Defend the Jewish Population in Israel during the First World War," in A.R. Mal'akhy [ed.], Yisrael (New York: Shulsinger Bros, 1949-50), pp 73-84.

Prof. Biger is technically correct in most of what he said, but he avoids the conditions of those times that are necessary for understanding the Ottoman state's actions as well as those of the Jews in the NILI.
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UPDATING 7-22-2008 Eyewitness Testimony by a NILI Member on the Armenian Massaces
Here & here & here
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UPDATING 3-28-2017 How Professor A S Yahuda saved Isaac Newton's papers and unpublished writings on the Bible, on ancient chronology, prophecy and so forth [here]
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Coming: More on Hebron, more on peace follies, more on Jews in Jerusalem, etc.