Ambassador Michael Oren: Obama Wants Israel to Placate Erdogan

This is an amazing revelation. It was long obvious that Obama wanted Israel to placate Erdogan. After all, it was when Obama was here in Israel (early 2013) that Netanyahu offered Erdogan his best non-apology for resisting the pro-Hamas efforts of Turkish jihadis and other jihadis on the Mavi Marmara. Nine of hese jihadis were killed when they were on their way to Gaza, declaring that their purpose was to break Israel's justified blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza. Hamas, let us not forget, openly advocates genocide of the Jews in its charter (Article 7), as well as promoting the forged and plagiarized Protocols of the Elders of Zion in that charter. Obama hardly disguised his sympathies for Hamas and for Erdogan's Turkey, now becoming more and more Islamist because of him. Obama also directly intervened with Israel on behalf of the prisoners taken on the Mavi Marmara and other boats taking part in the pro-Hamas convoy that was falsely named "the Free Gaza Flotilla."

We knew all that. But now, Michael Oren, formerly Israel's ambassador to the USA, reveals that Israel's cooperation in a triangular alliance with the USA and Turkey was a paramount US interest, in Obama's eyes. However, Erdogan is a Judeophobic Islamist provocateur. Israel should not apologize to Turkey or Erdogan in any way for resisting Erdogan's provocation by sponsoring the Mavi Marmara, which enjoyed Obama's support too. This support for Erdogan is another sign of Obama's basic Judeophobia.

Here are Oren's words [JPost, 12-19-2015]:
“The reason that apology took place was that in every single meeting we had with the president of the United States, Obama, he made it clear that his first priority was the reconciliation between Israel and Turkey,” Oren said. “He viewed the Israeli-Turkish-American triangle as a-close-to-paramount American strategic interest.” [see JPost here]. 

Obama has had a pro-Islamist policy from the beginning. And we have pointed this out before. He is seven-fold more dangerous because he is the president of the USA, the most powerful country in the world. This policy can be seen in his and his flunkeys indulgence of Islamists in Turkey (erdogan), Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood, called the Ikhwan) and various and sundry Arab terrorist factions such as Fatah and Hamas (the Palestinian Arab branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood). Obama knowingly tolerated these Islamists, including the jihadists on the Mavi Marmara.

The recent agreement to placate Erdogan is undesirable and unjustified but is understandable given Obama's pressure for it. Avigdor Lieberman's criticism of the accord is basically sound. Obama shows his own hypocrisy, his own false "humanitarianism" and faux "righteousness"  by overlooking Turkey's own embargo of Armenia starting about 1992 which was put in place by the previous government of Turkey but which  Erdogan has continued, while hypocritically denouncing Israel's justified blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza.

The Moral Depravity of the "Free Gaza" Flotilla movement

Somehow the aura of "humanitarianism" has attached itself to the so-called "free gaza flotilla." However, let's examine what their actions are designed to accomplish and who their allies and beneficiaries are in this effort.
The "free gaza" movement openly demands removal of the blockade on Gaza. That would mean that the Hamas Islamofanatic/Islamofascist govt of Gaza would be free --free to bring in any sort of heavy weapon that can be loaded on a ship. And shipping by sea is a more convenient way of transporting heavy weapons than by land. So they want Hamas in Gaza to have heavy weapons. In the past, Hamas has used the lighter, simpler weapons available to it to attack the Jewish civilian population in southern Israel, not only in Sderot but in Ashqelon, Ashdod, Beersheva and other towns and villages. The children of Sderot have been living under rocket attack, first by the rather simple Qassam rockets "home made" in Gaza which were not very accurate. The children often developed serious traumas from rocket attacks, even if they were not physically touched by the rockets or the shrapnel or pieces of broken houses. Now the Hamas has longer-range heavier rockets, like the Grad or Katyusha, which are somewhat more accurate and bear more explosives. In the last Israel-Hamas war 12-2008/1-2009 the Hamas shot rockets from Gaza that hit schools and kindergartens in Beersheba, a city previously out of range. The "free gaza" flotillas want to improve Hamas' chances in the next war. So much for the purposes of the flotilla.

Now about the beneficiaries and allies of the "free gaza" movement. Christopher Hitchens has drawn up a powerful indictment of flotillamania, also explaining what Hamas stands for. By the way, I don't always agree with Hitchens:

Boat People

Some questions for the "activists" aboard the Gaza flotilla.

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, July 4, 2011, at 11:03 AM ET

Palestinian boats and the Freedom Flotilla in the port of Gaza City

The tale of the Gaza "flotilla" seems set to become a regular summer feature, bobbing along happily on the inside pages with an occasional update. A nice sidebar for reporters covering the Greek debt crisis: a built-in mild tension of "will they, won't they?"; a cast of not very colorful characters but one we almost begin to feel we know personally. Such cheery and breezy slogans—"the audacity of hope" and "free Gaza"—and such an easy storyline that it practically writes itself. Since Israel adopts a posture that almost guarantees a reaction of some sort in the not-too-distant future, and since there was such a frisson of violence the last time the little fleet set sail, there's no reason for it not to become a regular seasonal favorite.

However, given the luxury of time, might it not be possible to ask the "activists" onboard just a few questions? (Activist is a good neutral word, isn't it, with largely positive connotations? Even flotilla, with its reassuring diminuendo, has a "small is beautiful" sound to it.) Most of the speculation so far has been to do with methods and intentions, allowing for many avowals about peaceful tactics and so forth, but this is soft-centered coverage. I would like to know a little more about the political ambitions and implications of the enterprise.

It seems safe and fair to say that the flotilla and its leadership work in reasonably close harmony with Hamas, which constitutes the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. The political leadership of this organization is headquartered mainly in Gaza itself. But its military coordination is run out of Damascus, where the regime of Bashar Assad is currently at war with increasingly large sections of the long-oppressed Syrian population. Refugee camps, some with urgent humanitarian requirements, are making their appearance on the border between Syria and Turkey (the government of the latter being somewhat sympathetic to the purposes of the flotilla). In these circumstances, isn't it legitimate to strike up a conversation with the "activists" and ask them where they come out on the uprising against hereditary Baathism in Syria?

Then again, Syria's other proxy party in the region is Hezbollah, which operates a state-within-a-state and maintains a private army on the territory of Lebanon. Senior associates of this group have recently been named in a U.N. indictment concerning the broad-daylight murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. Hezbollah's leadership and propaganda organs, while refusing all cooperation with the United Nations, are currently expressing undying solidarity with the Assad regime, which relies additionally on heavy support from the dictatorship in Iran. Again, the Hamas leadership seems compromised at best by its association with this local Tehran-Damascus axis. Surely there must be some spokesman for the blockade-runners who is able to give us his thinking on this question, too? At a time of widespread democratic and pluralist revolution in the region, Hamas imposes its own version of theocracy on Gaza and seems otherwise aligned with the forces that stand athwart the hope of continued and deeper change. Who wants to volunteer time to make this outfit look more presentable? Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-air prison (and when I last saw it under Israeli occupation, it certainly did deserve this metaphor). The problem is that, given its ideology and its allies, Hamas qualifies rather too well in the capacity of guard.

Only a few weeks ago, the Hamas regime in Gaza became the only governing authority in the world—by my count—to express outrage and sympathy at the death of Osama Bin Laden. As the wavelets lap in the Greek harbors, and the sunshine beats down, doesn't any journalist want to know whether the "activists" have discussed this element in their partners' world outlook? Does Alice Walker seriously have no comment?

Hamas is listed by various governments and international organizations as a terrorist group. I don't mind conceding that that particular word has been used in arbitrary ways in the past. But what concerns me much more is the official programmatic adoption, by Hamas, of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This disgusting fabrication is a key foundational document of 20^th-century racism and totalitarianism, indelibly linked to the Hitler regime in theory and practice. It seems extraordinary to me that any "activist" claiming allegiance to human rights could cooperate at any level with the propagation of such evil material. But I have never seen any of them invited to comment on this matter, either.

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians. The same group also manages to maintain warm relations with, or at the very least to make cordial remarks about, both Hezbollah and al-Qaida. Meanwhile, a document that was once accurately described as a "warrant for genocide" forms part of the declared political platform of the aforesaid group. There is something about this that fails to pass a smell test. I wonder whether any reporter on the scene will now take me up on this.

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To conclude, the whole notion of a "palestinian people" was invented for the sake of a psychological warfare/cognitive warfare struggle against Israel. The flotillas and fly-ins serve that purpose with professional expertise.
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Hamas organizer behind flotilla [here]
Israel officials explain the threat represented by the flotilla [here]
NGO Monitor: Flotilla won't bring peace [here]
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on Hamas organizers behind the fooltilla [here]

Big Lie of the "Free Gaza" Flotilla -- Gaza Gets Tons of Food Everyday

UPDATING 6-30-2011 see bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools



Here is a video showing Gaza's well-stocked open air food markets and shopping centers. Cellular phones and autos abound. The bourgeois [petit-bourgeois if you like] lifestyle is alive and well in the Gaza Strip.



The yearly billions in foreign aid that the Strip receives do a lot to promote consumption. The Gaza standard of living is on average notably higher than in the typical Egyptian village. Can you find poor people in Gaza? Probably. You can also find them in London, Paris and New York. Why not compare the number of homeless people sleeping on the streets in New York or Paris with the proportionately comparative number in Gaza. Probably fewer homeless in Gaza. On the other hand, I stayed on the Boulevard Richard LeNoir in Paris a few years ago. In the middle of this broad boulevard is a wide pedestrian island-cum-public park. Once a week or more often, a soup kitchen was set up in this park for the homeless and other poor folk. Those succoring the poor were giving out a kind of thick, congealed green substance that may have wanted to be pea soup. In any case, it must have been edible because a hundred or more people lined up for the food every time it was given out. As far as I know, Gaza does not have that.
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Here is a video [here]
Who is behind the current "Free Gaza Flotilla"? They're not a darling little group of sweet, innocuous pacifists. The main organizers are Muslim Brotherhood personalities, assisted by the US-based pro-Arab group, the ISM [international solidarity movement] [see here].
Daled Amos on the real purpose of the "free gaza flotilla." Quotes Adam Shapiro of the ISM (for solidarity with Nazis) [here]
Elder of Ziyyon on why the Dutch journalists, who wanted to embed with the "freedom flotilla", have quit (Elder presents a google translation of a Dutch press article) [here]. One of the journalists who quit was of Muslim origin herself [Hasna Maroudi]. Fund-raiser for the Dutch "freedom flotilla" boat was the Dutch rep of Hamas --Amin Abou Rashed-- who cooperated with other Muslim Brotherhood figures, and is seen in a photo with the notorious Muslim hate preacher on al-Jazeera, Yusuf al-Qaradhawi [their photo together in the original article here]. Al-Qaradhawi came back to Egypt for the first time in years after Mubarak's overthrow, thanks in part to Obama's support for bringing the anti-democratic Muslim Brotherhood into a future "democratic govt" of Egypt. Bear in mind that the Muslim Brotherhood rejects democracy and human rights in principle.
CAMERA refers to the Dutch journalist story and links to a professional translation of an article in Trouw [here][thanx to NGO Monitor]
NGO Monitor argues that the "freedom flotilla" will not bring peace. Of course not, guys, it's not supposed to bring to bring peace. Peace is not its purpose [here].
NGO Monitor has a translation from the Dutch De Telegraaf online news site [here] & from Trouw [here also linked to indirectly above through CAMERA]
Can you ever satisfy the Arabs and their friends? A Euro-funded, pro-Arab [pro-Fatah & Hamas] group called Gisha complains that Gaza's problem is not the inability to bring in food but the ability to export food and other goods [here].
Here is a video [here] showing a line of big trucks bringing supplies into Gaza through the crossing from Israel at Kerem Shalom near the Egyptian border with Israel and Gaza. The initials A.R.E. on some large boxes of refrigerators stand for Arab Republic of Egypt. That is, Gaza is importing refrigerators from Egypt. Remember that on the whole, Gazans have a higher standard of living than the average Egyptian.
6-4-2011 Belgian flotilla contingent going home due to disappointment with flotilla leadership & other reasons [here in Flemish]. This after Dutch journalists left because of humiliating treatment at hands of flotilla, as well as finding out that a Hamas operative was the flotilla's chief organizer. Dutch-Moroccan pro-flotilla militant changes her position and leaves Athens for Holland [here in Dutch]
New city to be built in Gaza [here, in Arabic, use google translator]
Melanie Philips quotes a flotilla leader [of ISM] who admits that the purpose of the flotilla is not humanitarian but political, aiming to open up Gaza port to any cargo that Hamas wants to bring in. That implies that the ISM and the "gaza freedom flotilla" are meant to enable Hamas bring in heavy weapons without any interference. Iran has already sent ships to bring heavy weapons to Gaza.[here too].
Tom Gross shows us pix of fun on the beach at Gaza [here]. The Flotilloonies might enjoy dipping their feet into the sea on the Gaza beach.
Alice Walker promises to deliver LOVE to Gaza, and explains that she is going there because she loves children & trees, etc. [video here] [NOTE: She does not love Israeli children in southern Israel who live at the mercy of Hamas rockets].