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

Mahmoud Abbas Tells European Union that He Wants All of Israel, including west of the Green Line

“We are keen on continuing the way of negotiations,” Abbas said. “We are determined to reunite our people and our land.” [here & here emph. added]

The above is what Mahmoud Abbas told Federica Mogherini, High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of the European Union and the foreign ministers of the EU states on Monday this week [1-22-2018 & here] in Brussels.

This phrase "to reunite our people and our land" seems to be a euphemism for the Arabs' taking all of the State of Israel including the land that Israel held between 1948 and 1967. In other words, it is a masked refusal to accept Israel in any borders. Now, Abbas and the PLO as a whole and Hamas and the other Palestinian Arab terrorist and political groups believe that all of the Land of Israel belongs to them as well as to Islam. To confirm that consider the word "reunite." If something has to be reunited, that means it was once united but is no longer. They know that they already control part of "palestine" [= the Land of Israel roughly speaking]. And what they don't control must be reunited with what they already control, Abbas implies.
And reuniting "our people" means bringing the dispersed Palestinian Arabs living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere with the status of refugees, back together in one state comprising the whole land of Israel, probably to be ruled by the Fatah and other factions that run the zones of Judea-Samaria now under PA/PLO rule.

The PLO Charter by the way speaks of the whole land that they call "palestine" needing to be "liberated"  from Israel. Likewise the PLO's Declaration of a State of Palestine of November 1988. These were obviously  rejections of peace. But maybe Mogherini and her staff are too ignorant or too stupid or too insensitive to the subtle Arab use of rhetoric to understand Abbas' real meaning. If they did understand Abbas' meaning would they have encouraged him and said they support him on the Jerusalem issue? She said:

“I want to reassure President Abbas of the firm commitment of the European Union to the two-state solution with Jerusalem as the shared capital of the two states,” Mogherini said during the meeting. [here & here]                                        

Let's leave aside the stupidity and impracticality of the notion of one city as the shared capital of two states. Did Mogherini understand that Abbas had just told her that he does NOT support the two-state solution, that he and those he represents are claiming the whole country?

Speaking of refugees, it is curious that the so-called "international community" --no doubt Mogherini is part of it-- seems to forget what happened in other situations where there were refugees on an ethnic basis. How is it that precisely the Europeans forgot that many Greeks were driven out of Anatolia, Turkey of today, and almost nobody in Europe but the Greeks themselves care about Greek rights and claims to the Smyrna [now Izmir] region from which most or nearly all Greeks were driven out? The total number of Greeks driven out is estimated at more than 1,100,000 while another 600,000 to one million were slaughtered in the period of 1914 to 1922 [some researchers put the numbers higher or lower]. Greece accepted more than one million refugees in the 1922-23 period and the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen negotiated an agreement between both Greece and Turkey to accept the principle of population exchange rather than go to war. As part of this agreement, Turkey agreed to let Greece expel some 400,000 Muslims living in northeastern Greece, Thrace, and take them in on Turkish territory. This was in exchange for the 1,200,000 or 1,500,000 Greeks that Ataturk and his army had already driven out of Anatolia, what is now Turkey.

For his services in the cause of mutual ethnic cleansing, Nansen received the Nobel Peace Prize. But that was not the end of Turkish-perpetrated ethnic cleansing. In 1955, while both Turkey and Greece were members of NATO, the Turkish government incited a pogrom in Istanbul, previously Constantinople (a Greek-speaking city before the Turkish conquest of 1453), that ended with the expulsion by the mob of tens of thousands of ethnically Greek Turkish citizens. The Turks got away with it. Somehow NATO let them get away with it.

How is it that the Europeans, including the wonderful folk at EU headquarters in Brussels, Mogherini and her staff, have forgotten that once upon  a time, a man got a Nobel Peace Prize for promoting the principle of population exchange?
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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
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What does Fatah, Abbas' faction, mean by "our land"?
It seems that they mean the whole country from the river to the sea, from the Jordan to the Med.
See here.
More EU hypocrisy related to covering up for Abbas [here], for his claims on the reasons for the Shoah.
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Other relevant articles:
Fiamma Nirenstein on Abbas' speech in Ramallah on 1-14-2018 [Italiano qui -English  here]

European Union Tortures Greek Fellow Europeans - What Can Israel Expect from the EU?

In January 2012 the EuroZone, the countries sharing the single currency, the euro, demanded extreme austerity from Greece. One of the provisions of the set of demands on Greece was to reduce medical benefits for the Greek population [veda qui].

We can now see the effect of these draconian demands. The French daily Le Figaro reported one and a half years ago, July 2015, on the gloomy picture. That is when Greece accepted a further set of harsh austerity demands by the EuroGroup which runs the EuroZone. I have no doubt that the situation now is worse than in 2015. Le Figaro writes:

Elevators out of service, tired greenish linoleum, a corridor burdened with patients abandoned on rolling beds. Over-aged medical material and medications that are running out. Austerity. At the Evangelismos Hospital in Athens, "We know what it is." . . .   

We hear them speaking harshly to each other . . .  "Go in front of me? Do you take yourself for a German?" exclaims an irritated fifty-year old  waiting his turn at the window where medicines are given out. "We're all worn out," another patient makes an excuse. "We mustn't complain," sighs Denise, an epileptic, 40 years old who subsists with her daughter  thanks to a disability pension of 300 euros per month. "We still have free medications." . . . . "I try to survive as best I can," chief cardiologist Dr Ilias Zarkos confides.  "At the  age of fifty-five I earn 1320 euros per month, as against 1600 euros four years ago. . . . In the past five years, we have all had our salaries reduced, and 20% of the staff went on retirement without being replaced. . . . Who would want to work under these conditions? Greece is now naked." "Every year the subsidies and equipment provided to the hospital are reduced by 15%," Dr Sioras continues. [Le Figaro, 15 Juillet 2015]

That is the state of Greek hospitals as of July 2015. That is the result of years of EU austerity treatment for the original debt crisis, whereas Greek debt as of July 2015 and as of now too, is worse, is higher than in 2010 when the debt crisis first came to light. Sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease.

If the Greeks were perhaps an exotic tribe in Africa or on the island of Borneo or some decidedly Third World country, would the EU be so callous to their suffering? Would the hospitals have to make do with short supplies and out of date equipment and supplies and reduced staff? Wouldn't Europe's supposed charitable and humanitarian instincts take over and wouldn't the cries for help be answered? Where is the solidarity for fellow Europeans, whereas solidarity is supposed to be a fundamental principle of the EU? Indeed, solidarity may be located in the same place as another EU principle, transparency, another EU value which is honored as much in the breach as the observance.

Besides, when the Palestinian Authority, a new form of the old PLO, is short of funds, somehow the EU finds the money. But the same generosity does not show up for the Greeks, for their fellow Europeans who are suffering. Nor does the supposed EU principle of transparency come into effect when it comes to funding a whole array of anti-Israel NGOs .....

The EuroGroup policy toward their fellow European Greeks is harsh and callous, and unproductive. What is their attitude toward Israel? Do they any longer recognize the Jewish right to live throughout the Land of Israel (Palestine in their parlance) west of the Jordan,  as the international community had decided in 1922 in the Mandate for Palestine issued to the UK for the purpose of erecting the Jewish National Home?  Today old commitments are forgotten. In fact, prominent EU member states voted at the UN Security Council for a resolution calling it a crime for Israelis to live east of the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line, even in Jerusalem, a city that has had a Jewish majority since 1853, if not before, whereas all Jews were ethnically cleansed from parts of Jerusalem --including the Old City's Jewish Quarter-- that were under Arab control after the 1947-1949 Israeli War of Independence. So the EU states represented in the UN SC favored apartheid against Jews by proclaiming that Jewish residence east of the Green Line, in Jerusalem too, was illegal according to international law, no less. That is what UN SC resolution 2334 has to say. Those EU states want to return Jews to their traditional status in Europe in the Middle Ages where often Jews were forced to live in ghettoes. Indeed, this demonstrates the cyclical nature of history. Out of the ghetto, now back to the ghetto.

Israel can hope for nothing decent at the upcoming French-sponsored "peace conference" in Paris. Bear in mind that the words, working-for-peace, can really mean working for war. There are strong grounds for assuming that the Paris war conference due to start on January 15 is meant to produce a resolution that will be taken to the UN Security Council before Donald Trump is inaugurated as US president on 20 January 2017 in order to prevent him from interfering in the gang up on Israel which Trump has already defined as "unfair". The Paris-to-New York time schedule is tight but possible. As the example of Euro treatment of Greece demonstrates, the EU and its member states can be not only stingy but harsh and cruel. Can Israel expect better from the EU after nearly 2000 years of discrimination and oppression of Jews and often of persecution?
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For more on the Eurozone's treatment of Greece, as well as the contrast between favoritism for the PLO/PA contrasted with stinginess with Greece, see here & here .

A quote from Il Sole-24 Ore (30 January 2012) on proposed reductions of medical coverage for Greeks:

Sul fronte previdenziale, la Troika fa notare che il 50% dei medicinali rimborsati dal sistema sanitario pubblico è generico, con prezzi bassi (e che vi è quindi spazio per ridurre l'esborso di denaro pubblico). [Il Sole-24 Ore, 30 Gennaio 2012  qui] 

Greece Opposes Labeling of Goods from Jewish Settlements

Greece has many reasons to resent the European Union, which has hardly treated Greece with brotherly and sisterly solidarity in the case of its debt crisis. In fact, the solutions to the Greek debt crisis, originating mainly in Germany at the German central bank, the Bundesbank, and adopted by the Eurozone, made Greece's debt crisis much worse than it had been before Greece turned to the Eurozone bodies for help, as we have shown in a number of previous posts.

Moreover, the Republic of Cyprus with its ethnic Greek majority that once aspired to join their island to Greece, has been occupied in part since 1974 by Turkey. That was 41 years ago. Some 200,000 Greek Cypriots were "ethnically cleansed" by  the Turkish invasion of the island, and fled to the south of the island as about 35 to 38% of the island was left occupied by Turkey. Or some would say that they were "displaced" in the euphemistic language generally used in the mainstream international press when writing about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Since then, the European Union to which both Greece and their brothers and sisters in Cyprus belong has had little to say in opposition to or criticism of the continued Turkish occupation. This contrasts with the constant EU criticism of Israel for allegedly "occupying" Judea and Samaria, the heart of the ancient Jewish homeland, called Ioudaia in Greek and IVDAEA (Judea) in Latin, both names pronounced about the same.

Furthermore, the international community had asssigned the Land of Israel, the former Roman province of Judea (roughly speaking), to the Jewish people as the Jewish National Home at the San Remo Conference, 1920, and the League of Nations, 1922. The Jewish National Home principle was supported by one of the leading Greek statesmen of the time, Eleftherios Venizelos.
As we know, the United Kingdom received a mandate from the League to foster development of the Jewish National Home. But the UK betrayed that commitment, most notably in the 1939 "Palestine White Paper."

Greece too was betrayed by its World War I allies, most notably France and the UK, who had promised Greece that it could take back Greek-populated territories in Anatolia, such as Smyrna and its hinterland, in return for supporting the Western Allies, the so-called Entente powers, in their war with Germany, Austria-Hungary (the Habsburg Empire) and the Ottoman Empire. The Supreme Allied Council dominated by the UK & France --two of the Principal Allied Powers-- hobbled Greece in its military operations in Anatolia so much that Ataturk's Turkish nationalists were able to defeat the Greeks after an intial Greek advantage and then drive out of Anatolia not only the Greek army but the ethnic Greek population of several million people [see "Smyrna" toward the bottom of the post] (1922). This was one of major instances of ethnic cleansing in the 20th century before WW2.

In another case of betrayal of promises, the EU claims that Judea-Samaria is "occupied" by Israel and constantly vilifies Israel's presence there. The EU also insists incorrectly that Geneva Convention IV 49:6 forbids Jews from moving into Judea-Samaria area because it is "occupied," as they allege. This racist, anti-Jewish policy has been most recently manifested in the call on EU member states to insist that products from Israeli/Jewish settlements in Judea-Samaria be labeled as such, that is, as products of an "occupied territory." This means that the EU wants to foreclose any need for Palestinian Arabs to negotiate with Israel what the future borders between Israel and a Palestinian Arab state will be. They want to force Israel to accept the PA/PLO's demands that Israel retreat to the 1949 armistice lines that were never borders, in order to have peace with the PA/PLO. And the EU wants to use the EU consumers to pressure Israel to submit, by not buying products from supposedly "illegal settlements". But no such pressure on Turkey is visible. Greece realizes that it cannot rely on the EU.

Greece set to oppose EU settlement labeling

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias has sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informing him of Athens’s opposition to the EU guidelines on the labeling of goods produced in Israeli settlements, The Times of Israel learns.

Kotzias’s message to Netanyahu came three day after Greek PM Alexis Tsipras visited Israel on Wednesday of last week.

Other than Greece, the only countries to break ranks on the measure are Hungary, which has declared its opposition; and Germany, which has yet to say whether it will implement it.

— Raphael Ahren Times of Israel
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More on the Greek position [here]. PM Tsipras also recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's "historic capital."

The Greek Crisis Shows the Stupidity of the Euro Currency Itself

Just a few thoughts that I have about the Greek debt crisis which is a crisis of the euro currency and the Eurozone itself.

Greek mismanagement of its state finances was a problem. But the main problem is the notion of the single currency itself. The euro was a bad idea whose time had come. The economic disparities between the member states of the eurozone were great, not to mention lack of a common tax system, pension system, state budget, labor laws, etc etc, plus Greece's special defense needs vis-a-vis Turkey, etc.

What happened to Greece was inevitable and could have happened to other eurozone states. After the Greek debt crisis became known in 2010 it was handled all wrong by the Eurozone which insisted on reforms --due to German domination--- rather than debt relief which at that time could have taken the form of eurobonds at a low interest rate which Greece could have paid at that time. Instead Greece was left to borrow for regular needs --as many countries, including the USA, do-- on the open market where interest rates on Greek debt inevitably shot up, and that should have been foreseen. So the Greek debt is much higher today than 5 years ago. And that is the fault of the eurozone, especially Germany/Schaeuble/Merkel etc.

Reforms yes, but not without an easy credit facility plus funds for investment in growth. Lebowitz is right but does not go far enough. Greece has offshore energy resources which Europe needs and could have invested in in order to help both Greece and the EU as a whole. But instead of funds for growth there was excessive austerity which destroyed rather than creating conditions for growth and getting out of the debt straitjacket

Germany benefitted from debt relief but it is ruled out when for Greece's benefit

UPDATING 7-13-2015 at bottom

The Greeks are still voting on the referendum whether or not to accept proposals by the creditor institutions for getting another tranche [slice] of loan money to pay off previous loans. Note that Greece was not offered money to finance growth, such as in developing Greece's off shore hydrocarbon deposits. Greece is being offered money to pay previous debts to those who are offering new loans. So Greece is in a vicious circle or trap.

The help that Greece needs is debt relief and funds to aid growth and development. Indeed, former Italian Prime minister Berlusconi --interviewed yesterday [by TG com 24]-- wished Greece to have a future of growth and sviluppo [= development]. But the creditor offers to Greece did not include aid for growth, without which Greece cannot pay off old loans in the future. Instead, they insist that old loans be paid. Debts must be paid is the principle that they pretend to uphold. But how short are their memories, especially those of the Germans!!!

After the general destruction caused by WW2, a German war, in all the countries attacked, and in Germany itself as well, West Germany, occupied by the USA, UK, and France, was loaned $15 billion in Marshall Plan money when a billion dollars was worth much more than today. All but a small part of that loan was forgiven and the rest stayed in Germany as so-called counterpart funds which were used by the USA to finance projects in Germany to help Germany. Moreover, under US leadership, the formerly German-occupied countries agreed to forego reparations payments. They gave up on their demands for compensation from Germany for material damages. Peter Coy describes the spirit of US policy:

On Sept. 6, 1946, U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes gave a speech in Stuttgart, Germany. A movement was afoot to penalize the Germans for their role in World War II by deindustrializing the country. Byrnes opposed anything resembling economic spite and promised the country a fair chance to rebuild. “Germany is a part of Europe,” Byrnes said, “and recovery in Europe will be slow indeed if Germany with her great resources of iron and coal is turned into a poorhouse.” It became known as the Speech of Hope. [Peter Coy in BloombergBusinessWeek]

Greece too was led by the US to give up its demands for compensation as well as for return of gold reserves and forced loans taken by the German occupation army from the Greek state central bank.
Hence, we see that Germany enjoyed and benefitted from debt forgiveness after the vast destruction caused by WW2. But today Greece must not benefit from debt forgiveness nor even from debt restructuring to extend pay back periods and/or to reduce interest on old debt.

What's more nobody seems to want to recall that after WW One, also a German war, Germany agreed to pay reparations to France. The sum was huge and it seemed so to the German governments in the 1920s.  So what did the German govts of the time do to alleviate their debt, that is, to get debt relief?
They devalued their own currency, the deutschemark, and the French were paid off in cheap, nearly worthless deutsche marks. Greece cannot do that since its debt is denominated in euros and Greece's govt does not control the value of the euro which it cannot devaluate by its own decision.

Here is another example of how Germany benefitted from debt relief which it rules out when it is for the benefit of Greece. And the other major countries in the Eurozone go along with the present absurdity of creditors trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

Can Israel expect any humane treatment from diamond-hearted, self-righteous hypocritical Europeans?
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Also see links below:
European Union knows what is best for everybody else but cannot or does not want to solve some of its own problems. [here]
Eurozone is stingy with Greece, generous with Arabs claiming the Land of Israel [here]
Eurozone betrays its Greek Eurobrethren. What would they do to the Jews? [here]
Why Greece should vote No [here].
Was it deliberate policy to impoverish Greece by putting it into a debt straitjacket? [here]
See analysis by Committee for Abolition of Third World Debt towards bottom of link [here]
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UPDATING 7-13-2015 Investment fund manager David Einhorn sees political motives in the
Eurozone working to have Greece fail even if it hurts the rest of the Eurozone.

David Einhorn, founder of Greenlight Capital, said Europe’s leaders are prepared to let Greece fail to discourage other countries from electing populists.
“Europe is unwilling to allow Syriza a face-saving compromise, even if that means Greece collapses and the rest of Europe suffers” [Bloomberg here]

The Eurozone Put Greece in a Debt Straitjacket - Was It Deliberate?

It's obvious to almost everybody that the Eurozone never "rescued" or "bailed out" Greece from its debt crisis in 2010. Instead, the Eurozone or Eurogroup put Greece into a debt straitjacket or debt trap in which Greece's state debt soared because it was left to borrow on the open market where the interest rates demanded by private investors/lenders were sure to rise fast. Later, but too late, it was openly realized  --about 2012-- that Greece needed to borrow on easy terms because its state debt was soaring. But Greece was already in the debt straitjacket or trap from which it cannot get out. Someone estimated that it would take 180 years for Greece to pay off the debt mountain.

Now evidence has emerged that suggests --not absolute proof to be sure, which is not likely to emerge for many years-- that putting Greece into a debt trap may have been deliberate German policy. The purpose seems to have been to use the Greek example as a whip to scare other economically weak Eurozone member states. German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is quoted as telling US secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, as reported by Peter Coy of Bloomberg Businessweek:

The upshot is that events are unfolding roughly as foreseen by the wily German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble: The disaster befalling Greece is scaring other European nations into following the straight and narrow. According to former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in his book Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, Schäuble told him in 2012 that—in Geithner’s words—some people were arguing “that letting Greece burn would make it easier to build a stronger Europe with a more credible firewall.”

This surmise of mine explains a lot, if true. Why do Germany and the Eurozone keep on insisting that Greece pay off debts made at inflated interest rates, debts which it cannot pay off for more than a century?
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Also see here, and below --
The economist Paul Krugman pointed out that Greece was in: "a vicious circle, with fears of default threatening to become a self-fulfilling prophecy."  here. Interestingly, former Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, also pointed out that Greece was in a "vicious circle" that it should be helped to get out of. He favored mutualization of state debt within the Eurozone.
European hypocrisy about human rights according to Michael Rubin on the Commentary blog, "The Lie that Europe Cares about Human Rights"  [here]

More European Greed, Failure & Hypocrisy: The Greek Case

We are all familiar with the moral pretensions and pretenses of Europe, particularly the European Union which embodies Europe's flaws quintessentially. They seem to know what is right for everybody else in the world, especially for Israel and the Jews. Just listen to us and you will have peace, they tell us. Why we should listen to them is beyond me, since I am old enough to remember that the Nazi Holocaust was perpetrated not just by Germans and Austro-Germans but was aided by most of Europe (by Arabs too but we're not talking about Arabs). Think of Quisling Norway and Vichy France and so on and so forth. Europe's world championship in hypocrisy is solid and unchallenged, as this Irish example bearing on Israel demonstrates. But even more striking is how the European Union  treats some of its own who appear to belong to a lesser class of Europeans.

The EU has never threatened Turkey with any sort of boycott for its occupation of northern Cyprus, whereas Cyprus, predominantly Greek ethnically, is a member of the EU itself. But there is obviously a lot of business to be done with Turkey or maybe the Greek Cypriots are just Europeans Grade B. Their brothers and sisters in Greece, also an EU member and a NATO member, suffer from counterproductive Eurozone schemes for settling their debt crisis. The Eurozone, a subsidiary comprising most EU members, imposed on Greece a terribly dysfunctional austerity plan that guarantees to keep most Greeks in poverty and does not encourage growth.

Anyhow Philippe Legrain in Foreign Policy updates some of the things that I and many professional economists have been saying for years [although I am not a professional economist, some big flaws in the "remedy" for Greece have been much too obvious]. Whatever the flaws in the economic plans to "help" Greece, their proposals for the Middle East  would work just as badly or worse if Israel adopted their plans to "help bring peace" to the Middle East. Here is Legrain:

Why Greece Should Reject the Latest Offer From Its Creditors

Debt bondage is destroying the country — for no good reason.

• BY PHILIPPE LEGRAIN
• JUNE 12, 2015
• 

Reform — Greece sorely needs it. Cash — the government is running desperately short of it. So it is time for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to do what’s best for Greece and accept its creditors’ reform demands in exchange for much-needed cash. That is how the Greek situation is usually framed. It is utterly misleading.

Imagine you’re in prison for not being able to pay your debts. (You’re right, it’s almost unthinkable — civilized societies no longer lock up bankrupt individuals. But bear with me.) After five years of misery, you lead a rebellion, take control of the prison, and demand your release. The jailers respond by cutting off your water supply. Should you back down and return to your cell, perhaps negotiating for slightly less unpleasant conditions, in order to obtain a little liquidity? Or should you keep fighting to be free? That, in essence, is what the standoff between an insolvent Greece and its eurozone creditors is really about.

For months, Greece has had “only days” to agree a deal with its creditors before it runs out of cash. Eventually that will be true. But even if Tsipras accepted the creditors’ demands, Greece would still have “only days” before it ran out of cash. The 7.2 billion euros on offer right now wouldn’t even cover the Greek government’s debt repayments until the end of August. And for a measly two months of liquidity, Tsipras is expected to surrender his democratic mandate: break his election promises, agree to yet more tax increases and spending cuts that would depress Greece’s economy further, and relinquish his demands for debt relief.

Then the wrangling would start again. Because so long as Greece remains in its debtors’ prison, it will be dependent on its jailers for liquidity and therefore expected to comply with whatever additional conditions they impose. Tsipras should not submit to this debt bondage.

Nine of every 10 euros that eurozone governments and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have lent to the Greek government since 2010 have gone torepay its unbearable debts, which should instead have been restructured back then. But from now on, every last cent of additional funding would go to pay back debt. The Greek government now has a small primary surplus: It doesn’t need to borrow, except to service its debts of 175 percent of GDP.

Yet in exchange for additional liquidity, Greece’s creditors are demanding a return to the failed austerity policies of the past five years, which have shrunkthe economy by 21 percent and thrown one in four people — and one in two youth — out of work. The hypothesis that austerity can cure insolvency has been tested to destruction. Another dose of it would be perverse.

As Martin Sandbu of the Financial Times points out, further austerity isn’t even in the creditors’ interests. They are demanding a fiscal tightening of 1.7 percent of GDP in the second half of this year alone. Since raising taxes and cutting spending would depress the economy — shrinking tax revenues and inflating social spending, thereby unwinding some of the budget tightening — a fiscal squeeze twice as big would be required to achieve the creditors’ target, if the past five years are anything to go by. According to Sandbu, that would crunch the economy by 5 percent, perversely raising the ratio of debt to GDP by some 9 percentage points. To achieve a primary surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP by 2018, as the creditors are demanding, would require a fiscal squeeze of 8.3 percent of GDP, depressing the economy by 12.5 percent and increasing the ratio of debt to GDP by around 22.5 percentage points. Far from bringing Greece’s debts down to more sustainable levels, further austerity would cause them to soar.

Why would eurozone authorities be so cruel and foolish? Because they don’t really care about the welfare of ordinary Greeks. They aren’t even that bothered about whether the Greek government pays back the money they forced European taxpayers to lend to it, ostensibly out of solidarity, but actually to bail out French and German banks and investors. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other eurozone policymakers just don’t want to admit that they made a terrible mistake in 2010 and have lied about it since. So they want to be seen as standing up for eurozone taxpayers’ interests, and they want Greeks to put up and shut up until Merkel and her minions are comfortably in retirement, and it is someone else’s problem.

Further austerity isn’t the only consequence of leaving Greeks languishing in their debtors’ prison. Contrary to claims that Greece shells out scarcely any interest, it pays an average interest rate of 2.5 percent on its debts, according to Joakim Tiberg of UBS, a Swiss bank — 4.5 percent of GDP in total. With prices falling by 2.1 percent over the past year, the inflation-adjusted interest rate is 4.7 percent. Worse, the debt overhang creates crippling uncertainty about how the crisis might be resolved — including whether Greece might be forced out of the euro — stunting consumption, investment, and growth. Having creditors breathing down your neck to raise taxes is a further deterrent to investment. And the debt overhang also causes deflation, making the burden even more unbearable.

The creditors’ insistence on reform is also disingenuous. Greece has been run by the institutions known as the Troika — the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF — since May 2010. They have had every opportunity to insist on the reforms they are now demanding. Yet they kept on funding Greece because all they cared about was the fiscal targets (and wage cuts to boost “competitiveness”). The sudden focus on reform is primarily about forcing Tsipras to break the promises that got him elected in January.

Let me be clear: Greece urgently needs reform. Its economy is underdeveloped, hidebound, and dominated by oligarchic families who monopolize markets and suborn politics. Its public administration is corrupt and inefficient. Its legal system is dysfunctional, its tax system full of holes. Tsipras may or may not be willing to reform Greece. But ultimately, it ought to be up to Greeks whether and how they do so.

Indeed, the main sticking points between Athens and its creditors aren’t really reforms, they’re fiscal measures. While improving the collection and administration of value-added tax (VAT) is desirable, the creditors are also demanding a tax hike of 1 percent of GDP. That is wrong-headed, since it would hit the country’s main export sector, tourism, which accounts for 18 percent of GDP.

Pension reform is also necessary as Greeks live longer and fewer workers have to support more retirees. But the country’s social safety net is so threadbare that a single-slashed pension is often supporting a whole family of jobless people. So, while encouraging healthy people to continue working is desirable, pension cuts are not.

Some argue that Tsipras should sign up to what the creditors want, take the cash to pay off the looming bond payments to the IMF and the ECB, make a show of reform, and then press again for debt relief. But the notion that the creditors would then be more flexible is fanciful. In 2012, eurozone governments promised Greece debt relief once it achieved a primary surplus, but they still haven’t delivered it. The Greek government has now put forward sensible plans for restructuring its debts. Unless its creditors are willing to start negotiating meaningful debt relief, Tsipras should reject any deal on offer.

Merkel ought to be as magnanimous with Greece as the United States was with post-Nazi Germany, when Washington forgave half of the West German government’s debts in 1953 [this is not what was most important about the Marshall Plan money: None of it went back to the United States. All of it stayed in Germany-- Eliyahu m'Tsiyon]. But if eurozone authorities won’t be reasonable, unilateral default — and even euro exit — is preferable to debt bondage. 
[emphases are mine, likewise I supplied the link in the sentence above "Merkel ought to be as magnanimous. . . ."- Eliyahu] 

High Eurozone Official Attacks German Policy of non-Solidarity with Euro Brethren -- Juncker Is First

Since last October, we have been criticizing the Eurozone's handling of its debt crisis, and more recently, especially the German role. The crisis started two years ago in Greece, and then spread to other eurozone countries because the Greek problem was not handled rightly. Some prominent Euros now recognize that German policy, which other Eurozone states have been acquiescing in, is the wrong way to a solution. Germany insists on austerity and rejects any debt-sharing [mutualization of debt]. Germany doesn't want to give up a single pfennig of its own money, forgetting that after all the destruction of WW2 --in Germany and the rest of Europe, in a war started by Germans-- Germany was enabled to rebuild and recover only thanks to the approx. $ 15 billion that America gave to Germany through the Marshall Plan [some of the money was given as loans but the loans were forgiven and all the money was kept in Germany]. The extreme austerity forced on Greece is ruining the Greek economy but Germany --with the acquiescence of its Eurozone partners-- insisted on more austerity, on a solution that doesn't work. The Euros are like a drunkard with a hangover who drinks more in order to relieve the discomfort of his hangover. The euro addiction to austerity is like a craving for the hair of the dog that bit ye. But most of the discomfort is being suffered in the countries with a high state debt, and is not yet felt in Germany.

Eurozone policy, dominated by Germany, that is by German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, is leading the world into a worldwide recession, if not a deep depression. That may have motivated the new criticism of Germany that hasn't been publicly heard at high levels before. Now the chairman of the Eurozone, Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, states that "there is no more time to lose" [«non c'è più tempo da perdere»] to stabilize the monetary union and adds the accusation of Germany being at fault. Juncker may foresee the possible collapse of the Euro if no major steps are taken and views Germany as an obstacle to needed measures. Collapse of the euro currency and the Eurozone states would have major world wide repercussions greater than the incoming world recession. Here is Juncker:

JUNCKER ATTACKS BERLIN IN THE SZ [suddeutsche zeitung] -- A very harsh Jean-Claude Juncker accused Berlin, meanwhile, of bending EU interests to internal political motives: "Why does Germany allow itself the luxury of constantly doing internal politics on questions that have to do with Europe [= the whole EU]? Why does it treat the Eurozone like its subsidiary?, the chairman of the Eurogroup [eurozone countries] asked in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung. [qui]

JUNKER ATTACCA BERLINO SULLA SZ - Un durissimo Jean-Claude Juncker ha accusato intanto Berlino di piegare gli interessi dell'Ue a ragioni di politica interna: «Perchè la Germania si permette il lusso di fare continuamente politica interna su questioni che riguardano l'Europa? Perchè tratta l'eurozona come una sua filiale?», si è chiesto il presidente dell'Eurogruppo in un'intervista alla Süddeutsche Zeitung. [qui]

But maybe Juncker didn't wise up enough. In the same interview he proposes that German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble should be made finance minister for the whole Eurozone --or maybe the whole EU. "Schäuble has all the characteristics." [«Schäuble ha tutte le caratteristiche»]. But would other Euro states, other Eurozone members want their economies to be dominated even more closely than before by one the chief architects of the failures since the first mistaken Greek "rescue"? In any case, do they want to be more tightly controlled by German policy? On the other hand, maybe by proposing Schäuble as a super Eurozone finance minister, Juncker means just to throw a bone to the Germans in order to soften the blow of his criticism. Maybe. But it would be best to put Schäuble in retirement or let him criticize from a seat in the German parliament where he would not directly make policy.

Lastly, although there is little enough solidarity among Eurozone and EU member states, the EU continues to fund the PA/PLO as well as all sorts of lying, anti-Israel so-called "human rights" & "peace" NGOs, even as the EU's own funds run low, let's bear in mind that we must not allow the Euros to decide Israel's future. They are fools at best, if not consciously hostile.

[Altri servizi su Il Sole-24 Ore e Il Giornale]
[data on EU funding of fake "human rights" and "peace" NGOs can be found in abundance on the site of NGO Monitor --see link on our blog roll]
[If they're funded by the EU, can they really be considered "non-governmental organizations"?]

EuroFools Betray Greek Brethren, Undermine Their Own Creation -- Prove that Their "Peace" Advice to Israel Is Either Hostile or Stupid

UPDATING 5-19 & 6-2-2012

As an Israeli, I am tremendously amused to see how the EU, more specifically the Eurozone, plus the IMF, cannot solve the debt crisis. It should warn us against taking any advice from the EU about our conflict with the Arabs. The Greek debt-cum-economic crisis at present is due not only to the failure of Greek governments prior to Papandreou secretively building up debts with the advice of US financial firms. It is also due --and even more so-- to the utterly stupid and counterproductive "remedy" demanded by the eurozone and IMF. And the German role here is especially thick-headed and outrageous.

I consider Wolfgang Schaeuble, German finance minister, a weapon of European self-destruction. It should have been obvious 2 years ago that without either the Eurozone [EMU = european monetary union] and/or IMF guaranteeing loans to Greece [as Krugman recommended] or/and the provision of an easy loan facility for Greece at a reasonable, low interest rate [maybe something like eurobonds], that interest rates for Greece would balloon and swell up on the open market and Greece could never pay back the loans at --let's say-- 33% interest. Especially without growth. So the original Greek "bailout" was stupid and unworkable, which some foresaw. Now, the Germans --led by Schaeuble are insisting on punishing Greece [watch films of the German finance minister seething with rage over Greeks "breaking" promises]. This is outrageous because the Germans all too easily forget that Germany did not come out of its WW2 ruin & wreckage on sheer austerity & hard work but got Marshall Plan billions from America in the form of cheap, low interest loans as well as grants. Actually in the end, most of the loans were forgiven & Germany paid back only about 15% of its Marshall Plan aid!!! The Americans could have left the Germans to grope for food in their post-war ruins, after a war that they had started [also see here & here & here]. Of course, some German economists are more sensible than Schaeuble.

Yes, Greece needed structural reforms but easy loans too were indispensable. Without them Greece got into a vicious circle that the Euro fools still don't understand. As an Israeli I see that EU "peace" prescriptions are as reliable as their economic stupidities. Doctor EU, heal thyself.

UPDATING 5-19-2012
Solidarity is a two-way street, Greece must keep its promises.
Guido Westerwelle, German Foreign Minister, FDP party
[Israel TV, channel 1, Ro'im `Olam 5-19-2012]Solidarity is a two-way street. . . the European Community
must stand firm and demand the necessary structural reforms. . .
Only when the Greeks also provide evidence that they
are serious [must we provide help]
Rainer Bruderle, FDP party leader in Bundestag.

We called Schaeuble a European weapon of self-destruction. This implies that he has been the brains and the force behind Germany's policy on the Greek debt crisis [now a crisis in several eurozone states since the Greek "rescue" plan of 2010]. Indeed. Angela Merkel, German chancellor [PM] does not seem very bright and takes her economic directives from Schaeuble, supported by most Germans. Since Germany is the largest successful economy in the eurozone and has the most money reserves, it can force its will on the rest of the EMU, which is what has happened. Yet the first austerity plan for Greece of 2010 has obviously failed. But no change in EMU policy is likely. Nor any admission of fault in the "rescue" plan itself. Schaeuble blames the Greeks. Now Greece may leave the eurozone, the EMU, which could lead to higher interest rates for other eurozone states and to eventual break up of the EMU. This would harmfully affect EU states like the UK that are outside the eurozone as well as the whole world economy. Hence Schaeuble is a European weapon of self-destruction.

Could a different rescue plan in Greece in 2010 have saved Greece? Maybe, but as said above, it would have had to provide an easy borrowing facility for Greece --not even necessarily as generous as the Marshall Plan was to Germany [see addendum below] but with reasonably low interest rates-- plus provisions for growth. Now it is probably too late to save Greece and/or keep it in the eurozone. Maybe the EMU itself can no longer be saved. News out of the G8 summit [5-19-2012] reports that Merkel resisted the calls by other G8 members for a focus on growth & stimulus over austerity. The eurozone which the Germans love so much may be on the way to "break up," as David Cameron, UK prime minister, wondered about the other day. The Germans have shown appalling harshness and stinginess in this affair. The German urge to punish may end up punishing the Germans too. Schaeuble himself seems at times to be playing a Gestapo officer in one of those old WW2 movies.

Nevertheless, the other eurozone [EMU] states and the IMF --mainly run by Europeans-- went along with this sad comedy, this farce of greed, harshness, stinginess and historical amnesia --which especially characterizes Germany. Doctor EU, heal thyself. And don't come to Israel with barely disguised proposals for having the Arabs do your dirty work, finishing Hitler's job in the name of "palestinian self-determination."

- - - - - - - - - - -ADDENDUM- - - - - -
More on the Marshall Plan & Germany from Committee for the Abolition of Third World DebtThe 1953 London Debt Agreement, or the German debt
If West Germany could redeem its debt and rebuild its economy so soon after WWII it was thanks to the political will of its creditors, i.e. the United States and their main Western allies (United Kingdom and France). In October 1950 these three countries drafted a project in which the German federal government acknowledged debts incurred before and during the war. They joined a declaration to the effect that “the three countries agree that the plan include an appropriate satisfaction of demands towards Germany so that its implementation does not jeopardize the financial situation of the German economy through unwanted repercussions nor has an excessive effect on its potential currency reserves. The first three countries are convinced that the German federal government shares their view and that the restoration of German solvability includes an adequate solution for the German debt which takes Germany’s economic problems into account and makes sure that negotiations are fair to all participants.” |5|
. . . . .
The agreement set up the possibility to suspend payments and renegotiate conditions in the event that a substantial change limiting the availability of resources should occur. |7|
To make sure that the West German economy was effectively doing well and represented a stable key element in the Atlantic bloc against the Eastern bloc, allied creditors granted the indebted German authorities and companies major concessions that far exceeded debt relief. The starting point was that Germany had to be able to pay everything back while maintaining a high level of growth and improving the living standards of its population. They had to pay back without getting poorer. To achieve this creditors accepted first, that Germany pay its debt in its national currency, second, that Germany reduce importations (it could manufacture at home those goods that were formerly imported), |8| third, that it sell its manufactured goods abroad so as to achieve a positive trade balance. These various concessions were set down in the above-mentioned declaration. |9|
Another significant aspect was that the debt service depended on how much the German economy could afford to pay, taking the country’s reconstruction and the export revenues into account. The debt service/export revenue ratio was not to exceed 5%. This meant that West Germany was not to use more than one twentieth of its export revenues to pay its debt. In fact it never used more than 4.2% (except once in 1959).
Another exceptional measure was that interest rates were substantially reduced (between 0 and 5%).
Finally we have to consider the dollars the United States gave to West Germany: USD 1,173.7 million as part of the Marshall Plan from 3 April 1948 to 30 June 1952 with at least 200 million added from 1954 to 1961, mainly via USAID. [here Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt]
UPDATING George Soros, billionaire money manager, far from our favorite person, warns that the eurozone has only 3 months to solve or alleviate its financial crisis otherwise the crisis may lead to the break up of the EU altogether. Soros, surprisingly, blames Germany for profiting from the single currency while harming the peripheral countries.
Germany benefitted from debt relief after WW2 but not willing to help Greece by granting debt relief. How they forget!! [here]