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Location: Beirut, Lebanon

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Kill a Turk and Rest by Uri Avnery

ON THE high seas, outside territorial waters, the ship was stopped by the navy.

The commandos stormed it. Hundreds of people on the deck resisted, the soldiers used force. Some of the passengers were killed, scores injured. The ship was brought into harbor, the passengers were taken off by force.

The world saw them walking on the quay, men and women, young and old, all of them worn out, one after another, each being marched between two soldiers…
The ship was called “Exodus 1947”. It left France in the hope of breaking the British blockade, which was imposed to prevent ships loaded with Holocaust survivors from reaching the shores of Palestine. If it had been allowed to reach the country, the illegal immigrants would have come ashore and the British would have sent them to detention camps in Cyprus, as they had done before. Nobody would have taken any notice of the episode for more than two days.


But the person in charge was Ernest Bevin, a Labour Party leader, an arrogant, rude and power-loving British minister. He was not about to let a bunch of Jews dictate to him. He decided to teach them a lesson the entire world would witness. “This is a provocation!” he exclaimed, and of course he was right. The main aim was indeed to create a provocation, in order to draw the eyes of the world to the British blockade.

What followed is well known: the episode dragged on and on, one stupidity led to another, the whole world sympathized with the passengers. But the British did not give in and paid the price. A heavy price.

Many believe that the “Exodus” incident was the turning point in the struggle for the creation of the State of Israel. Britain collapsed under the weight of international condemnation and decided to give up its mandate over Palestine. There were, of course, many more weighty reasons for this decision, but the “Exodus” proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I AM not the only one who was reminded of this episode this week. Actually, it was almost impossible not to be reminded of it, especially for those of us who lived in Palestine at the time and witnessed it.

There are, of course, important differences. Then the passengers were Holocaust survivors, this time they were peace activists from all over the world. But then and now the world saw heavily armed soldiers brutally attack unarmed passengers, who resist with everything that comes to hand, sticks and bare hands. Then and now it happened on the high seas – 40 km from the shore then, 65 km now.

In retrospect, the British behavior throughout the affair seems incredibly stupid. But Bevin was no fool, and the British officers who commanded the action were not nincompoops. After all, they had just finished a World War on the winning side.

If they behaved with complete folly from beginning to end, it was the result of arrogance, insensitivity and boundless contempt for world public opinion.

Ehud Barak is the Israeli Bevin. He is not a fool, either, nor are our top brass. But they are responsible for a chain of acts of folly, the disastrous implications of which are hard to assess. Former minister and present commentator Yossi Sarid called the ministerial “committee of seven”, which decides on security matters, “seven idiots” – and I must protest. It is an insult to idiots.

THE PREPARATIONS for the flotilla went on for more than a year. Hundreds of e-mail messages went back and forth. I myself received many dozens. There was no secret. Everything was out in the open.

There was a lot of time for all our political and military institutions to prepare for the approach of the ships. The politician consulted. The soldiers trained. The diplomats reported. The intelligence people did their job.

Nothing helped. All the decisions were wrong from the first moment to this moment. And it’s not yet the end.

The idea of a flotilla as a means to break the blockade borders on genius. It placed the Israeli government on the horns of a dilemma – the choice between several alternatives, all of them bad.

Every general hopes to get his opponent into such a situation.

The alternatives were:

1. To let the flotilla reach Gaza without hindrance. The cabinet secretary supported this option. That would have led to the end of the blockade, because after this flotilla more and larger ones would have come.
2. To stop the ships in territorial waters, inspect their cargo and make sure they were not carrying weapons or “terrorists”, then let them continue on their way. That would have aroused some vague protests in the world but upheld the principle of a blockade.
3. To capture them on the high seas and bring them to Ashdod, risking a face-to-face battle with activists on board.

As our governments have always done, when faced with the choice between several bad alternatives, the Netanyahu government chose the worst.

Anyone who followed the preparations as reported in the media could have foreseen that they would lead to people being killed and injured. One does not storm a Turkish ship and expect cute little girls to present one with flowers. The Turks are not known as people who give in easily.

The orders given to the forces and made public included the three fateful words: “at any cost”. Every soldier knows what these three terrible words mean. Moreover, on the list of objectives, the consideration for the passengers appeared only in third place, after safeguarding the safety of the soldiers and fulfilling the task.

If Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, the Chief of Staff and the commander of the navy did not understand that this would lead to killing and wounding people, then it must be concluded - even by those who were reluctant to consider this until now – that they are grossly incompetent. They must be told, in the immortal words of Oliver Cromwell to Parliament: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

THIS EVENT points again to one of the most serious aspects of the situation: we live in a bubble, in a kind of mental ghetto, which cuts us off and prevents us from seeing another reality, the one perceived by the rest of the world. A psychiatrist might judge this to be the symptom of a severe mental problem.

The propaganda of the government and the army tells a simple story: our heroic soldiers, determined and sensitive, the elite of the elite, descended on the ship in order “to talk” and were attacked by a wild and violent crowd. Official spokesmen repeated again and again the word “lynching”.

On the first day, almost all the Israeli media accepted this. After all, it is clear that we, the Jews, are the victims. Always. That applies to Jewish soldiers, too. True, we storm a foreign ship at sea, but turn at once into victims who have no choice but to defend ourselves against violent and incited anti-Semites.

It is impossible not to be reminded of the classic Jewish joke about the Jewish mother in Russia taking leave of her son, who has been called up to serve the Czar in the war against Turkey. “Don’t overexert yourself’” she implores him, “Kill a Turk and rest. Kill another Turk and rest again…”

“But mother,” the son interrupts, “What if the Turk kills me?”

“You?” exclaims the mother, “But why? What have you done to him?”

To any normal person, this may sound crazy. Heavily armed soldiers of an elite commando unit board a ship on the high seas in the middle of the night, from the sea and from the air – and they are the victims?

But there is a grain of truth there: they are the victims of arrogant and incompetent commanders, irresponsible politicians and the media fed by them. And, actually, of the Israeli public, since most of the people voted for this government or for the opposition, which is no different.

The “Exodus” affair was repeated, but with a change of roles. Now we are the British.

Somewhere, a new Leon Uris is planning to write his next book, “Exodus 2010”. A new Otto Preminger is planning a film that will become a blockbuster. A new Paul Newman will star in it – after all, there is no shortage of talented Turkish actors.

MORE THAN 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson declared that every nation must act with a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind”. Israeli leaders have never accepted the wisdom of this maxim. They adhere to the dictum of David Ben-Gurion: “It is not important what the Gentiles say, it is important what the Jews do.” Perhaps he assumed that the Jews would not act foolishly.

Making enemies of the Turks is more than foolish. For decades, Turkey has been our closest ally in the region, much more close than is generally known. Turkey could play, in the future, an important role as a mediator between Israel and the Arab-Muslim world, between Israel and Syria, and, yes, even between Israel and Iran. Perhaps we have succeeded now in uniting the Turkish people against us – and some say that this is the only matter on which the Turks are now united.

This is Chapter 2 of “Cast Lead”. Then we aroused most countries in the world against us, shocked our few friends and gladdened our enemies. Now we have done it again, and perhaps with even greater success. World public opinion is turning against us.

This is a slow process. It resembles the accumulation of water behind a dam. The water rises slowly, quietly, and the change is hardly noticeable. But when it reaches a critical level, the dam bursts and the disaster is upon us. We are steadily approaching this point.

“Kill a Turk and rest,” the mother says in the joke. Our government does not even rest. It seems that they will not stop until they have made enemies of the last of our friends.

Uri Avnery is the sage of Israel. The founder of the Israeli peace movement, Gush Shalom, Avnery calls for the reinvigoration of the peace movement by direct engagement.

Friday, June 04, 2010

An Open Letter to Turkey

Dear Turkey,

Ever since you decided to trade in the Secularism of Ataturk for the Islamism of Erdogan, you also seem to have dispensed with the ability to coexist with non-Muslims on a peaceful basis. These days all we ever seem to get from you, is video clips of your leader, Prime Minister Erdogan, barking at us like a dog that its owner carelessly let off the leash. And if you don't know that Erdogan's owner lives in Riyadh, then you don't know very much of what goes on in your own country.

But your affairs are your own affairs. And our affairs are our affairs. If you want to let a fanatic in a cheap suit destroy Turkish nationalism in the name of Islam, that's your business. But when he gets into business with terrorist organizations who attack and murder our soldiers, then it's our business. And when a country that persecutes its Kurdish, Assyrian and Armenian citizens, and sends their elected representatives to jail-- presumes to self-righteously lecture us on how to manage our affairs, it had better remember that holding a stone throwing contest in a glass house will just lead to piles of broken glass.

You say you want an international investigation into the flotilla raid? Sure. Right after we have an international investigation into that minor matter of Armenian genocide that you've been ducking for quite a while. As the new "standard bearer" in fighting for human rights, I'm sure you will agree that it's only fair that Turkey should undergo the same scrutiny it demands for other countries.

And then we can move on to the more than 10,000 political prisoners in your jails. A number that at times has topped 100,000. An independent investigation could also begin by looking into the torture and murder of political activists such as Engin Ceber. They could meet with representatives of TAYAD, the organization representing the families of prisoners. And they would no doubt be fascinated by the more than 1500 children in your prisoners who are there on "terrorism" charges. Like that 12 year old you arrested in 2008 for singing a Kurdish folk song. So by all means wrap yourselves in the banner of "Human Rights" and we'll turn it into a noose and strangle you with it.

In Israel, Arabs are a legally recognized minority. Arabic is taught in schools and used as a legally recognized language. Meanwhile Kurdish identity is all but banned in Turkey. Kurdish names, folk songs and even the Kurdish language itself has been repressed. Your regime has actually prosecuted and removed officials for simply incorporating a Kurdish phrase into a greeting. You screech self-righteously about the "Palestinian children"-- perhaps we should talk about the hundreds of Kurdish children arrested for throwing stones at protests. Arrested and charged with terrorism. Just more of the thousands of political prisoners of oppressed minorities in your prisons.

And perhaps next time your dog Erdogan gets up to bark up at us about human rights, we can stuff this in his mouth. Jenin, the Second Lebanon War and every armed encounter between Israel and Islamic terrorists over the last 20 years combined together killed fewer people, than your country did in 1997 alone. After you get through lecturing us on the use of force against Islamic terrorists, shall we discuss how many times you used jets to bomb Kurdish rebels who were lightly armed at best. Including in 2008 when you invaded sovereign Iraqi soil in order to continue your genocide of the Kurdish people.

You talk about stolen land, when your entire country is stolen land, from Cyprus to Istanbul. Your regime is a racist illegitimate entity based on the oppression of the Kurds, the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Circassians and numerous others. You went directly from being Imperialists to Fascists to Islamists, a truly dubious achievement for any nation. Your history is filled with slavery, ethnic cleansing, genocide and invasion. And that's just in the last century alone. If you had any sanity or shame, you would dig a hole, crawl into it, and hope that no one mentions words like "Minority Rights" or "Territorial Legitimacy" in your presence, instead of trying to use them as a club against a nation whose national history predates yours by thousands of years. We had kingdoms and a civilization that changed the world, back when your ancestors were still trying to decide whether to eat the sheep or rape it.

But let us get back to your precious Islamist flotilla, decorated with Turkish flags that used to be more than just red versions of the Saudi flag. That ship you filled up with Muslim Brotherhood members and Islamist radicals bound for our shores. Over in your wonderful nation of boundless freedom, reporters have been put on trial for even interviewing leaders of terrorist groups. You sentenced the head of a Kurdish party to six months in prison for calling the head of the PKK, Mr. Ocalan, instead of just Ocalan. He joins the more than 800 Kurdish politicians you imprisoned in the last year alone. And after all that you actually have the nerve to pretend to be "outraged" when Israel intercepts your flotilla full of political terrorists?

But of course we know how strongly you feel about blockades. Like the time you blockaded Armenia for Sixteen Years. Very well then. If you insist on sending vessels flying the Turkish flag to aid Hamas, perhaps we'll begin sending vessels flying the Israeli flag to aid the PKK. We're not big fans of the PKK, but since you've decided to friend Hamas, then what's good for the turkey, just might be good for the gander. We can also fill a flotilla full of senile troublemakers, phony survivors and leftist radicals-- along with a few hundred well armed "activists" who know how to use a knife. Or perhaps we won't bother with any of that. Instead for every boat flying the Turkish flag that invades our territory, we'll donate a million to the PKK. I wonder how many rocket launchers that would buy. Perhaps the next time, your air force sweeps in to bomb Kurds out of their homes, they might get a surprise or two.

And then there's the Republic of Cyprus, which has actually been helping us stop weapons smuggling. They might benefit from significantly upgraded air defenses. While the US insists on equalizing weapons sales to Turkey and Greece, we just might have something tastier to offer to one side. And the citizens of the Republic of Cyprus might actually be able to sleep soundly in their beds, instead of being intimidated by savages showing off their F-16's over their heads. The Cyprus National Guard likes our drones, just like you do. But what if they had a much better equalizer at their disposal? Being a small non-Muslim nation surrounded by much larger Muslim countries, we do have a certain fondness for the infidel underdog.

Oh I know, what you're going to say. This means war. But you might want to consider that we've fought and beaten enemies many times our size. And what exactly was the last war you won single-handedly? And no, bombing starving Kurdish rebels from the air, or occupying Cyprus doesn't count. And how long could you fight that war, before a domestic Kurdish insurgency overthrows your little empire. If that doesn't happen, you might want to think about the big Russian bear at your back. The bear has been eyeing you for a long time now. And with your military engaged in a disastrous war for the Great Caliphate, your borders would be temptingly open. And who exactly would bail you out then?

Oh I know you've made many great news friends, such as Ahmadinejad and that nice burnoosed king in the Arabian Desert, who tells your Erdogan when to jump and how high, but if you think Iran is about to pass up Russian nukes in order to bail you out, you've got another thing coming. Meanwhile old Abdullah in the desert can't even protect himself without the US Marines. And if you think Obama would send them in to save your asses, you've got another thing coming. I'm sure if there were Russian tanks headed to Ankara, he'd make a vocal statement about it. And Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would pretend not to laugh while hanging up the phone.

There is of course the European Union. Last time Russia pulled that trick, it was Britain that bailed you out in the Crimean War. But these days Her Majesty's Empire isn't quite in the same shape it used to be. Sure Cameron, Clegg and Harman will lick Erdogan's feet. But none of them want to be the next Tony Blair either. Germany doesn't like you very much anymore. Perhaps that time when it got enmeshed in WW1 to protect your Ottoman Empire may have put them off. Or your internal campaign of subversion exploiting Germany's horde of Turkish laborers. What are you left with then? France, Italy or perhaps Austria will forget that whole pesky Gates of Vienna thing and this time ride to your rescue.

No, when Russian commandos are ripping off your wife's Burqa-- there will be no one left to save you. Not your newfound allies, or Erdogan who will take the first plane to Riyadh, with as many Lira as his sweaty hands can shove into the pockets of his cheap suit. And just think of it, as the Hagia Sophia church that you turned into a mosque, will become a church again. Istanbul will once again be Constantinople, which means a certain catchy 20's song will require a rewrite. Of course it may not happen exactly that way. But it will happen. Erdogan's plan to suppress and integrate Kurds into a Muslim Turkey will not succeed. And his antagonizing of former allies means that Turkey is exchanging friends, for enemies. Meanwhile your new friends happen to share borders with you and have territorial claims on your land.

So when that day of reckoning comes, you will find that you have made enemies of former allies such as Israel and the US-- and that the new allies Erdogan has found for you in Iran and Syria would prefer a Russian controlled Turkey, that has no chance of ever reverting to a Kemalist government. And Erdogan's godfather in Saudi Arabia commands oil money, not troops. And while he might be willing to sink Turkey for the sake of Islam, perhaps there are Turks who value their nation, more than Islamism. If not, you can look forward to Erdogan "reforming" your country, until it has the military might of Pakistan, the literacy level of Saudi Arabia and the poverty rate of Egypt. It is of course your choice.

A people have the right to choose their destiny, for good or ill. And if you find that this letter is filled with contempt, it is a contempt fully merited by a regime that seeks to cloak its shameful betrayal of a former ally in the guise of human rights, when it brutally suppresses the rights of its own minorities. You may wish to go on dancing to the tune being played by Erdogan, to sheet music composed in Riyadh. It is a very good tune. Filled with hate, violence and religious fanaticism. That also is your choice. But know that whatever you have was bought and paid by your ancestors who understood that Turkey would either modernize out of the gutter of Islam, or it would be washed away by the colonial tide. Your power does not come from Islam, it comes from the bread crusts of civilization that fall from the table of Europe. Abandon them for the red hued madness of the Jihad, and you will not rule over an empire, but over a wasteland. If you doubt that, look to the south and to the east. Look to the desert. You came from there once. And if you throw away civilization for the fanatical madness of Islam-- you will return there again.

Sincerely Yours

A Descendant of a Subject of the Ottoman Empire