The Mavi Marmara Fallout Continues
December 19, 2012 § 3 Comments
Despite the Mavi Marmara incident being two and a half years in the past, its effects are still reverberating in Israel and Turkey and neither side is exactly covering itself with glory. On the contrary, both countries are in the midst of taking action directly related to the Gaza flotilla of 2010 that reflects poorly on each, and that does not inspire confidence for the future of Israeli-Turkish relations.
First is the less egregious example brought to us by Israel, which is the effort to bar National Democratic Assembly MK Hanin Zoabi from running in the January 22 election. Zoabi was the first Arab Israeli woman elected to the Knesset as a member of an Arab political party, and the Central Elections Committee is voting to bar her from running again based on charges that she does not support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and that she incites violence against the government. The first part of this equation stems from the fact that Zoabi decries Israel as racist for being a Jewish state and is openly and proudly anti-Zionist. The second part stems from Zoabi’s participation in the flotilla, as she was aboard the Mavi Marmara when it was boarded by IDF troops and afterwards blasted the IDF and accused it of deliberately killing people on board. It is for this latter reason that Likud MK Ofir Akunis submitted the petition to have Zoabi barred from the next Knesset, since there is an enormous amount of anger in Israel that a Knesset parliamentarian would take Turkey’s side against Israel and actually participate in a flotilla designed to break the Gaza naval blockade. In the past, petitions have been filed to ban parties, and this is again the case this time, but now we have the addition of going after Zoabi personally for her involvement in the flotilla.
There is no doubt that Zoabi is enormously critical of Israel, and there is also a strange cognitive dissonance involved when Zoabi uses her perch as an Arab Israeli elected to the Knesset on behalf of an Arab Israeli party to claim that Israel is fundamentally undemocratic. Nevertheless, one of the wonderful things about Israel is that someone like Zoabi can be elected to the Knesset and can express her opinions as loudly as she wants; this is precisely why arguments that Israel is not a democracy fall flat. Furthermore, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, who is not exactly a leftist, has urged the Central Elections Committee not to disqualify Zoabi because he says the evidence against her is not sufficient to do so. Once Zoabi is banned – the vote is not in question – she is almost certainly going to be reinstated by the High Court, but that does not make this episode any less discomforting. Democracies tolerate all types of unsavory and odious speech, and nobody has alleged that Zoabi herself engaged in violence or attacked IDF soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara. Letting Zoabi continue to spout her view that Israel is not a democracy while doing so from the floor of the Knesset is a much better way of strengthening Israel than providing her with ammunition for her point.
While the move to kick Zoabi out of the Knesset is misguided, Turkey’s new effort to place heat on Israel over the flotilla is far more insidious. Turkish intelligence is now claiming that five of the IDF soldiers who boarded the Mavi Marmara were Turkish citizens who helped raid the ship and interrogate passengers, and it has sent their names to the prosecutor trying the case against IDF officers. According to this new information, which somehow nobody had ever mentioned for two and a half years until now, people on board the ship heard IDF soldiers talking in fluent Turkish and the alleged Turkish IDF members told the Turks whom they were interrogating that Israel had solicited them to be interpreters. In order to figure out who these people are, Turkey has investigated all of its citizens who traveled to Israel and back in the weeks before and after the flotilla, which means that the MIT is spending lots of time checking out Turkey’s Jewish community.
It is certainly in the realm of possibility that Israel sent Turkish translators to interrogate passengers, but I don’t buy the story for a second about Turkish Jews flying in to work for the IDF and then flying right back home when they were done. This is a not so subtle effort to intimidate Turkish Jews and create an implicit threat that if Israel does not apologize and pay compensation, it is Turkey’s Jewish community that will suffer the consequences. Hüseyin Ersöz Oruç, who is the vice chair of the IHH (the group that organized the flotilla), declared that the five names are going to be published and that “everyone will know who the Turkish Jews are that served in the Israeli army and killed Turkish civilians on the Mavi Marmara.” This obviously is worrisome for Turkish Jews who now have to worry about reprisals and attacks upon their loyalty, which is even more absurd considering that a large portion of Turkish Jews purposely back away from Israel and go out of their way to stress that Judaism and Zionism are two separate things. Since Turkey’s efforts to pressure the Israeli government through traditional diplomatic means are not working, someone has made a decision to try new tactics and hit Israel in a sensitive spot by threatening the local Jewish community. As misguided as Likud MKs are in trying to throw Zoabi out of the Knesset over her support for a foreign government, it does not even begin to compare to threatening an entire minority community for nothing more than being Jews. I am confident that the Israeli High Court will do the right thing, and let’s hope that the Turkish government comes to its senses and does the right thing as well.
The Week In Ridiculousness
November 9, 2012 § 1 Comment
I thought I’d use today’s post to highlight a couple of things going on this week that are so absurd that I had resolved to ignore them at all costs, but since they are burning a hole in my brain I am giving in. And no, I will still not be commenting on anything that Jennifer Rubin has written (which should be the new textbook definition of ridiculous) since I am hoping that if nobody pays any attention to her she will, like my 5 month old son, eventually cry herself to sleep and we will no longer have to listen to her.
Topic number one that I had resolved to ignore is the Kafkaesque exercise in propaganda trial of Israeli military officers, including former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, taking place right now in Turkey. The four IDF commanders are being tried in absentia for the deaths of nine Turkish citizens aboard the Mavi Marmara, and in case you are wondering if this trial is a genuine attempt to exercise justice or a political theater of the absurd, all you need to know is that the prosecution is asking for individual sentences of 18,000 years apiece. It might also interest you to hear that the government IHH (ed.. that was a sloppy mistake on my part), which sent the flotilla in 2010, has decided to run advertisements for the trial that are plastered around Istanbul, so you would not be mistaken in thinking that this is closer to a reality show than it is to an impartial judicial hearing. Despite the Turkish government’s best attempts to entice people to come out for its intricately planned modern day gladiator spectacle, the plaza in front of Çağlayan court house has been sparsely populated with only a couple of hundred people who have been competing for attention with Turkish pro-choice activists. The timing of the trial and the government’s efforts to use it to stir up nationalist sentiment are no doubt related to the fact that the AKP and Prime Minister Erdoğan himself are at the shakiest point in their decade-long rule, between the Syrian morass and intra-party tension between Erdoğan and President Gül. Rallying around the flag is the oldest trick in the book and this is a nakedly transparent move in that direction, but it remains to be seen whether it will work. There should be no doubt at all though that this is not a serious effort to get Israel to compromise, will have absolutely zero positive effect on Turkey’s campaign for an Israeli apology and compensation, and is purely and simply about domestic political gain. It is a political temper tantrum, beneath Turkey or any country that purports to take itself seriously. If Ankara were actually interested in a resolution to the dispute with Israel, rather than stage a show trial it would drop its demand for Israel to end the Gaza blockade – which it knows Israel will never agree to and which has nothing to do with Turkey anyway – and work out language on an apology and specific compensation, both of which Jerusalem has indicated it is open to accepting under the right circumstances. It might be too late now that Avigdor Lieberman’s power has been enhanced, but at least a good faith effort would put the ball in Israel’s court. What is going on now, however, is nothing short of an embarrassing and disgraceful spectacle.
Topic number two is the figurative self-immolation of Eric Dondero. For those unfamiliar with his work, Dondero is a former Ron Paul aide who is so upset at President Obama’s reelection that he has decided to personally boycott all Democrats for the rest of his life. What does this mean in practice, you might ask. The answer, in Dondero’s own oh so eloquent words:
All family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt.
I strongly urge all other libertarians to do the same. Are you married to someone who voted for Obama, have a girlfriend who voted ‘O’. Divorce them. Break up with them without haste. Vow not to attend family functions, Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas for example, if there will be any family members in attendance who are Democrats.
Do you work for someone who voted for Obama? Quit your job. Co-workers who voted for Obama. Simply don’t talk to them in the workplace, unless your boss instructs you too for work-related only purposes. Have clients who voted Democrat? Call them up this morning and tell them to take their business elsewhere.
I read this yesterday, and assumed it had to be a joke. Nobody takes themselves this seriously, right? Not to mention that this is about as insane as it gets, even for a devoted Ron Paul employee who believes that the government is secretly planning to form a union with Canada and Mexico and probably carries Krugerrands with him to the supermarket to buy groceries. As it turns out based on Dondero’s interview in New York Magazine, not only is he not joking but he is more deranged than I could have ever imagined. Read the whole interview for a wonderful snapshot of the mental fever that has seized some folks in this country, but my two favorites snippets are Dondero’s answer to whether he would tap an unknown Republican to perform a complicated and risky brain surgery over a Democrat ranked as the top neurosurgeon in the country – “Simple: Avoid them both. Go to Mexico for your medical treatment. Avoid all the red tape and bureaucracy – and his demand that a Democratic neighbor drowning in a lake would have to yell “Obama sucks” before Dondero would jump into the water to rescue him. That people like this exist make me laugh until it hurts and curl up in a ball and cry at the same time.
