Turkish Blood Changes the Equation

2 June 2010
We thank God that the Freedom Flotilla ships sailed from Turkish ports and thank Him more that one of them (Marmara) was sailing under the Turkish flag. We thank Him a third time that Turkish martyrs were killed by the bullets of the Israeli soldiers who raided the ship and opened fire deliberately at the activists aboard it with the murderous intent.

Turkey's entry into the arena of the Arab-Israeli conflict with such strength and zeal has started to bear fruit with unusual speed. The UN Security Council met within few hours to discuss the Israeli massacre, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak immediately ordered the opening of the Rafah crossing and demonstrations swept across Turkey demanding revenge for their martyrs' blood.

Since when did the Security Council meet so quickly to discuss an Israeli aggression at an Arab request and issue a statement demanding an immediate serious investigation according to international criteria and condemning Israeli criminality? It is true that the statement, or resolution, was not as forceful as we had hoped for but it was different and the reason is the Turkish factor. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was more Arab than the Arabs themselves when he acted strongly and courageously in confronting this Israeli criminality by demanding an extraordinary UNSC session and another for NATO, withdrawing his ambassador immediately from Tel Aviv, demanding that Israel lift the blockade immediately from the Gaza Strip, describing the attack on the Freedom Flotilla as vile and state terrorism, and warning the Hebrew State he was running out of patience.

We have not heard anything like this language since the death of Egyptian leader Jamal Abd-al-Nasir. These manly stands have disappeared completely from the lexicons of our Arab leaders as criticizing Israel has become taboo, allowing Israel to persist with its crimes, massacres, blockades, and shameless humiliations of this nation.

We do not want an ordinary or extraordinary meeting of the Arab League to discuss the latest Israeli massacre. What is the use of such a meeting other than to appear to be interested or trying to do something? Is it not disgraceful that the Security Council met all night and only hours after the massacre while the League Council had not yet met when these lines were being written?

Israel is living its worst days now, not because of Arab military or diplomatic efforts but because it assumes that protection from the US and the west is always guaranteed. The arrogance of power made it commit these stupidities and act like outlaws and pirates at sea.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu practices lies as a profession, like all Israeli officials, and this lie reached its peak when he said his soldiers opened fire at the activists in self-defence, that is, self-defence against unarmed people who were amazed to see helicopters dropping commando units and shooting live bullets at them.

The ships were not carrying bombs and missiles and there was not a single gunman aboard them. They were carrying only electric wheelchairs for the disabled whose limbs were destroyed by the Israeli missiles and phosphorous bombs during the aggression against Gaza, medicine boxes for the sick, construction materials for repairing what was destroyed by the bombardment, and water purification materials banned by the Israeli authorities so as to kill the Strip's sons from cholera and typhoid. Two years of US pressures and pleas to persuade Israel to allow the entry of building materials and cement into the Strip so as to put an end to the suffering of 60,000 persons living under the open sky over their destroyed houses were useless.

One of the ironies of fate is that the Israelis who are accusing the organizers of these convoys of using them as a tool of provocation and media propaganda were the first ones to use this method before 70 years. They filled ships with the Jewish immigrants who survived the Holocaust in the 1940's in order to embarrass the British authorities occupying Palestine at that time and which were trying to prevent them by force for fear of the Palestinians' rebellion. More seriously, the Jews' Zionist leaders who organized these ships, the last of them in 1947 which carried around 4,700 immigrants, deliberately clashed with the British forces that were imposing a naval blockade and claimed that British tear gas killed a baby so as to incite world public opinion and win it to their demand for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The UN mission was at the time discussing the issue of partition. These pressures regrettably succeeded in issuing the UN resolution and it was later revealed that this baby was not killed by British tear gas, as the British "Daily Mail" said, but had died days before the confrontation.

Israel broke international law by raiding a passenger liner in the open sea and international waters and then hijacking it and arresting its passengers, killing and injuring 50 of them. One of these ships was raising the flag of Turkey, a NATO member.

The question being asked is what would be the reaction of the United States and NATO if Ahmadinezhad's Iran intercepted an American, British, or even Norwegian ship in international waters, opened fire at its passengers, injured its captain, and then took the ship to an Iranian port?

The answer is obvious and known. This Iranian stand would be considered a declaration of war deserving the dispatch of fleets, bombers, and nuclear submarines to bombard Iran or, at best, have the UNSC issue an immediate and quick resolution imposing suffocating economic sanctions on it.

What do the Israelis expect when they attack a ship in the open sea? Do they expect its passengers to receive them with flowers, dances, and songs, or by slaughtering sheep and calves?

Israel is confirming for the millionth time that it is a rogue state defying all international charters and it is wrong to say that these actions and behaviours are happening because an extremist right-wing government is ruling it because the former "Kadima" government committed war crimes during its aggression against the Gaza Strip, used white phosphorous bombs, and killed more than 1,500 innocent people, a third of them children.

All of them are war criminals and there must be a quick international investigation to uncover all the circumstances of this latest massacre and those involved in it, starting with Netanyahu who admitted giving the green light for committing it and then General Gabi Ashkenazi, the chief of staff who carried it out, and ending with Defence Minister Ehud Barak who supervised it.

Netanyahu's Government has announced that it will prevent any new ship which wants to break the blockade and in the same way with which it dealt with the Freedom ships. The organizers announced at the same time the preparation of new convoys in a strong challenge to the Israeli arrogance. The difference between previous convoys and the new ones is that the latter's passengers will be more eager and prepared for martyrdom and even compete for it. Israeli piracy is not going to intimidate them.

Israel has lost its strategic ally Turkey and moved it from the corner of friend to that of the enemy. The Turkish people, stubborn and proud, will not forget their martyrs. Israel is increasingly hated as it faces the threat of Iran's growing regional power and stands on the verge of losing its Western allies whom it is embarrassing and threatening their security with its massacres.

The only friend left for Israel, and we say it with bitterness and sorrow, are the official Arab order or those still committed to the peace process and moving in the American orbit. We say it sincerely and with satisfaction: Congratulations to Israel for these friends. They might be helpful to it when they have not been helpful to their nation, creed, peoples, and fair causes.