Haaretz: Always hitting us when we’re down

I was shopping in Tel Aviv’s Shuk HaCarmel, late on Thursday afternoon, as news of 40 deaths in a fire in the Carmel Forest started to filter through. And, as is their wont, stallholders were loudly and crudely relaying the first details to shoppers and fellow traders.

But whatever you say about stallholders in the Shuk (and I wasn’t particularly kind about them, last week), their hearts are in the right place . . . something that can’t necessarily be said for much of this country’s (so-called) liberal elite (close relations of its “cultural elite”).

“Israel is a stupid, lawbreaking state. It voraciously devours its own people, and this time devoured them with fire.”

Sarid: Arrogant slaphead

So ranted Yossi Sarid, left-wing political commentator and former Meretz leader, in the following morning’s Haaretz under a headline – Where trees burn… (amended, it would seem, for the online edition) – playing on Heinrich Heine’s prediction pertaining to the burning of books.

“I told you so,” repeats the arrogant bald tosser ad infinitum, delighting in his would-be prescience, while admitting that he knows nothing about the cause of the fire (he couldn’t have, seeing as the deadline for submissions would have been around midnight on Thursday).

You see, Israeli journalists of the far left love nothing more than the knee-jerk response. And while the cause of the fire, together with the obvious lack of preparedness for it, will result in yet another state commission of inquiry, Haaretz’s hyperbole and overkill – Friday’s edition featured two other, similar front page comment pieces (see below) – typifies the kind of gratuitous, tasteless Israel-bashing in which it appears to so delight whenever controversy, hardship or tragedy strikes the country (see, for example, Washing, folding . . . and binning Haaretz?)

While two arrests have now been made, Amir Oren penned Call it murder before any evidence of foul play had come to light. “If [the fire] turns out to be man-made . . . ,” he starts one sentence, before then seeming to forget to amend his stupidly irresponsible title (the online edition adds this qualification as its by-line).

And in The firefighters’ Yom Kippur War – you couldn’t make it up! (title again changed online) – Aluf Benn somehow contrives to use the tragedy to warn “Israel not to embark on war against Iran.”

Can Haaretz really be surprised when, as it has admitted, so many people phone up to cancel their subscriptions? If Israel’s other English language newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, wasn’t quite so lame, I would probably do so too.

Fire raging at Kibbutz Beit Oren

(But moving away from these shameless, self-loathing, journalistic assholes to the people who really count . . . ) There are just so many awful ironies in this continuing tragedy, commencing as it did on the very first day of Chanukah. On Friday evening, for example, Israeli TV broadcast the candle-lighting of members of Kibbutz Beit Oren, one of the places worst hit by the fire. And as a kibbutznikit read aloud the blessing ending “she’asa nisim la’avoteinu ba’yamim ha’hem ba’zman ha’zeh” – Who has wrought miracles for our forefathers in those days at this season – the news anchor commented wryly, “In those days, maybe . . . but I am not so sure about these.”

I save till last (and most definitely least) my favourite (if you can have such a thing!) bête noire: Turkey. Following the contemptible way in which this nation of nauseating hypocrites has turned on Israel – its erstwhile ally and even saviour (during the 1999 Izmit earthquake) – over the last couple of years, I would tell Prime Minister Erdogan to shove the two firefighting planes offered to us right up an ‘alley’ (the Turk’s favourite) where the fires don’t burn (except, perhaps, after a spicy kebab).

We will get through this latest test just like we get through all of them . . . and without help from Turkey, or our own dickheads at Haaretz.

World Trade Center set for suicide bomber memorial

From today’s Independent . . .

While the controversy over plans to build an Islamic center and mosque just two blocks away from Ground Zero continues, other plans have come to light for a monument to shahids or fedayeen – i.e., suicide bombers and ‘martyrs’ – on the very site of their most dastardly act: the World Trade Center.

The Allahu Akbar Foundation wants to erect the memorial – comprising three figures: Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, together with an “unknown martyr” (with wires hanging out of his clothing and his thumb on a switch) – at the entrance to 1 World Trade Center (due for completion in 2013).

The artist: Fuqn-Youslus, in her Gaza City home

The figures, made from scrap metal garnered from the twisted wreckage of Israeli buses, took the celebrated Palestinian artist, Miwurqs Fuqn-Youslus, over two days to complete.

“It would have taken even less,” said Fuqn-Youslus from her home (or, at least, what’s left of it) in Gaza City, “but there is a shortage of decent quality niqabs (head coverings) in the shuk as a result of the Israeli blockade. My current one is not a good fit, and the slit keeps riding over my eyes while I work! Oh yes, and there is also the matter of my one arm . . .” (Hamas officials amputated Fuqn-Youslus’s right arm at the elbow after she refused her husband sex without good cause).

The initial reaction of New Yorkers, however, to the latest plans – including of families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks – has been far from enthusiastic.

“Why don’t they just spit on the graves of the three thousand people who were murdered here?” said the father of one such victim, a New York firefighter.

The founder of The Allahu Akbar Foundation, however, Aamer Zileeh-Qunt, can’t see what all the fuss is about.

“We are hearing a lot of propaganda and lies against Muslims – this monument commemorates good men and is not disrespectful in any way,” said Mr. Zileeh-Qunt from his hideout in a remote region of Pakistan. “And it is not just a memorial to martyrs, but also to those who wanted to be but, for example, were too thick to pass the flying course or who, like my brother Abu Hamza in Belmarsh (prison), could not follow the simple instructions in their jihadi bomb-making manuals.”

Various American Reform rabbis have given their support to the planned monument, as has the Jewish lobbying group J Street.

And the reaction in Britain has also been supportive, with Member of Parliament Gerald Kaufman going so far as to claim that opposition to the memorial constitutes an insult to the memory of his late grandmother.

“As a Jew,” declared Mr. Kaufman from outside his Regent’s Park home (that of the dodgy expenses claim), “I am ashamed that some of my coreligionists are behind this ignoble attempt to derail what is, after all, an entirely innocent monument. My grandmother, who was murdered by the Nazis, died in vain if Manhattanites will not allow this perfectly respectable memorial.”

Gorgeous Bhoy: George Galloway ex-MP

Speaking from his bench outside Kings Cross Station, George Galloway, also once a Member of Parliament, claimed that “the tentacles of Zionism are behind this outrageous opposition. It is a lovely work, and my auld mate Saddam, zichrono livrocha, would have been all for it!”

Meanwhile, artsy UK human rights activists Ken Loach, Alexei Sayle and Annie Lennox, together with career Jew-baiter Ken Livingstone, have organised a rally in support of the proposed monument – and to protest against what they have labelled “an undemocratic, Islamophobic provocation” by its opponents – in Hyde Park, this Sunday.

Following the death of the regular speaker at such rallies, playwright Harold Pinter, the organisers are flying in Hollywood film director Oliver Stone, whose recent remarks, they say, make him the natural heir to Pinter’s rally stage.

American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist and political activist, Noam Chomsky, will also traverse the Atlantic specially for the rally.

“My Jewishness,” said Professor Chomsky from his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “together with the fact that no one is bright enough to understand a word of what I am on about, makes my opinion on US government policy vis-à-vis Zionism, the Palestinians and Islam practically unimpeachable.”

The reaction of the Islamic world, too, to opposition to the planned monument has been one of anger. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, between dodging “stray firecrackers”, proclaimed that “the Zionists’ days are numbered”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was unavailable for comment, but a government spokesman in Ankara, Aylyket Ubdibüm, said that Mr. Erdoğan would “go along with the Iranian response . . . whatever that may be.”

And, emerging from his Beirut bunker in a cunning “bandit” disguise, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah – who denied recent media reports that he and a certain extremist rabbi residing in Stamford Hill may be distant cousins – again threatened Tel Aviv.

“We have missiles capable even of reaching melchett mike,” declared Nasrallah. “This Zionist piss-taker should enjoy his four dogs while Allah allows him.”

Cunning disguise: Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, on a Beirut street

Making us sick: An open letter to a Turkish MP

Dear Mr. Kiniklioğlu,

I write in response to your op-ed article, This Israeli Government Has Gone Too Far, in last Wednesday’s International Herald Tribune.

“It makes yer sick . . .” So a dear, late uncle of mine would commence his not infrequent tirades against the hypocrisy and double standards of the international community and media in its treatment of Israel. And, after reading your ill-thought-out piece, I have not been able to get Uncle Stanley’s words out of my head.

As Deputy Chairman of External Affairs in Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Spokesman of your parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, I would have expected you to know at least a little of your own country’s human rights record, however uncomfortable the facts.

From the opening, however, of your article’s second paragraph – “I have many friends in Israel . . .” (the equivalent of the anti-Semite’s familiar “Some of my best friends are Jews . . .”) – I feared the worst. And your description of the raid on the Gaza flotilla and of its “peace activists” – they of the delightful “Go back to Auschwitz” call – flies in the face of all the evidence, which clearly shows an attempted lynch of IDF soldiers.

How would Turkey respond to another country daring to interfere with its treatment of the Kurds? And how would your soldiers respond to beatings with iron bars, to having their weapons grabbed and turned on them, and to being thrown off the deck of a ship? Would Turkey provide the “independent investigation”, “apology”, “compensation” and “punish[ment]” which you now demand of Israel?

Your reference to the war which Israel “unleashed” in Gaza totally ignores its cause: eight long years of Hamas rocket attacks (still continuing). Turkey has hardly been a model of restraint when it comes to its Hamas, the Kurdish PKK. Moreover, conditions in Gaza make it seem like The Ritz compared to Turkey’s savagely neglected Kurdish hinterlands.

Turkey is not one-tenth of the democracy that Israel is (and after only 62 years of existence). Seeing as your Masters in International Relations would appear to have excluded them from its syllabus, here are just a few of the uncomfortable details:

• In 2008, Turkey ranked second (after Russia) in the list of countries with the largest number of open human rights violation cases at the European Court of Human Rights (source, and see this table).
• In addition to thousands of “disappearances”, by the close of 2008, a total of 2,949 people had been killed by unknown perpetrators and 2,308 by extrajudicial executions in the, primarily Kurdish, southeast and eastern regions of Turkey (source).
• Turkish politicians, trade unionists, journalists and human rights activists (genuine ones!) have been convicted merely for having used the word “Kurdistan” (source), while Turkey has a long history of deaths at demonstrations due to excessive police force, with 13 killed during a PKK funeral as recently as March 2006 (source).

For details of Turkey’s “cultural genocide” of the Kurds, its invasion, occupation and ethnic cleansing of northern Cyprus, and – most heinous of all – its extermination of up to one a half million Armenians, see here, here and here.

Where do you find the gall, Mr. Kiniklioğlu, to lecture Israel (or any country for that matter) about “blatant disregard for international norms and law”, to quote Amnesty International – whose website dedicates one hundred webpages solely to Turkey (and, then, only going back to 1994!) – or to moralise about what “the conscience of the Turks” can or cannot “carry the burden of”? What contemptible hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness!

The feebleness of your argument (if indeed there is one) is reflected in your desperate, shameful references to how the Turks “welcomed the Jews escaping from the Inquisition in Spain in 1492” and to how your “diplomats have risked their lives to save European Jews from the Nazis” (according to my research, a total of three Turks have been honoured by Yad Vashem).

You conveniently (cunningly?) omit to mention, however, the self-interest inherent in the Sultan’s and Atatürk’s aforementioned actions, and the subsequent huge contribution – especially commercial – of Turkish Jewry to your country. You also overlook, inter alia, Turkey’s racist 1942 Wealth Tax, its role in the Struma disaster of the same year, and the no less than three terrorist attacks on Istanbul’s Neve Shalom Synagogue.

Have you forgotten, too, the hundreds of Israeli search and rescue workers who risked their own lives in order to save Turks in the aftermath of the 1999 Izmit earthquake?

You seem to consider that Turkey has been doing Israel a huge favour, all these years, by accepting arms supplies and upgrades, together with military intelligence and know-how, from our vastly superior army and air force.

No, it was not “the Israeli raid”, as you mischievously (duplicitously?) suggest, that “was a turning point for Turkish attitudes towards Israel” or which “crossed a critical threshold” . . . but rather your prime minister’s and party’s decision to realign Turkey with the terrorist states of Syria and Iran (you disingenuously also throw into your article mention of “the tension surrounding Iran’s nuclear program”, in which Turkey is now an accomplice). In such circumstances, writing that “Turks regard the current Israeli government as unfriendly” would be akin to Hitler having said that about the Russians, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union!

It is worrying that the International Herald Tribune sees fit to publish such dangerous, ill-thought-out drivel, merely by virtue of its author being a member of his country’s parliament. Had you submitted the same as part of an undergraduate degree in Politics at a British university (or even at a former polytechnic), it would have received a straight “F”.

To give you some idea of the strength of feeling here about your country’s double standards, an Israeli artist friend of mine – by no means a right-winger – related to me over coffee yesterday morning how he had walked 45 minutes to the Turkish Embassy in Tel Aviv merely to “give it the finger” (literally). And I, too, give you the finger, Mr. Kiniklioğlu, together with your vile, knuckle-dragging nation of hypocrites.

If you have anything to say in your defence – as to why you believe that your sickening hypocrisy and double standards should not earn you June’s Mook of the Month (with your reputation, from Web searches of your name, being forever associated with mookness) – I invite you to post it to https://melchettmike.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/making-us-sick-an-open-letter-to-a-turkish-mp/.

Yours sincerely,

melchett mike

[I have e-mailed this post to Mr. Kiniklioğlu via the contact page of his website.]

Hitting Turkey where it hurts

Israeli tourism to Turkey hit an all-time high in 2008, with over half a million Israelis (me included) visiting between January and October alone. Israelis rank tenth amongst all nationalities entering the Third World country, which boasts Istanbul and some cheap resorts. (Ynetnews article)

But enough is enough.

Following Prime Minister Erdogan’s grossly hypocritical tirades against Israel’s war on terror (see my earlier Mr. Erdogan . . . you’re the Christmas turkey! post), and the Bnei Hasharon basketball team’s ordeal in Ankara last week (Jerusalem Post article), the time has come for Israelis to hit the hypocritical Turks where it hurts most . . . and I don’t mean in their asses (that would be counter-productive), but in their pockets, by choosing a different vacation destination.

Turkey’s arch enemy, Greece, would be a fitting choice. Its islands have better beaches, entertainment and, most definitely, culture (if not Russian totty) than Antalya, Bodrum, and all those other tawdry resorts put together. One is also less likely to be accosted by some fat, greasy, moustachioed male looking for some unsuspecting kosher ‘meat’ to stick on his unwashed ‘skewer’.

I, for one, won’t be visting Turkey again (and can now dispose of all those corks). But the next time there is a terrible natural disaster there, let’s tell them how shit they’ve been to the Armenians and the Kurds before automatically proffering our support.

Wankers.

(Apologies for melchett mike having become rather less refined over the past fortnight . . . frustration at all the hypocrisy has brought out the cruder side of me!)

Mr. Erdogan . . . you’re the Christmas turkey!

Turkey is known more for its kebabs (and the dubious sexual preferences and practices of its menfolk) than its national sense of humour. The recent utterances of Turkey’s Prime Minister, however, bear all the hallmarks of a comic genius.

In January, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of Turkey’s Islamic ruling party, suggested that Qassam rockets fired from Gaza don’t kill.

His latest one-liner is that Israel’s war against Hamas and its rockets constitutes “a serious crime against humanity”.

Mr. Erdogan is clearly trying to prove, single-handedly, that the origins of the North American slang turkey – “a stupid or inept person” (Concise Oxford Dictionary) – do not derive from the bird eaten on Christmas; because both Erdogan and his country, stuck in the Middle Eastern Middle Ages, know all too well about “serious crime[s] against humanity”.

Not even mentioning (as Turks themselves don’t) the Armenian genocide and ongoing persecution of the Kurds, Turkey is a serial violator of human rights (the reason for its delayed accession to the EU). Blacklisting, on political, religious and sexuality grounds, is commonplace, as is torture, even murder, at the hands of the police. “Denigrating Turkishness” is prohibited, and many journalists and intellectuals have been victims of violent attacks and even assassinations. Forced virginity-testing for females was only outlawed as recently as 2002.

I had shocking first-hand experience of the primitive, barbaric side (there is another) of Turkey in 2000, on my first ever visit to the country, for the UEFA Cup semi-final between Galatasaray and Leeds United. On the evening before the game (a matter of minutes after I had started walking back to my hotel), Leeds fans Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight were viciously stabbed to death (Loftus was stabbed 17 times) in Taksim Square, in the heart of Istanbul, by a knife-wielding mob, following allegations that the Turkish flag had been “disrespected”. Even if true, a nation that values a piece of cloth over human life needs to undertake some serious self-analysis. (Some of the Turkish press even glorified the killings, one headlining “We made their heads kiss the ground of our motherland.” Nice.)

Istanbul is a fascinating city (I have been four times now, and even had my heart broken there). But the Ottoman Empire has long since faded, and venturing outside of the major cities is, by all accounts, like finding oneself on the set of some Middle Eastern Deliverance.

Despite being only sixty years’ old, and rising out of the ashes of the Holocaust rather than a vast Empire, Israel is light years ahead of Turkey in the democratic stakes, and in virtually every other way. She provides Turkey with major assistance, including humanitarian (IDF search and rescue teams were to the fore in the aftermath of the 1999 earthquake), military, and intelligence (the Mossad helps Turkey track down Al Qaeda operatives in the region).

Mr. Erdogan, friendship works both ways. And friends support each other at times of need. Perhaps it is hard for you to comprehend (not being written in your holy Koran), but a genuine Jewish friend is better than a criminal Muslim one. You wouldn’t want to share an Efes Pilsen (alcohol-free, of course) with a Hamas terrorist any more than a PKK one.