24-Dec-17: Nabi Saleh, the media and a Tamimi child's journey

Ahed Tamimi in court last week
[Image Source]

A depressingly large number of people posting in various social media channels are hammering away right now at a campaign that tries to characterize the Palestinian Arab teen Ahed Tamimi as a victim of Israeli oppression, as a human rights activist, as a freedom fighter.

She's the young woman many know as Shirley Temper, a photogenic and compliant performer who for at least eight years now has been the central child figure in a long-running propaganda performance orchestrated by her father, the full-time propagandist Bassem Tamimi and his publicity business he operates, Tamimi Press.

What others say about this is very much on our minds. What Bassem Tamimi himself says is a matter of record. Child abuse? Manipulation? Ha! The ugly manipulation in which he and his fellow villagers engage chronically is dismissed in masterful fashion: "Our children are doing their duty and must be strong." It's an appalling message of which the directors of the Hitlerjugend would have been proud. 

We keep running into people who think they know the story of the Tamimi clan. But it's clear to us that in reality few understand the rich and ugly detail of their hatefulness. It's expressed not as mere protest and words but the kind of physical violence that has ended dozens of lives on the Tamimi side and among their many victims.

FBI Most Wanted Terrorist: The Arabic version is here

Regular readers of this blog know our oldest daughter Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in a massacre engineered by Bassem Tamimi's niece, Ahlam Tamimi. 

Since March 2017, that Tamimi woman has been a fugitive from US justice, wanted by the FBI to face federal charges in Washington arising from the bombing/massacre of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem 16 years ago.

She has confessed often and in great detail about her role as the mastermind of the slaughter.

Meanwhile Bassem Tamimi has been crowned a hero of and by Amnesty International. In a shockingly cynical move that in large measure backfired on them, Amnesty's agitprop specialists sent him on a coast-to-coast roadshow in 2015.

We tried to get some straight answers from him and from his generous sponsors at the time to some straightforward, related questions... but all we got was ignored: see "04-Sep-15: Mr. Human Rights Defender, a question if we may".

But Ahlam Tamimi, the confessed murderer, along with her uncle and aunt and cousin Nariman, Bassem and Ahed, are simply part of a long list of Tamimis associated with Arab-on-Israeli terror. Some of the details have been deliberately obscured or hidden. We have been doing what we can to publicize them.

We revisited some of the barely-known details just a few days ago - see "19-Dec-17: Uncovering some of Nabi Saleh's hideous buried secrets".

On any objective view, enthusiasm for the "bravery" of Ahed (sometimes written Ah'd and Aahd) Tamimi is a strange thing because of how it ignores the trajectory of her emergence as a media figure and the center of a multimedia "Free Ahed Now" project.

How old is she? 

Depends whom you ask. She was 12 in September 2011 [quoted by Israellycool from an Arab source]; 8 in August 2012 [Source: +972, a far-left Israeli site]; 13 in December 2012 [Source: TimeTurk News and other Turkish sources]; 10 in December 2012 [Source: World Bulletin]; 13 in June 2013 [Source: Your Middle East]; 12 in February 2014 [Source; The Guardian]; 14 in September 2015 [Source: NBC News]; 16 in February 2017 [a South African source]. Thus she was born (in the same order as those links) in 1999, 2004, 1999, 2002, 2000, 2002, 2001, 2001. It's hard to be precise. And to be clear, it's fair to assume all this vagueness is intentional.

[UPDATE January 1, 2018: The answer is - she will turn 17 on January 31, 2018, having been in 2001. Much if not most of what has been written and published in past years about her age has been wrong, and almost certainly deliberately fudged. See what we wrote here.]

We have pulled together some images (below) from public sources that chart the process by which her family and her village - but most of all her parents - cultivated a media-ready provocateur. It's a dismaying chronicle not only because it shows how there are loathsome people who, even though they are parents, would do this to a child. But also because of the individuals, a distressing number of them progressive Jews, who have embraced this distressing and very obvious child-abuse while giving no sign they see the malice, the hate, the bigotry and the overt and calculated manipulation that has accompanied it from the outset until today.

▲ July 2, 2010: Screaming on demand for her father's cameras and just 9 years old, Ahed Tamimi is confident enough to walk up to a fully armed soldier and shriek into his face. It's very likely someone told her not to worry, everything will be OK, just show fierce little-girl anger while the cameras roll. And so a career is launched. See more in this video from which the photo above was screen-captured. And here: "06-Sep-15: The making of a pigtailed provocateur". Watch carefully and you can see the child's mother in the same video clip. Mostly - since she has much less to offer than her child does - she stays out of camera range.

▲ June 16, 2012: With live-action TV news cameras everywhere, this is Ahed Tamimi on stage, age 11, in Amman, Jordan, gazing longingly at her role-model cousin and Nabi Saleh's pride and joy, the boastful and confessed murderer-who-got-away-with-it Ahlam Tamimi, our daughter Malki's killer. The occasion is the wedding of the Tamimi woman with another Nabi Saleh murderer (who happens also to be a Tamimi, the bride's cousin and little Ahed's cousin), Nizar Tamimi, the male in the photo. Everyone in the picture, along wih many of the wedding guests, is a blood-relative of everyone else. (The Tamimi's are deeply committed to marrying within their tribe.) As the published videos and photos attest, many members of the Nabi Saleh Tamimis traveled to Jordan to be present. Background: "22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it"

▲ September 2012: Here she's eleven years old. The CAMERA caption reads: "Mahmoud Abbas congratulates A'hd (right) and her cousin Marah for their "bravery" (From the Nabi Sabeh Solidarity blog)" 

▲ November 2, 2012: Still not quite 12, and captured on video by the cameras of Tamimi Press while stage managed by Bassem Tamimi, her deeply-cynical father, Ahed screams "I spit in your face". [Image Source]

▲ December 24, 2012: Recognizing the power of a little blonde tyke, aged almost 12 and who teaches the Israelis a lesson, Mevlüt Uysal, then mayor of the Istanbul district of Başakşehir (and currently mayor of Istanbul) awards the always-willinng Tamimi girl the Başakşehir Hanzala Courage Award trophy [Image Source]

▲ December 31, 2012: The Tamimi handlers manage to set up an encounter for the sub-teen child with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan [Image Source]

▲ December 31, 2012: Next thing you know, he gives her breakfast [Image Source]

▲ A widely-published portrait of Ahed with the proud parents (father on the left) in February 2013 [Image Source]. She's aged 12.

▲ March 17, 2013: That's twelve-year-old Ahed in the bottom row among the other eager "peace-makers" of Nabi Saleh. Her father and chief manipulator Bassem Tamimi is at top left; her mother Nariman Tamimi in the bottom left corner. Everyone's a relative of everyone else here - a major promotion for bigotry-rich terrorism from the editors of one of the world's major sources of news. Some people read this and may think the Tamimis are talking about some future activity of a peaceful nature. A reminder that in the so-called second Intifada, the death toll among Israelis was huge; among Arabs, substantially larger. We urge you to absorb some of the background: "17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns". And this follow-up: "29-Aug-15: Revisiting a Palestinian Arab village and its monsters". And another: "01-Sep-15: A tale of two villages: one devoted to non-violence, another that actually exists".

▲ November 21, 2014: AlwatanVoice publishes one of the many Tamimi Press snapshots of the Tamimi village children boldly marching to another entirely-artificial and contrived weekly "clash" with Israeli soldiers. As always, Ahed Tamimi, not quite 14, is placed by her father (she's always being placed by one of her parents) in the most photographed position. Right behind her is Naji Tamimi, a full-time paid Fatah "activist" and cousin or brother (according to different sources) of Bassem Tamimi

▲ March 13, 2015 Ahed Tamimi is 14 here. The weekly Nabi Saleh media-focused confrontation with remarkably restrained and patient Israeli soldiers [Image Source]

▲ March 13, 2015: Ahed, 14, playing the customary featured role she's been bred to fill, in the weekly performance-for-the-media outside Nabi Saleh. Once again, she's screaming on cue [Image Source]

▲ August 28, 2015: With her father Bassem moving into the camera's view for a brief moment (green shirt), but doing nothing to protect his daughter, Ahed Tamimi, 14, photogenically writhes and struggles with an embarrassed, lone Israeli serviceman who could have theoretically used his gun to get out of a difficult situation but naturally did not. It's as viral an image as Bassem Tamimi can ever have planned. [Image Source: CNN]

▲ September 2, 2015: Bassem, Nariman, Ahed (14) and other members of the family are again honored by a personal audience with the president-for-life of the Palestinian Authority [Image Source]

▲ September 3, 2015: Not to be outdone by his boss, Sabri Saidam, the Palestinian Authority's minister of education visits the little town of Nabi Saleh to get a grip on developments there. Background: "10-Sep-15: It takes a village: The passion for violence of the peace-loving Tamimis". No such visit would be complete without an Ahed pose. She's 14.

▲ November 2015: Bassem Tamimi, Ahed's father, is paraded around the US by Amnesty International, In Ithaca, NY, where this photo is taken, he addresses an audience of school-children from Grade 3. There's outrage in the city ["School District: Ithaca 3rd graders exposed to anti-Israel rhetoric in the classroom" and "Judge sends Ithaca schools a message over pro-Palestinian speaker"]. Shortly afterwards, his visa to enter the United States was permanently revoked by the Obama administration.

▲ November 2015: An invaluable examination by Petra Marquardt-Bigman of the Ahed Tamimi phenomenon, the horror of the messages emanating from her parents and cousins, and the context in which all this has been happening [The Tower] 

▲ Some months ago, Ahed Tamimi, not yet 17 and following the instructions of the event planners, addressed in Arabic a committee in the European Parliament.

▲ From the Jewish Voices for Peace Twitter feed

The idea of referring to Nariman Tamimi, Ahed's mother, as a person with a "voice full of love and tenderness" is delusional. Don't believe us? Check out "02-Oct-15: Truth, honesty, love, murder... and useful idiots".

But if the subject of "butchered childhoods" is mentioned, we happen to know something about how that actually works. Our daughter Malki, who never once thrust a fist into the face of anyone let alone a soldier, was just fifteen years old when she became an unwilling participant in the explosive moment which the murderous Tamimi clan celebrate yearly with such huge enthusiasm. 

The photo of Malki (above) stands for the absolute opposite of what the Tamimi propaganda machine is marketing: goodness, kindness, concern for others, embracing the different and the weak and the damaged, always optimistic.

It's tragic how many people fail to understand that simple truth.

15-Apr-16: Stand by for a united Islamic assault on terror... and possibly some other things as well

Erdogan addresses Muslim kings and prime ministers yesterday in Istanbul [Image Source]

Almost entirely unreported at this early stage, might it be that the Islamic world has decided, finally, to do something serious to curb terrorism? Perhaps, but in the circumstances (which we're about to describe) it would be wise to suspend judgment for a while. That's because it's not that clear what sort of steps they are planning to take. Or against whom exactly. Or frankly for what purpose.

It stems from a major announcement by Turkey's most powerful politician.

Today, Friday, is the second day of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) 13th Islamic Summit Conference. Held once every three years, the event is hosted this time by Turkey in Istanbul with the attendance of "prime ministers and presidents from over 30 countries".

The OIC, about which we have posted several times in the past [click], was formed in 1969 and is made up of 57 member states. It calls itself "the collective voice of the Muslim world" working to "safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony".

Peace and harmony, let's concede, are in notably short supply these days, and strikingly so in a significant number of the Muslim countries and even at the summit itself (see "OIC conference begins with Iran-Saudi spat"). Indeed Turkey's foreign minister, quoted today by Aljazeera ["Islamic world leaders seek to bridge differences"], reveals that

"the Islamic world is experiencing many disputes within itself. Fratricidal conflict causes great pain. Sectarianism divides the ummah," he told OIC foreign ministers on Tuesday, using the Arabic world for the Muslim community. "Hopefully, this summit will pave the way for healing some wounds." [Aljazeera, April 14, 2016]

Healing wounds? The Russian RT news outlet helps us understand how they are going about that. It reports this morning that terrorism (and not violent extremism, please note) has emerged as a core feature of this OIC summit:

Turkey is trying to unite the Islamic world and lead it in the fight against terror with a new Istanbul-based police force tasked with tackling extremism in the region... Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has accepted his proposal to create a multinational police center based in Istanbul to battle international terrorism. The new structure is to be called the OIC Center for Police Cooperation and Coordination... “It would be helpful to establish a structure among member states that will strengthen and institutionalize cooperation against terror and other crimes,” he said, during a speech... The aim, according to Erdogan, is to fight Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq, Syria and Libya and Boko Haram and Al Shabaab in Africa, as “all these terror organizations oppress and harm all Muslims."

Turkey's Davutoglu and PA's Abbas yesterday at OIC summit.
Probably preparing their attack on terrorists [Image Source]

However, and it's a rather big but, that's not all they want to fight. RT explains that

While the details of the new Islamic anti-terror police force yet to be made public, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is already calling to “liberate all Islamic lands under occupation.”

The Turkish daily Hurriyet expands: 

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has put forth a call to “liberate all Islamic lands under occupation,” while also asking for a common and broader view of Muslims in order to discuss the problems of the Muslim world with maturity. “We need a common stance for the liberation of all the Islamic lands that are under occupation, especially Palestine,” said Davutoğlu April 14, while delivering an opening speech... “The most important indicator which would show the effectiveness of the OIC is protecting Muslim minorities and liberating occupied lands such as Palestine, Karabakh and Crimea,” Davutoğlu said... [explaining that in these places] the Islamic identity is under threat of being demolished... “Despite differences of opinion, we need to maximize political relations and improve bilateral contacts in maturity so we can discuss all problems in the Muslim world,” he said. ["Turkish PM calls for broader view of Muslims", Hurriyet, April 15, 2016]

(In passing, we will mention that the editorial offices of Hurriyet, whose line is considered liberal and secular, were sacked by pro-Erdogan mobs screaming Islamist slogans several times in the past year. Still, they managed to escape the fate of their larger competitor Zaman, Turkey's biggest-circulating newspaper; it was shut down by court order last month and placed under state control. BBC says "no reason was given by the court for the decision", and quotes Davutoglu as cryptically explaining the takeover was "legal, not political".)

We have found relatively few mentions in online news channels today of the two-pronged strategy announced by the Turks. This report ["Muslim countries have agreed to work together to fight terrorism: Turkey President Erdogan"] for instance, from a respected Mumbai-based news service seems to have been written by someone who was out of the room when Palestine came up. The same with yesterday morning's Reuters despatch ["Muslim nations agree to work closely to fight terrorism: Turkey's Erdogan"] The Gulf News editors saw fit [here] to report how Erdogan "noted that the majority of the victims of terrorism are Muslims and called it a “source of shame” that most of those who risk their lives at sea to reach Europe are Muslims." But didn't mention the Palestine angle either.

Perhaps we'll be seeing some more-comprehensive news reporting later today. But it seems an odd dropping of the ball.

Being opposed to terror is one of those abstractions that tend to have more to do with prevailing cultural values than with the plain meaning of the words. Sometimes, too, the results of attitude polls into such matters as how people feel about terror and human bomb attacks just don't make sense without drilling down into how they understand some of the basic words.

To illustrate, this might be a good time to review how "terror" seems to mean radically different things at different times and in different contexts. For instance, "03-Nov-15: What do they mean when the Palestinian Arabs say they oppose terror?" And for a specifically-Turkish context, "6-Jun-10: It's not that complicated: Is IHH a humanitarian group or a terrorist group?"

Finally a reminder of how the juxtaposition of the words victim, terror and Israel tends to make some people loses their moral compass completely: "03-Mar-16: When the UN responds to terrorism, which victims does it entirely ignore?"

22-Dec-15: Has a Hamas terror insider just been thrown out of Turkey?

Al-Arouri addresses a global gathering of Islamic scholars in Istanbul's
Cevahir Hotel, August 20, 2014, and claims credit on behalf of Hamas
for the abduction and murder of three Israeli boys in Gush Etzion
some weeks earlier [Screen shot]

If the name Saleh Mohammad Suleiman Al-‘Arouri is not familiar to you, it should be.

Saleh Al-Arouri is in the news this evening because, according to reports published today, the senior terrorist, Hamas politbureau member and Islamist preacher has just been expelled from Turkey. News reports today say this is in accordance with an Israeli request in the context of the re-normalization of relations between the two countries. But there are differing versions of what has just happened.

According to the Ynet version today,

Israel established al-Arouri's expulsion from the country as a condition for achieving full reconciliation between Ankara and Jerusalem. Al-Arouri's "voluntary" departure was agreed upon during the meeting between Hamas' political chief, Khaled Mashal and Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu last Saturday. Nevertheless, Erdogan clarified to close associates that he had no intention of closing Hamas' offices in Turkey and would not stop his financial and moral support of Hamas, as Israel requested...  It was also agreed upon that al-Arouri would be expelled from Turkey and that talks about laying a gas pipeline between Israel and Turkey would soon begin. [Hamas leader expelled from Turkey | Ynet, December 22, 2015]

One of the founders of Hamas, Al-Arouri is a veteran of Israel's prison system where he spent 15 (some say 18) years. On release in 2007, he was expelled to Syria. Hamas' offices in Syria were shut down in 2012, at which point he and several terrorist colleagues were welcomed to Turkey. We have had occasion to write several times about the savagery over which he presided from there:

• 11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising
• 27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved
• 30-Sep-14: Martyrs and monsters
• 11-Sep-14: Freeing terrorists: The price in human lives lost and in justice perverted keeps getting clearer

On August 20, 2014, speaking from the principal dais at a gathering in Istanbul of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, Al-Arouri publicly confessed that Hamas was behind the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenage boys some weeks earlier, an act of terror that ignited passions right across the spectrum of Israeli public opinion. (The global association of "scholars" has its own YouTube channel. His speech, in Arabic with English-language subtitles, is online.)

It seems Turkey's decision to separate itself from Al-Arouri is not intended for full disclosure, if Ynet's sources are right:

Turkish media were asked Monday to not publish the reason for al-Arouri's expulsion from the country. Newspaper editors were told that the official reason given would be that he left of his "own free will"... [Ynet]

The same sources say the terrorist is likely to take up residence in Qatar where several of his Hamas colleagues are luxuriously ensconced already, or - which seems less likely - in Lebanon.

The Jerusalem Post offers a different take. Quoting Al-Quds Al-Arabi, a London-based newspaper, it says today that Al-Arouri left Turkey several months ago "so as not to embarrass Turkey, which was facing big pressure from Israel and the US Administration”, and is now "shuttling between Qatar and Lebanon... The source also denied that Turkey had banned Al-Arouri from entering the country".

In Turkey, credible reports have been circulating for months that Al-Arouri had already moved elsewhere. Hurriyet Daily News, in an August 12, 2015 report headlined "Hamas leader Arouri not in Turkey" quoted officials from that country's foreign ministry saying not only that he was no longer a resident of Turkey but never had been. The same report quotes Israel's Channel 10 News saying in early August pretty much what Ynet and the Jerusalem Post have reported as news today - that

Turkey had bowed to pressure by the United States and ordered al-Arouri, who Israel has accused of organizing terrorist attacks in the West Bank, to leave the country... [Hurriyet, August 12, 2015]

Why did Turkey agree? Because, according to the August 2015 report, that was one of the Western prerequisites for Turkey’s entry into the coalition of forces fighting ISIS. (Personally, we're not persuaded.)

A respected Turkish newspaper, Today's Zaman, tells things over a little differently, asserting that

Turkey and Israel have agreed that Salah al-Arouri, a senior leader of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, who has been living in Turkey will not be allowed to operate from there...  The AK Party's recent change of heart towards the Israelis came after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signaled when returning from a trip to Turkmenistan earlier in December that the region would benefit from Turkey and Israel's rapprochement... ["Turkey says talks to mend ties with Israel positive, no change in preconditions", Today's Zaman, December 22, 2015]

Whatever the fine details, if the Islamist savage is now involuntarily on the move and no longer able to call Turkey home, we can hope something good might yet come of it.

06-Nov-15: What Amnesty hath wrought: The elevation of the terror-minded Tamimis

Allow us to please recommend strongly that you go over to the website of The Tower to read an important investigative article authored by Petra Marquardt-Bigman (bio here). 

Under the title "How a Family Became a Propaganda Machine", she reveals how the Palestinian Arab Tamimi clan (about whose members we have written often) has become internationally renowned for their supposed advocacy of non-violence - in large measure due to to the indispensable support of Amnesty International. 

As the writer shows via a detailed drilling down into matters that rarely get reported, the undeserved elevation of the Tamimis to influence and prominence is done only by carefully overlooking how they really, truly and sincerely want an armed uprising against their Israeli neighbours. On an ongoing basis, from their base in a town called Nabi Saleh, these bigoted, violent and hateful people (and supporters of similar bent) contribute mightily towards ensuring that happens.

Here's a brief extract:

While almost everyone in Nabi Saleh is a member of the Tamimi clan, Bassem’s photogenic family—particularly his teenage daughter Ahed—has always been at the center of the media attention that the Nabi Saleh protests have assiduously cultivated. In 2013, Ahed made global headlines when she was bestowed with Turkey’s Handala Award for Courage by then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in recognition of her very public confrontation with Israeli security forces who had arrested her brother.
Bassem has long-served as the spokesman for Nabi Saleh’s supposedly non-violent protest movement. In an interview published in early May 2011 on the website The Electronic Intifada and promptly cross-posted at the website of the Hamas-affiliated al-Qassam Brigades, Bassem Tamimi outlined views he has since repeated many times. A quote from the interview—“our destiny is to resist”—has become something of a signature slogan for the Tamimis.
Bassem Tamimi had already expressed his hope in his Electronic Intifada interview that the regular protests in Nabi Saleh would provide “the basis for the third intifada.” Some two years later, a glowing tribute to the Tamimis featured as a New York Times Magazine cover story. In that piece, Tamimi declared: “If there is a third intifada … we want to be the ones who started it.” The hope that the almost weekly demonstrations at Nabi Saleh “could become something big”—“Like a third intifada”—has also been expressed by other members of the Tamimi family.
The image of the Tamimis presented in countless sympathetic media reports and vigorously promoted by their supporters is that they are courageous activists fighting for a just cause without resorting to violence. The organizers of Bassem Tamimi’s recent U.S. speaking tour describe him as “an internationally recognized Palestinian human rights activist from the West Bank farming village of Nabi Selah [sic], where weekly nonviolent demonstrations are held in opposition to illegal Israeli settlement construction and military occupation.”
Many of the organizations that sponsored Bassem’s cross-country tour during September and October are outspoken advocates of a boycott of Israel, among them Jewish Voice for Peace; Sabeel, a Palestinian-Christian organization that attacks Judaism with Islamist zeal; Students for Justice in Palestine; and the Middle East Children’s Alliance. The most prominent of all, and certainly the most recognizable, was that of Amnesty International.

Read on. The whole piece is deserving of the widest attention.

UPDATE November 7, 2015: At the request of several readers, some items here (from a longer list) about the Tamimi clan, Bassem Tamimi, and the essential role played by Amnesty International in irresponsibly turning him into the undeserved recipient of sympathy and support:

• 02-Oct-15: Truth, honesty, love, murder... and useful idiots
• 30-Sep-15: With Amnesty at his side, why would so-called smear campaigns faze this child-abuser?
• 28-Sep-15: Vegans and a passion for blood
• 13-Sep-15: A roadshow and its groupies
• 11-Sep-15: How devoted to non-violence are the villagers of Nabi Saleh really?
• 10-Sep-15: It takes a village: The passion for violence of the peace-loving Tamimis
• 07-Sep-15: Peace, human rights, the sheer joy of killing people
• 06-Sep-15: The making of a pigtailed provocateur
• 04-Sep-15: Mr. Human Rights Defender, a question if we may
• 02-Sep-15: Lights, action, camera, bite: Scenes from a cognitive war
• 01-Sep-15: A tale of two villages: one devoted to non-violence, another that actually exists
• 29-Aug-15: Revisiting a Palestinian Arab village and its monsters
• 17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns 

01-May-15: Turkish mayor's rudeness provokes US ambassador to change hair color but the background is far uglier

Ankara's mayor, Melih Gökçek
Funny-strange more than funny-ha-ha, and a conspiracist
to boot

Reports are circulating in the media today about the long-time mayor of Ankara, the capital of Turkey, and the juvenile rudeness he has just directed against Obama administration officials in Washington. The Guardian reports it this way today:

The mayor of Turkey’s capital city has been accused of hypocrisy after tweeting a string of sexist and anti-American comments against a US official – but launching hundreds of lawsuits against people who use Twitter to criticise him. Melih Gökçek directed his remarks at Marie Harf, the acting spokeswoman for the US State Department, after a Turkish pro-government newspaper criticised her for being “silent” on unrest in Baltimore despite repeated US government criticism of Turkey during the violent crackdown on Gezi Park protestors in the summer of 2013. One of Gökçek’s tweets included pictures of Baltimore police tackling a protester, alongside an image of Harf, above the words: “Where are you stupid blonde, who accused Turkish police of using disproportionate force?” Above the image, Gökçek wrote: “Come on blonde, answer now!”

The Guardian's editors go on to recite some of the history of this "notoriously Ankara mayor". It also notes that he's a hypocrite and something of a coward who

"regularly lashes out at his opponents on Twitter [but] is less happy to be the subject of online criticism... Mayor of Ankara since 1994 and a veteran member of the ruling Justice and Development party (AK), Gökçek is one of the most polarising figures in Turkish politics."

US ambassador Bass and today's Instagram image
[Image Source]

An AFP report this afternoon ["US envoy hits back at Ankara mayor: ‘We’re all blonde’"] makes some similar points while reporting on a novel kind of push-back from the US ambassador to Turkey:

The US ambassador to Turkey on Friday hit back at sexist remarks by Ankara’s maverick mayor to the US State Department spokeswoman in unusual style, posting a picture of himself with blond hair. Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek, a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had on Wednesday fired off an extraordinary diatribe on Twitter over the Baltimore rioting, telling the US State Department acting spokeswoman Marie Harf to “come on blonde, answer now.”...Harf herself had refused to rise to the bait of the comments, saying in Washington: “I really don’t think I’m going to dignify them with a response.” But US ambassador to Turkey John Bass took to Instagram to make his response, posting a picture of himself with his normally brown hair turned blond. “American diplomats: we’re all blonde,” he wrote in English and Turkish. [AFP, May 1, 2015]

Trouble is, both articles fail to point out that the Turkish politician, a close ally of Turkey's rather difficult president, is a lot worse than just a fat-mouthed crank. There's considerable malevolence in the man and his career, as we wrote some months ago ["14-Jan-15: A reminder that hateful conspiracy theories are not only found in dark corners"] in a post focusing on him. 

We quoted a news report from a serious Turkish source that eventually got almost zero news coverage, though it was tied to the tragic terror killings of French Jews in Paris this past January. Here it is again:

Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek has alleged that last week's deadly attacks on a French satirical magazine and a kosher supermarket in Paris that left 17 people dead are the result of France expressing support for Palestine, and that Israeli intelligence is behind the attacks, the semi-official Anadolu news agency reported... Gökçek attended the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Gölbaşı youth branch fourth ordinary district congress on Sunday and mentioned the terrorist attacks in France. He said Israel was annoyed with the lower house of French parliament for voting for the recognition of a Palestinian state and with France's vote in favor of a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution calling for the same recognition. “Israel certainly doesn't want this sentiment to expand in Europe. That's why it is certain that Mossad is behind these kinds of incidents. Mossad enflames Islamophobia by causing such incidents,” Gökçek said. He claimed that after the Paris attacks, around 50 mosques and some Muslim individuals had been targeted but such incidents were not reported on by the international media. “Palestine being recognized as a state is why these [attacks] have taken place,” he concluded. [Today's Zaman, a major Turkish newspaper, January 12, 2015 - as quoted in our earlier blog post]

Half a year earlier, in July 2014 Gökçek supported the antisemitic tweet made by Turkish singer Yıldız Tilbe: "God bless Hitler, it was even too few what he did to the Jews, he was right" and "The Jews will be destroyed by Muslims, in the name of Allah, not much time left for it be done". [Source: Wikipedia]

When public figures, especially those in ambitious, aspirational states of the Middle East, take the lead in propagating anti-Jewish conspiracies against a background of murdered Jews. we don't have much of a sense of humour. 

We wish the news-reporting industry took a little more trouble in the profiles they publish of jackasses like Gökçek. He's not a mere buffoon, and taunting him with dyed hair is missing the point: this is a rabble-rousing antisemite whose dignified public office provides him with cover to sow the seeds of anti-Jewish sentiment - as if there were not enough already - in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. 

10-Jan-15: Clothing, feeding and harboring terrorists? Not what Americans used to think it meant

Head of the terrorist organization, Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, on one of several visits
to Turkey, with the Turkish leader Erdogan [Image Source]

For Americans, and for those of us hoping to see the US show some spine in the face of terrorism's expanding frontiers, this depressing exchange below from Thursday's Daily Press Briefing at the State Department in Washington DC is worth filing away and remembering. ["Ms. Psaki" refers to the spokesperson for the United States Department of State, Jennifer Psaki, who served previously as spokesperson for President Barack Obama. "Matt", who asks the questions, is probably Matt Lee who covers the State Department for Associated Press.]

QUESTION: -- Turkey, the Turkish foreign minister has said that the leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, is welcome in Turkey anytime he wants to – any time he wants to go. Do you have any thoughts about that, given the fact that he is --

MS. PSAKI: I spoke to this a little bit yesterday, but it wasn’t asked in the exact same way. Our position on Hamas has not changed. Hamas is a designated foreign terrorist organization that continues to engage in terrorist activity and demonstrate its intentions during the summer’s conflict in – with Israel. We continue to raise our concerns about the relationship between Hamas and Turkey with senior Turkish officials, including after learning of Meshaal’s recent visit there. And we have urged the Government of Turkey to press Hamas to reduce tensions and prevent violence.

QUESTION: Well, I mean, is there any – I mean, I don’t get it. This guy is the leader of a terrorist organization. If Ayman Zawahiri showed up in Turkey, would you have a similar muted response? I mean --

MS. PSAKI: I don’t think that’s a muted response. Obviously, we look at each situation case by case.

Ms Psaki [Image Source]

QUESTION: Well, this is a NATO ally and they seem to be --

MS. PSAKI: Yes.

QUESTION: -- they’re hosting and seem to be willing and happy to host the leader of a group that you deem a foreign terrorist organization. So is Hamas somehow less bad than other – other groups that are on the FTO list?

MS. PSAKI: I just conveyed we expressed our concern. We’ll continue to have that discussion with Turkey.

QUESTION: Can I ask in a different way, slightly – the other side of the coin? Could the hosting of somebody like Khaled Meshaal place Turkey in some jeopardy of finding itself on the list of nations that sponsor state terrorism or states that sponsor terrorism?

MS. PSAKI: I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. Obviously, there are a range of criteria that are looked at in that regard. So I --

QUESTION: Well, you remember the famous Bush doctrine: If you clothe, feed, or harbor a terrorist, you are a terrorist. Does that doctrine still hold?

MS. PSAKI: Well, I don’t think we’ve repeated that exactly. There’s obviously criteria that we look at as it relates to designating countries or individuals. We’re not looking at that as it relates to Turkey.

QUESTION: Well, welcoming --

MS. PSAKI: Obviously, we’re concerned about this.

QUESTION: Well, welcoming the leader of a group that you’ve designated a foreign terrorist organization would certainly seem to be supporting it.

MS. PSAKI: Well, Matt --

QUESTION: No?

MS. PSAKI: -- obviously we’ve expressed our concerns. There hasn’t been action that we have knowledge of to confirm about where his whereabouts are, so --

QUESTION: But you just said that you knew – that you raised your concerns with him when you found out that he was there a couple --

MS. PSAKI: That he recently visited. Yes, we did.

QUESTION: Yeah, but I mean, that’s it? It’s okay?

MS. PSAKI: I don’t think I said it was okay.

QUESTION: Well, no --

MS. PSAKI: Pam, do --

QUESTION: -- I know. But there isn’t any consequence, then, except for you saying that we’re concerned about --

MS. PSAKI: I --

QUESTION: All right.

10-Feb-13: Turkey's selective terrorism outrage

Erdogan and Obama: A relationship based on 'confidence' and
'bonds of trust'. {Image Source: Sunday's Zaman, influential
Turkish newspaper]

From Turkey comes a report today that its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his country "had grown impatient about European tolerance on terror groups". On the face of it, it's good news, though in some respects quite surprising.

Recall that not so long ago, the same Erdogan issued an official invitation to the head of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, to visit Turkey. Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper reported on June 14, 2010 that Erdogan had been convinced by Hamas arch-terrorist and politburo chief Khaled Meshaal that a top-level Turkey/Hezbollah meeting 

would increase the Turkish premier’s popularity in the Arab and Islamic world and would further embarrass Israel in the wake of its deadly raid on the Gaza aid flotilla... The Turkish government neither denied nor confirmed the report. 

At about the same time, Erdogan earned kudos from his Iranian friends. The Turkish leader made public statements defending the Hezbollah terrorists against allegations that they were behind the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri. This went over extremely well in Teheran. Iran's notorious PressTV media channel quoted Erdogan speaking for the Lebanese terrorists:

"Hezbollah says it is Lebanon's spirit of resistance, and even uses the term 'al-Shahid (martyr) al-Hariri.' No one can imagine it is linked to this thing... No one can imagine that Hezbollah is linked to the assassination of Rafiq Hariri."

Now, under the headline "Erdogan slams European countries over terrorism", the Turkish news outlet Cumhuriyet announces this weekend that Erdogan's patience has run out. Let's note carefully what it is that has so irritated him. It's

Europe's tolerance on terror groups that targeted security forced and civilians in Turkey... [showing] "the urgent necessity to question relation between Europe and terror. Turkey will advance on this relationship with utmost resolve," Erdogan told his AKP members in a meeting in Istanbul. Erdogan also accused Europe of failing to show the necessary solidarity with Turkey in fighting terrorism, which he said had cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars in the past three decades. "Certain European countries have been protecting murderers who are sought through international arrest warrants. Leaders of terrorists groups freely walk in Europe and they freely control their terror networks from abroad.

A great pity that the Turkish anger over European 'tolerance' of terrorists is so selective in its scope. 

Or to put it another way, what a shame this outspoken politician is so rarely criticized for his bald-faced hypocrisy on terrorism.

Parts of the Turkish media are fond of reminding their readers that

U.S. President Barack Obama named Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan among the five leaders that he has established relations based on confidence, in an interview with Time. In an interview with Fareed Zakaria, the Editor-at-Large of Time magazine, Obama named Turkish PM Erdoğan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, and British Prime Minister David Cameron among leaders that he was able to forge "bonds of trust..." Obama said that the “friendships and the bonds of trust” that he has been able to forge with a whole range of leaders is “precisely, or is a big part of, what has allowed us to execute effective diplomacy.”

Erdogan is the only one of Obama's 'most trusted' leaders operating in our part of the world.

6-Dec-12: Turkish columnist asks: "Is Hamas real or a bad joke?" and offers a thoughtful answer

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and
Hamas' Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh (Reuters)

Here, in full, is an op ed written by Burak Bekdil, and published yesterday on the Turkish news site Hurriyet Daily News. It's entitled "Is Hamas real or a bad joke?".

I am not sure if Hamas is unhappy or happy with Israel’s use of “disproportional force” each time the jihadists escalate indiscriminate rocket attacks against Jewish targets. I am not sure if we poor souls can ever understand the jihadists when they say “they love death more than we love life.” 

Hamas’ rhetoric stinks of death, nothing but death – indiscriminate death. Be it “our” death or “the enemy’s.” And it never metamorphoses into something more humane, something less nihilist. Most recently, in an interview with Today’s Zaman, Gaza’s Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, confidently spoke of “defending and liberating Jerusalem,” and “fighting the enemy forever.” 

According to Mr. Haniyeh, the nearly 200 dead Palestinians – including Palestinian children killed by errand Hamas rockets – proved Hamas’ “prowess.” He called the eight-day fighting a “victory.” 

In the same interview, the prime minister pledged to prepare “bodies and army” for the next attack on Israel and to keep their strategy “always based on armed struggle.” Mr. Haniyeh defines the Palestinian borders as “from Palestine as we know it [Gaza, West bank and Jerusalem] to Rafah and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.” 

Mr. Haniyeh claims that “with every [Israeli] attack we grow stronger.” Since “Muslims don’t cheat or lie,” one cannot help but wonder if the Israeli Defense Forces are secretly conspiring for Hamas’ jihad. If what Mr. Haniyeh says is true, why do the willing subscribers of the Palestinian cause across the world, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, complain of Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Hamas targets? They should instead welcome every attack, thinking every attack will strengthen Hamas. Is that too cruel to say? Ask Mr. Haniyeh. 

But Hamas can be amusing too. Its charter is must-read fun. My favorite section is the one which states: “The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” 

Other pearls of humanity include holding Jews responsible for a wide range of events and disasters going as far back in history as the French Revolution. The Hamas covenant also provides justification for fighting and killing Jews, without distinction of “whether they are in Israel or elsewhere.” 

Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s section on Hamas contains these headings, among others: Military wing, Islamization efforts, antisemitism and anti-Zionism, statements on the Holocaust (another fun read), children as human shields, children as combatants, human rights abuses, rocket attacks on Israel, attempts to derail 2010 peace talks, themes of martyrdom, guerilla warfare and other targets. Another heading reads: Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey as a role model. We are honored! 

And the U.N.-sponsored probe into the previous war, the Goldstone Report, accused Israel of war crimes and other offenses, but it also found that:

• They (Hamas’s activities) constitute a deliberate attack against the civilian population. These actions would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity... The rocket and mortar attacks launched by armed Palestinian groups have caused terror. 

• Hamas continues to view all armed activity directed against Israel as … a legitimate right of the Palestinian people.

• The security services under the control of the Gaza authorities carried out extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, detentions and ill treatment of people.

The latest war is over. Hamas is happy because the war gave Hamas what it says it loves more than we love life. And I tend to blame the whole bloodshed on stupid trees and rocks in the holy lands. They still refuse to call out to Muslims or Abdullah and betray the last Jew hiding behind them – the last Jew to be killed.

He's also the author of "Sorry to remind you (but Golda Meir was right!)".