Turkish injured taken to hospital in Israel

If Israelis in high official places were still slow to get the message of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's implacable anti-Israel campaign, they only had to listen to foreign ministry spokesman Burak Ozgergin's vow in Ankara Wednesday, June 30: The (Turkish) public," he said, "will see in step after step (taken by Turkey) how Ankara gets Israel to admit its crimes."
He noted that Turkey had not once, but twice denied Israeli military planes entry to Turkish airspace.

debkafile's sources report that this verbal assault was consistent with the "revelation" unveiled Monday, June 28, by the Turkish MAZLUM-DER organization, also known as The Association of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed Peoples, just before Erdogan flew home from Toronto where he attended the G20 summit and had a disastrous interview with US president Barack Obama.
The MAZLUM-DER spokesman Yasin Divrak suddenly alleged that the nine Turks who died in a clash aboard the Gaza blockade-busting Mavi Marmara on May 31 were killed by shots from Israeli helicopters. He strongly challenged the Israeli case and its video footage attesting to Israeli commandos fighting back when set upon with knives and axes by violent activists as they landed on deck.
The spokesman of MAZLUM-DER, which has an anti-Israel extremist record, presented four arguments to support his charge of Israeli war crimes:

1. Examinations of the bodies in Ankara showed that the victims were not killed by the commandos in self- defense but by helicopters, meaning that the Israelis shot first.

2. Autopsies showed some of the Turkish dead were shot several times in the head, i.e., from above, from the air. The Turkish "peace activists" were therefore "executed."

3. The returned Turkish bodies were washed in alcohol to conceal evidence of gunpowder or chemical substances allegedly used by the naval commandos.
4. In all the bodies except one, the fatal bullets were not found. One bullet was found lodged in the brain of the activist Ibrahim Bilgen. It was of type which the Turkish doctors and ballistic experts said they had never seen before. The spokesman implied that this particular bullet was left in place as an Israel warning of what Turkey should expect if more flotillas were sent to Gaza.

According to debkafile's Ankara sources, this piece of "evidence" is part of the dossier the Turks are stacking up for the international inquiry commission they intend demanding the UN General Assembly establish to investigate the flotilla incident. They need this extra probe to undermine the credibility and legitimacy of the public inquiry Israel has instituted by jurists and two international observers.
The Turkish prime minister is seriously on the warpath against Israel, after failing in their frigid interview in Toronto to persuade President Barack Obama to accept his alignment with the extremist Iran, Syria and Hizballah and his hostile breach with Israel.
Obama confronted him with two options: friendship with Washington or deepening his bonds with Tehran.
Erdogan returned home with his mind made up. He would not capitulate to Washington and he was more determined than ever to provoke a showdown with Israel.
One of his first steps, according to our Ankara sources, will be to go around UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon and submit to the UN Assembly on behalf of Turkey, Iran and Syria a draft calling for an international committee to investigate Israel's conduct in its May 31 raid on the Turkish flotilla. They can count on an automatic anti-Israel majority for its passage.
Observers in New York expect a panel of the same make-up and anti-Israel bias as the one headed by South African justice Goldstone which was tasked with investigating Israel's 2009 campaign in the Gaza Strip.
The Turkish prime minister believes Ban will not demur and even the Obama administration may come around to it, although Washington originally praised Israel's public inquiry, to which two reputable foreign observers had been attached, as fully meeting the UN Security Council's requirements for a credible, impartial, transparent investigation.
Ankara's move is aimed at intensifying Israel's diplomatic isolation in the world body.
To pre-empt it, the Netanyahu government decided this week to expand the mandate of the flotilla investigation panel headed by retired Justice Jacob Turkel. The next cabinet meeting will empower the commission to subpoena witnesses, question them under oath, issue letters of caution and have free access to any evidence needed to execute its mission.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sale of F-15s, PA State and Taliban Divide Obama and Saudi King

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
U.S. President Barack Obama and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah warmly spoke of friendship in their public statements after their White House meeting Tuesday, but they did not relate to their differences: The king's desire for pressure on Israel, his request to buy a fleet of F-15 warplanes and Saudi money for Taliban terrorists.

President Obama praised the king for "His Majesty's wisdom and insights," and added, "We talked about our joint interest and work together in combating violent extremism. And we talked about a range of strategic issues, including issues relating to Afghanistan and Pakistan; Iran and its attempts to develop nuclear weapons capacity. We discussed the Middle East peace process and the importance of moving forward in a significant and bold way in securing a Palestinian homeland that can live side by side with a secure and prosperous Israeli state."

King Abdullah did not relate to any of the specific issues that the president raised and instead spoke of the American people as friends of Saudi Arabia, adding that President Obama is an "honorable and…good man."

Their meeting comes one week before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is to visit the White House, which is walking a tightrope between satisfying Palestinian Authority demands and President Obama's sinking popularity at home among Christians as well as Jews. Earlier in June, the White House hosted PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

The differences among interested parties in the American strategy "continue to make Middle East peace an unsolvable puzzle for the administration," the Christian Science Monitor reported after Tuesday's high-profile meeting.

The Israeli government feels "Obama has been slow to grasp just how urgent the threat against Israel is," James Phillips, senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Heritage Foundation told the newspaper. "The Israeli leader has held since the beginning of his government that Iran is the most urgent problem facing Israel and the international community."

The Arab world, with support from many advisors in the Obama administration, has tried to place the Arab demands for a Palestinian Authority country as the key to solving all of the region's problems.

Another deep division between Saudi Arabia and the United States is the flow of money from the oil kingdom to Taliban terrorists, despite the king's statement that both countries are "combating terrorism."

"The Saudis are trying to broker something between Karzai and the Taliban, while the United States would prefer to move to serious negotiations only after some ‘progress,' from our point of view, on the battlefield, Phillips told the Monitor.

A third problem for President Obama is the Saudi king's desire to buy F-15 warplanes, ostensibly to help it offset Iran's growing power but which also could be used against Israel if the pan-Arab world repeats its 1967 attempt to destroy the Jewish State. (IsraelNationalNews.com)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Israel Envoy: 'Tectonic Shift' in U.S.-Israeli Ties

Video

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2010/June/Israel-Envoy-Tectonic-Shift-in-US-Israeli-Ties/

Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., says relations between the two countries are going through a "tectonic shift."

Last week on a visit to Israel, Oren reportedly told Israeli diplomats during a briefing that Jerusalem and Washington are like "continents drifting apart," Haaretz reported.

"I said shift, not rift, but that may be a subtlety that escaped the Israeli ear," Oren told the Washington Post about the briefing, given in Hebrew at the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

His comments about disagreements with the White House come in the wake of pressure from Washington over the Gaza Strip blockade and construction disputes in east Jerusalem.

"There are disagreements, I'm not going to be Pollyannaish," Oren said. "But there are two qualifiers you have to attach. One, we have had disagreements with other administrations in the past, and the litmus with the relationship is not whether there are disagreements, but how you approach the disagreements."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why aid the enemy?

Israel has every right to close its border to a belligerent neighbor intent on eradicating it.

Bowing to misguided international pressure, particularly from the West, the government lifted nearly three years of restrictions on civilian goods allowed into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. The restrictions had been imposed in reaction to the repeated launching of missiles into the Negev. This decision hardly makes any strategic sense because it helps Hamas, an ally of revolutionary Islamist Iran. Both are anti-Western forces focused on destroying the Jewish state.

The easing of the blockade reflects the success of a Hamas propaganda campaign to depict the situation in Gaza as a humanitarian disaster.

While Gaza is not prospering, the standard of living there is generally higher than in Egypt - a little-noticed fact. The ability of this Goebbels-type propaganda to entrench a tremendous lie in the consciousness of the international community testifies to the continued vulnerability of naive Westerners to sophisticated psychological warfare, and to the complicity of much of the Western press in this enterprise.

The step taken by the government also significantly helps Hamas strengthen its grip on Gazans, as it controls the distribution of any goods entering its territory. Moreover, even if Hamas allows for a general improvement in the daily lives of all Gazans, this reduces the incentive for regime change, which should be part of the Western goal. Strengthening this radical theological regime in the eastern Mediterranean defies Western rational thinking.

The entrenchment of Hamas rule in Gaza amplifies the schism in Palestinian society and strengthens Hamas's influence in the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. It is also a slap in the face of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who demanded the blockade's continuation. Hamas's achievement here further undermines whatever ability - albeit a very limited one - the Palestinian national movement had to move toward compromise with the Jewish state.

THE INTERNATIONAL pressure that led to the decision also indicates a gross misunderstanding of Israel's predicament and its legitimate right of self-defense. Israel totally disengaged from Gaza in 2005, hoping that the Gazans would focus their energy on state-building and achieving prosperity.

Gazans could have decided to try to become a Hong Kong or a Singapore.

Yet Hamas turned Gaza into a political entity engaged in waging war on the Jewish state by launching thousands of missiles with the specific intention of harming civilians.

Ironically, Hamas demands that Israel allow a supply of goods into the Strip.

It is legally and morally outrageous to claim Israel is responsible for the Gazans, who are no longer under occupation and who have supported the rule of Hamas in great numbers.

After the 2005 withdrawal, Israel's responsibilities - stemming from previously being an occupying power - ended.

Since Gaza is an enemy country, it does not deserve any special treatment from Israel beyond its legitimate steps taken in pursuit of selfdefense.

Israel, like any other sovereign state, has every right to close its border with a belligerent neighbor.

Moreover, it has no obligation to provide water, electricity, fuel or access to food and/or medical supplies to its enemies. Why on earth should it aid those that want to eradicate it? The bewildering and hypocritical international response to Israel's attempts to prevent war material from reaching Gaza, as manifested in the criticism surrounding the Gaza flotilla incident, should be of great concern to Jerusalem. Again, we see the successful application of propaganda whose objective is to deny Israel its legitimate right of selfdefense.

This campaign is part of a larger plan designed to neutralize the superior capacity of the West, and Israel in particular.

Instead of easing the blockade, the government should have announced its intention to exercise its sovereign right to close the border with Gaza and halt the transfer of any goods to its enemy within several months.

Israel must make clear to the world that it refuses to accept responsibility for the welfare of Gazan residents, particularly since they are employing violence against the Jewish state.

The period leading up to the actual border closure should be used to establish alternative routes of supply via Egypt, which also borders Gaza.

Egypt is unlikely to welcome such a development because it prefers to keep the Gaza hot potato in Israel's lap. However, the Egyptians are much more adept at dealing with the Gazans, whom they ruled in the past.

The Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere are not only Israel's problem, but constitute a regional headache.

The writer is professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies. This article first appeared on www.bitterlemons.org and is reprinted with permission.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gaza rocket destroys Israeli factory
Palestinian terrorists operating out of the Gaza Strip fired a rocket into southern Israel early Wednesday morning seriously damaging a local packaging plant. There were no injuries in the attack, which occurred during the pre-dawn hours.

Israel closed the nearby Kerem Shalom border crossing into Gaza amid warnings of further rocket attacks. The crossing is used to bring huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza every day.

There has been a significant rise in Palestinian mortar and rocket attacks from Gaza over the past two weeks.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Israeli Arab nurseries raising up new jihadists
The Knesset's Education Committee on Tuesday learned that there are some 500 Arab nurseries and kindergartens operating illegally in northern Israel, and that at least 100 of them are being run by the jihadist Islamic Movement.

Education Ministry representative Dr. Orna Ben-Simhon said the licenses of these day cares and schools had been revoked, but that they continued to operate anyway.

Israeli Arab lawmakers at the hearing insisted that the schools, where children are taught that Israel is an illegitimate entity, operate in full accordance with the law, but are unfairly targeted on racist grounds.

The Islamic Movement is a radical organization that denies Israel's right to exist and has in the past encouraged Israeli Arabs to join Palestinians in the use of terrorist violence against their Jewish countrymen.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Turkey Losing Hot Israeli Summer Tourist Dollars

by Hana Levi Julian
A group of young Israelis abruptly switched their post-high school trekking plans this past Monday from a hike in the hills of Turkey to a tour of Bulgaria instead. Israelis have dropped Turkey as a hot tourist destination, and the former Middle Eastern ally is beginning to feel the pinch.

According to a report published Wednesday in Turkey's English Daily News, some 50,000 Israelis have canceled their summer reservations "indefinitely." The Israel Travel Agents' Association added to the figure, announcing 100,000 cancellations.

Israelis began avoiding Turkey as a tourist destination as early as last year in response to repeated insults by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan following Operation Cast Lead, the 2008-2009 winter war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

Eventually, some of the diplomatic fallout was healed - enough so that Israel's El Al Airlines resumed daily flights to Istanbul this past April - but the fragile progress was again destroyed when Ankara helped sponsor a six-ship flotilla sent to break Israel's sovereignty over Gaza waters.

At least one of the vessels was manned by armed terrorists linked to the Turkish IHH organization, posing as "peace activists." The terrorists ambushed Israeli Navy commandos who boarded the ships after they refused to change course when directed to head for Ashdod port. Subsequent violent demonstrations and cancellation of military contracts by Turkey led to reciprocal actions by Israelis, who quickly responded by canceling vacation plans and putting off the launch of new flights to Istanbul.

All told, the current figures add up to a loss of at least $400 million in tourism dollars for the Turkish economy. The publication quoted Levantin Tour operator Levent Guner, who pointed out, "An Israeli tourist spends $650 on average. The number of tourists spending that much money is very low. Some tourism agencies have gone bankrupt due to this situation." He added that of the 17,000 Israelis his firm had expected to bring to Turkey this year, the company only managed to entice 200 tourists to visit the country.

Turkey's Coup de Grace is Israel's 'Carpe Diem'
Israel's Ministry of Tourism, meanwhile, is seizing the opportunity to encourage tourism at home. The Ministry announced Wednesday that next week it will launch a sparkling new two-week, $1 million campaign to "Especially Now, Spend Your Vacation in Israel!"

The campaign, to be splashed on to billboards, television screens, Internet web sites and on radio waves across the country, will feature information about all the various tourist attractions and special deals that are available to Israelis this summer, including special events and routine sites of interest such as amusement parks, water parks, national parks and nature reserves.

A domestic travel survey conducted in March by the Geocartography Institute showed a 52 percent rise in the number of Israelis who have decided to spend their vacations in their own country this year. Of those, some 35 percent had decided to travel south to Eilat, 36 percent were heading to points north, and 15 percent were spending their free time at the Dead Sea. (IsraelNationalNews.com)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Europe: Worst for Jews Since End of WW2

by Hillel Fendel
European Jewry is in its worst condition since the end of World War II. This bleak evaluation was delivered by European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor on Tuesday.

"Jews are afraid to walk the streets in Europe with Jewish signs," Kantor said. "Synagogues, Jewish schools and kindergartens require barbed-wire fences and security, and Jewish men, women and children are beaten up in broad daylight."

EJP (European Jewish Press) reports that Kantor was speaking at a lunch meeting in Brussels, organized in honor of Belgium's ascendance to the presidency of the European Union. The participants were members of the European Parliament from Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands (Holland) and Luxembourg), as well as representatives of the Jewish communities of those countries.

Malmo, For Example
"Most worryingly," he added, "Jews are being forced out of many European cities, like Malmo, because of the atmosphere of hostility and violence." Malmo, on the southern tip of Sweden, is the country's third largest city, with 290,000 people. It has the highest proportion of non-Scandinavian natives of any Swedish city; the largest group of immigrants is from Iraq.

Earlier this year, the Sunday Telegraph reported that increasing numbers of Jews were leaving Malmo for Israel and England because of a jump in anti-Semitic violence by both Muslim extremists and neo-Nazis.

Where are European Leaders?
Kantor asked for support from European leaders: "I would like European politicians to state loud and clear," he said, "that there is no justification or understanding whatsoever for the attacks on Jews or Jewish institutions in Europe."

He rejected the claim uttered by Malmo Mayor Ilmar Reepalu, and many others, that the attacks on Jews are simply a byproduct of the Middle East violence, especially Israel's counter-terror attack on Gaza 18 months ago. "This line of reasoning is illegitimate as well as dishonest," Kantor said. "There are tens of conflicts raging in the world, where hundreds of thousands of people are losing their lives. Has anyone heard of a single other act of violence in Europe that is justified because of a foreign conflict?"

Three months ago, at a conference organized by the European Jewish Congress, under the patronage of the president of the European Parliament, Kantor said that in January 2009, there were more anti-Semitic incidents in France, Germany and Britain than in all of 2008. "Europe did not demonstrate any significant reaction to this," he said.

In addition to legislating stronger laws against incitement, Kantor said that Europe should also make better efforts to pressure Hamas to release captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Shalit, who will be 24 in August, has received no neutral visitors and been held captive by Hamas-affiliated terrorists for just over four years.

(IsraelNationalNews.com)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Man Who Threw Shoe at Beinisch Gets Three Years

by Gil Ronen
The Jerusalem Magistrates Court sentenced a man who threw a shoe at Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch to three year in jail on Wednesday.

Pinchas (Pini) Cohen, 52, hurled his shoe at Beinisch during a High Court debate on the use of medical cannabis in January. The shoe, thrown from about 22 feet away, hit Beinisch squarely in the face, breaking her glasses and toppling her from her chair and onto the floor. Cohen, who is divorced, was motivated by frustration over a child support debt that he believes the courts saddled him with unfairly.

MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) reacted to the sentence, saying that while Cohen's action was reprehensible, the sentence amounted to "judicial thuggery."

"While rapists, drug dealers and robbers walk the streets in the name of the Basic Law of Human Dignity and Freedom," the freshman MK said, "it is absurd to mete out such a long sentence to a man who threw a shoe. Pinchas Cohen deserves punishment for his act, but it is regrettable that the punishment is so disproportionate, illogical and unreasonable."

In his sentence, Magistrates Court Judge Shimon Feierberg determined that "through the deed of hurling an object at the President of the Supreme Court, in the course of a court session, the defendant challenged the entire judicial system."

"This is an unprecedented deed in Israel, in which a litigant protests the result of a trial by attacking a judge in the courtroom," he added. "It is not accidental that the defendant chose to attack the President of the Supreme Court, who heads the system, in his attempt to disgrace the entire system and punish it for daring to rule against him in legal procedures."

The court found Cohen guilty of assault, contempt of court and intentionally causing grievous harm.

At the time of the attack, some commenters saw a connection between Cohen's action and a general feeling of hostility toward the court system in the Israeli public.

Plummeting Support for Courts
Recent polls indicate that the court system, including the Supreme Court, enjoy less trust in the eyes of the general public than at any other time in Israel's history. While 80% of the general Jewish public (not including residents of Judea and Samaria and hareidi-religious Jews) placed "great trust" in the High Court in 2000, only 56% did so in 2010. Among Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, the percentage with "great trust" for the top court plummeted from 60% to 25% in that decade, and among hareidi Jews, it sank from 19% to 9%. (IsraelNationalNews.com)