Newcomers to colloquial Hebrew are puzzled by the expression "Kill a Turk and rest."
This firmly ingrained figure of speech has nothing to do with Israelis killing Turks.
Like many other colloquialisms in our language it was imported generations ago by Yiddish speaking Jews.
I suppose it could be called a pre-computer age hyperlink to a Jewish joke. For the sake of brevity I'm quoting the abridged version:
In Czarist Russia, to be exact during the war that broke out between Russia and Turkey in 1877, a Jewish boy is drafted to fight in the army.
His tearful mother takes leave of him at the railway station and implores him: “Don’t overexert yourself! Kill a Turk and rest. Kill another Turk and rest again…” But mother!” the boy interrupts her. “What if the Turk kills me while I'm resting?” “Kills you?!” the mother exclaims in sheer disbelief. “But why should he kill you? What have you done to him?”
Today as then the Yiddishe Mamma's advice has been condensed to "Kill a Turk and rest."Which simply means- Don't rush, take it easy.
Well I'm not taking her advice because this is my last chance to write about the Gaza flotilla fiasco before the opening of the Mondial, the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa on Friday. Football mania will inundate the news media relegating every non-soccer story to the least read, heard and viewed status. Therefore I want to mention the "Flotilla Embroilment" again mainly because it marks a turning point in regional relations.
On Saturday the straggler in the Gaza flotilla, the long awaited Rachel Corrie was brought to dock at the port of Ashdod. The quiet takeover of the ship was preceded by diplomatic contacts with both its passengers and organisers. On Friday, Israel and Ireland put together a deal that would allow an orderly transfer of the humanitarian equipment on board to the Gaza Strip, but the passengers rejected it. In light of this rejection, the forum of seven senior ministers in the Israeli cabinet decided to board the ship and bring it to Ashdod.Admittedly the boarding party was not greeted with rice and rose petals, but the reception was cordial and uneventful.
The much smaller Rachel Corrie and her small complement of crew and passengers differed in other respects compared to the Mavi Marmara,. Aboard the Rachel Corrie were mostly code-pink grandmas whereas the Mavi Marmara's passengers included an armed and ready-to-fight core of IHH hotheads.
All week long a battle has been waging between Israeli and Turkish ftv clipson YouTube, each side trying to prove its version of what happened aboard the Mavi Marmara.
For a closer look at the previous ship’s humanitarian aid cargo access the following clip via this hyperlink:
Of course someone will claim that the clip like other related images are falsified.
The Turks adamantly claim that the flotilla was loaded with humanitarian aid items only.
The Christian Science Monitor criticised the Turkish reaction and rhetoric, "Even considering the shock and sorrow over the tragic deaths of eight Turks and a Turkish-American aboard the Gaza-bound flotilla of Turkish vessels, the rhetorical response from Turkish officials has been over the top.
Turkey’s government leaders have called the Israeli raid on the flotilla a 'massacre,' likened it to 9/11, and branded it 'state terrorism'."
In response I'm tempted to raise the matter of the Armenian genocide denial but I doubt if we would benefit from reminding Mr. Erdogan of the 1.5 million Armenians the Turks gleefully murdered. Well that was ninety years and even if the nine Turks shot on the deck of the Mavi Marmara were certainly not white-frocked choir boys, the media was quick to make them blameless martyrs.
Thanks Roberta for the following link to Alan Jones’ popular Australian radio programme:
It’s disconcerting to see the repeated scenes of frenzied Turkish demonstrators and their incensed prime minister ranting and raging at Israel every day almost as frequently as he prostrates himself in the direction of Mecca.
Just the same the relations between Israel and Turkey involve a lot of money on both sides. But not only money, there are deep-rooted military interest at stake.
An editorial in The Economistwarning of Israel's growing isolation argues that this dependence is less mutual and more one-sided. "Israel needs Turkey more than Turkey needs it," …. "As for America, its dependence on Turkey for its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq means that it cannot afford to alienate Prime Minister Erdogan," then referring to the clash on the deck of the Mavi Marmara it states,.
"The impression received yet again by the watching world is that Israel resorts to violence too readily."My impression is that the watching world is only too ready to condemn Israel. It doesn't want to be confused by the facts. The navy commandos who landed on the deck were mercilessly beaten before they resorted to shooting in self-defence.
An example of presenting a "doctored" version of the incident was mentioned inHaaretz.
In addition to the video footage released by the IDF, Reuters bureau inIstanbulreleasedphotographs taken during the raid on the Turkish ship. A spokesman for the agency was hard put to explain "certain discrepancies”:
"The images in question were prepared for dissemination following a routine editorial practice which included cropping at the edges. When we realised that a dagger was inadvertently cropped from the images Reuters immediately moved to the original set as well.”
This is not the first time that Reuters has been criticised for images that appear to be biased against Israel. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the news agency admiited that one of its picturesof destruction caused by Israel's bombing of Beirut had been altered with the aid of a computer graphics programme.
Political commentator Tom Gross said, "Everyone makes mistakes, including journalists, but every time Reuters says it makes a mistake, it does so to Israel’s detriment, and this looks suspiciously like a deliberate pattern."
Ironically, the father of Julius Reuter, the German Jew who founded Reuters, was a rabbi.
He must be turning in his grave!
There is a blanket condemnation of Israel regarding the illegal blockade and the illegal defence of that closure on the Gaza Strip.
Charles Krauthammerwrote a very neo-con forceful piece in TheWashington Post under the title "Those Troublesome Jews." It was good for the convinced firm supporters of Israel and maybe for wavering confused and undecided casual observers of the Middle East arena. If Netanyahu read it he was probably glad for Charles' unswerving support. Krauthammer makes a good case but falls short on the problematic justification of the Gaza blockade.
Even when he quotes Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who states, "The blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal."
Legal but not wise.
I confess my heart doesn't bleed for the people under siege in Gaza. Naturally I'm more sensitive to the suffering of the people living in Israel's Gaza periphery communities, some of them are my family and friends. Having said that I hasten to add and repeat what I said last week – the Gaza blockade is untenable. It doesn't photograph well, especially now and should be replaced a mechanism that keeps the arms out but allows essential supplies to enter the Gaza Strip.
I am indebted to Peter Frank who referred me to political scientist George Friedman's interesting nonpartisan analysis of Israel's predicament.
Actually Friedman in his article published in Stratfor doesn't call our situation a predicament.
He sums up as follows:"Israel’s actions have generated shifts in public opinion and diplomacy regionally and globally. The Israelis are calculating that these actions will not generate a long-term shift in the strategic posture of the Arab world. If they are wrong about this, recent actions will have been a significant strategic error. If they are right, then this is simply another passing incident. In the end, the profound divisions in the Arab world both protect Israel and make diplomatic solutions to its challenge almost impossible — you don’t need to fight forces that are so divided, but it is very difficult to negotiate comprehensively with a group that lacks anything approaching a unified voice."
Friedman began his overview of the ME conflict with a synopsis.
“The first generations of Israelis lived under the threat of conventional military defeat by neighboring countries. More recent generations still faced threats, but not this one. Israel is operating in an advantageous strategic context save for the arena of public opinion and diplomatic relations and the question of Iranian nuclear weapons .
All of these issues are significant, but none is as immediate a threat as the specter of a defeat in conventional warfare had been. Israel’s regional enemies are so profoundly divided among themselves and have such divergent relations with Israel that an effective coalition against Israel does not exist — and is unlikely to arise in the near future.
Given this, the probability of an effective, as opposed to rhetorical, shift in the behavior of powers outside the region is unlikely. At every level, Israel’s Arab neighbors are incapable of forming even a partial coalition against Israel. Israel is not forced to calibrate its actions with an eye toward regional consequences, explaining Israel’s willingness to accept broad international condemnation. “His damage assessment reads as follows
“Given this environment, it is extremely difficult to translate hostility to Israeli policies in Europe and other areas into meaningful levers against Israel. Under these circumstances, the Israelis see the consequences of actions that excite hostility toward Israel from the Arabs and the rest of the world as less dangerous than losing control of Gaza. The more independent Gaza becomes, the greater the threat it poses to Israel. The suppression of Gaza is much safer and is something Fatah ultimately supports, Egypt participates in, Jordan is relieved by and Syria is ultimately indifferent to.
Nations base their actions on risks and rewards. The configuration of the Palestinians and Arabs rewards Israeli assertiveness and provides few rewards for caution. The Israelis do not see global hostility toward Israel translating into a meaningful threat because the Arab reality cancels it out. Therefore, relieving pressure on Hamas makes no sense to the Israelis. Doing so would be as likely to alienate Fatah and Egypt as it would to satisfy the Swedes, for example. As Israel has less interest in the Swedes than in Egypt and Fatah, it proceeds as it has.
A single point sums up the story of Israel and the Gaza blockade-runners: Not one Egyptian aircraft threatened the Israeli naval vessels, nor did any Syrian warship approach the intercept point. The Israelis could be certain of complete command of the sea and air without challenge. And this underscores how the Arab countries no longer have a military force that can challenge the Israelis, nor the will nor interest to acquire one. Where Egyptian and Syrian forces posed a profound threat to Israeli forces in 1973, no such threat exists now. Israel has a completely free hand in the region militarily; it does not have to take into account military counteraction. The threat posed by intifada, suicide bombers, rockets from Lebanon and Gaza , and Hezbollah fighters is real, but it does not threaten the survival of Israel the way the threat from Egypt and Syria once did (and the Israelis see actions like the Gaza blockade as actually reducing the threat of intifada, suicide bombers and rockets). Non-state actors simply lack the force needed to reach this threshold. When we search for the reasons behind Israeli actions, it is this singular military fact that explains Israeli decision-making.”
While the YouTube war continuesI want to include a recent Israeliaddition to the battle array:
Now is the time for the much needed national catharsis we revel in; all the self-flagellation that takes place after our military engagements that didn't go exactly according to plan.
Among other things we will blame our PR for our shortcomings knowing fully well that even good PR wouldn't have made us the "darlings of the western world."We are too strong to be underdogs so we are blacklisted ostracised and labeled apartheid oppressors. Since the people who malign us don't havethe time or patience to hear the whole narrative, they make do with the conveniently cropped version of the story.
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