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TURKISH HYPOCRISY
by Benny Morris
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/28/turkish-hypocrisy.html
Mar 28, 2012 10:30 AM EDT
A fortnight ago, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister,
accused Israel of committing "genocide" against the Palestinians.
Speaking before members of his AK Party, the Islamist party that
has ruled Turkey since 2002, Erdogan said that the "children of
the Holocaust"-the Israelis-had for a century been "systematically"
carrying out a campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.
Erdogan's comment was triggered by the week-long Israeli-Palestinian
flareup around the Gaza Strip, which had been set off by months
of low-level rocketing by Palestinian terrorists of Israeli border
villages and, more immediately, by the March 9th assassination by
Israeli aircraft of Zuhir al-Qaisi, the head of the Popular Resistance
Committees, one of the armed factions in the strip. (The Israelis
said he was targeted because he was busy organizing a terrorist raid
into Israel-a "ticking bomb," as it were.)
Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi (R) stands along
side Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a welcoming
ceremony in Tehran on March 28, 2012, Atta Kenare / AFP / Getty Images
During that bout of violence, the Resistance Committees and its
sister organization, the Islamic Jihad (though apparently without
the participation of the Hamas, the dominant Palestinian armed group
in the territory), had fired more than 200 rockets into Israel,
aimed at the cities of Beersheba, Ashdod and Ashkelon as well as at
nearby rural communities. Several Israelis were injured but there
were no fatalities.
The low level of Israeli casualties was due to compliance with
government instructions to sit out the violence in bomb shelters-which
included the closure of schools in much of southern Israel for days
on end-and to the effective functioning of the recently-perfected
Iron Dome anti-missile missile system, that shot down most of the
incoming rockets bound for city centers.
In the Israeli counterstrikes during the week, mostly by manned
aircraft and drones, 26 Palestinians died-twenty-two of them
terrorists and militants, mostly members of rocketeering squads,
killed either before or after launching their projectiles. Four of
the Palestinian dead were civilians. The ratio of militant to civilian
dead is remarkable, given that the terrorists produce and store their
missiles in built-up areas and often launch them from sites next to
civilian houses; it indicates that the Israeli military took great
pains to avoid hitting civilians. During the week-long exchange,
the Gaza Strip's schools functioned normally; unlike Erdogan (and
some of its own spokesmen), the Gaza population knows exactly who
the IDF targets and puts its faith in the air force's accuracy.
This bout of violence, of course, is but the latest in the countless
eruptions that have dotted the Zionist-Palestinian conflict over the
past hundred or so years.. It is not a "genocide" by any stretch of
the imagination or language. Arabs have been killing Jews and Jews
have been killing Arabs for decades-and while it is true that Jews,
given their superior skills, have killed Arabs in greater numbers
than Arabs have killed Jews, it is not for want of Arab trying.
Indeed, if genocidal intentions have been present anywhere in
the conflict, it is on the Arab side-or as Abdul Rahman Azzam,
the secretary general of the Arab League told the British minister
in Amman, Alec Kirkbride, on the eve of the pan-Arab invasion of
Israel/Palestine of 15 May 1948, the Arabs' aim was to drive the Jews
"into the sea."
Erdogan's description of Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians as
"genocidal" is mendacious and inflammatory. And it is mind-boggling
in its chutzpah and hypocrisy, given the fact that Erdogan heads
a state that has actually perpetrated several bouts of genocide in
the not-too-distant past, against the Armenians and, to a degree,
against the Asia Minor Greeks between 1894 and 1923.
Turks may dispute the authenticity of this or that document found in
foreign archives (their own archives have been thoroughly purged of
any trace of the successive stages of the Armenian genocide)-such as
the handwritten notes by Ahmet Esat, the director of the Second Branch
of the Security Office of the Turkish Ministry of Interior, relating
to a meeting of the heads of the Committee of Union and Progress,
the group that ruled Istanbul, in January 1915 that set in train
the massacres ("Apply measures to exterminate all males under 50,
priests and teachers, leave girls and children to be Islamized...
Kill off in an appropriate manner all Armenians in the army...")
But there is no disputing the testimony of the many thousands of
Armenian and Greek survivors of the murderous "deportations" or of
the American missionaries, and the reports by German and British and
American consuls and businessmen (and the occasional Turkish "traitor")
who recorded what happened in real time during the horrific massacres,
which resulted in between 1.5 to 2 million dead Armenians and Greeks.
Turkish officialdom may publicly dispute this historical reality
and, in an effort at browbeating, may threaten and even cut off
relations or contacts with this or that country-as it recently did
with France when the French parliament introduced legislation to
prohibit Armenian-genocide denial. But the Turks know. And their
acute sensitivity regarding the genocide charge is probably a good
indication of their knowledge about what their forefathers did a few
decades ago. Charging others with genocide may simply be a defense and
denial mechanism. In Erdogan's case, traditional Islamic antipathy
towards "the Jews"-"a base" people and "murderers of prophets,"
as the Koran puts it in one of its suras-may also play a role.
Up-front honesty may be shooting for the stars. But surely we are
entitled to a measure of humility and contrition from the Erdogans
of this world-or at least their silence.
by Benny Morris
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/28/turkish-hypocrisy.html
Mar 28, 2012 10:30 AM EDT
A fortnight ago, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister,
accused Israel of committing "genocide" against the Palestinians.
Speaking before members of his AK Party, the Islamist party that
has ruled Turkey since 2002, Erdogan said that the "children of
the Holocaust"-the Israelis-had for a century been "systematically"
carrying out a campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.
Erdogan's comment was triggered by the week-long Israeli-Palestinian
flareup around the Gaza Strip, which had been set off by months
of low-level rocketing by Palestinian terrorists of Israeli border
villages and, more immediately, by the March 9th assassination by
Israeli aircraft of Zuhir al-Qaisi, the head of the Popular Resistance
Committees, one of the armed factions in the strip. (The Israelis
said he was targeted because he was busy organizing a terrorist raid
into Israel-a "ticking bomb," as it were.)
Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi (R) stands along
side Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a welcoming
ceremony in Tehran on March 28, 2012, Atta Kenare / AFP / Getty Images
During that bout of violence, the Resistance Committees and its
sister organization, the Islamic Jihad (though apparently without
the participation of the Hamas, the dominant Palestinian armed group
in the territory), had fired more than 200 rockets into Israel,
aimed at the cities of Beersheba, Ashdod and Ashkelon as well as at
nearby rural communities. Several Israelis were injured but there
were no fatalities.
The low level of Israeli casualties was due to compliance with
government instructions to sit out the violence in bomb shelters-which
included the closure of schools in much of southern Israel for days
on end-and to the effective functioning of the recently-perfected
Iron Dome anti-missile missile system, that shot down most of the
incoming rockets bound for city centers.
In the Israeli counterstrikes during the week, mostly by manned
aircraft and drones, 26 Palestinians died-twenty-two of them
terrorists and militants, mostly members of rocketeering squads,
killed either before or after launching their projectiles. Four of
the Palestinian dead were civilians. The ratio of militant to civilian
dead is remarkable, given that the terrorists produce and store their
missiles in built-up areas and often launch them from sites next to
civilian houses; it indicates that the Israeli military took great
pains to avoid hitting civilians. During the week-long exchange,
the Gaza Strip's schools functioned normally; unlike Erdogan (and
some of its own spokesmen), the Gaza population knows exactly who
the IDF targets and puts its faith in the air force's accuracy.
This bout of violence, of course, is but the latest in the countless
eruptions that have dotted the Zionist-Palestinian conflict over the
past hundred or so years.. It is not a "genocide" by any stretch of
the imagination or language. Arabs have been killing Jews and Jews
have been killing Arabs for decades-and while it is true that Jews,
given their superior skills, have killed Arabs in greater numbers
than Arabs have killed Jews, it is not for want of Arab trying.
Indeed, if genocidal intentions have been present anywhere in
the conflict, it is on the Arab side-or as Abdul Rahman Azzam,
the secretary general of the Arab League told the British minister
in Amman, Alec Kirkbride, on the eve of the pan-Arab invasion of
Israel/Palestine of 15 May 1948, the Arabs' aim was to drive the Jews
"into the sea."
Erdogan's description of Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians as
"genocidal" is mendacious and inflammatory. And it is mind-boggling
in its chutzpah and hypocrisy, given the fact that Erdogan heads
a state that has actually perpetrated several bouts of genocide in
the not-too-distant past, against the Armenians and, to a degree,
against the Asia Minor Greeks between 1894 and 1923.
Turks may dispute the authenticity of this or that document found in
foreign archives (their own archives have been thoroughly purged of
any trace of the successive stages of the Armenian genocide)-such as
the handwritten notes by Ahmet Esat, the director of the Second Branch
of the Security Office of the Turkish Ministry of Interior, relating
to a meeting of the heads of the Committee of Union and Progress,
the group that ruled Istanbul, in January 1915 that set in train
the massacres ("Apply measures to exterminate all males under 50,
priests and teachers, leave girls and children to be Islamized...
Kill off in an appropriate manner all Armenians in the army...")
But there is no disputing the testimony of the many thousands of
Armenian and Greek survivors of the murderous "deportations" or of
the American missionaries, and the reports by German and British and
American consuls and businessmen (and the occasional Turkish "traitor")
who recorded what happened in real time during the horrific massacres,
which resulted in between 1.5 to 2 million dead Armenians and Greeks.
Turkish officialdom may publicly dispute this historical reality
and, in an effort at browbeating, may threaten and even cut off
relations or contacts with this or that country-as it recently did
with France when the French parliament introduced legislation to
prohibit Armenian-genocide denial. But the Turks know. And their
acute sensitivity regarding the genocide charge is probably a good
indication of their knowledge about what their forefathers did a few
decades ago. Charging others with genocide may simply be a defense and
denial mechanism. In Erdogan's case, traditional Islamic antipathy
towards "the Jews"-"a base" people and "murderers of prophets,"
as the Koran puts it in one of its suras-may also play a role.
Up-front honesty may be shooting for the stars. But surely we are
entitled to a measure of humility and contrition from the Erdogans
of this world-or at least their silence.