Emotional Peres
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's reaction to the negative, impolite and emotional attitude of both Israeli President Shimon Peres and the moderator of the panel, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, has made him a hero in Turkey. But, before trying to smokescreen what has been happening to Turkey and the world's perception of Israel by saying that everyone who criticizes Israeli terrorism is anti-Semitic, Israel and its Western supporters should try to understand that the world is changing fast and becoming more transparent.
Israel killed more than 1,300 people in Gaza recently, and most of these people were innocent civilians, including children and babies.
With the help of communication technology, the world watched and observed what actually happened in Gaza. The world saw that the Israeli massacre machine bombed indiscriminately and killed civilians, demolished houses, mosques, hospitals and ambulances. The world knows from the US-led Iraqi and Afghan occupations that if the intention is there, the technology is available to avoid civilian casualties. With the current state of war technology, civilians are only killed if they are intended to be killed. This is what happened in Gaza. Israeli politicians, soldiers, most of its academics and most of its people were pleased with what was happening to Gazan civilians, and they did not even bother to explain away civilian casualties as collateral damage. They tried to justify Israeli terrorism by Hamas rockets, but the world public opinion does not swallow this lie.
First of all, nothing can justify the massacre of innocent civilians.
Second, we saw numerous demolished houses, hospitals, dead bodies of babies, children and women in Gaza. Has anyone seen anything similar to this massacre in Israeli-occupied territories rocketed by Hamas? Asking this does not mean that I agree with Hamas' violence. I condemn the killing of innocent civilians and children. As a Muslim, I am guided in this by Fethullah Gülen, who in 1991 said in tears in a monumental Ottoman mosque while preaching to maybe 100,000 people that when Saddam Hussein sent missiles to Israel, Mr. Gülen saw innocent Israeli children in pain. I remember how for several years this statement was abused by radicals. I am sure that the overwhelming majority of Turks still share similar sentiments. But this has not stopped me and these Turks from condemning Israeli massacres and supporting Mr. Erdoğan. Moreover, our pluralistic history makes us very confident that no one can label us as anti-Semitic.
Can anyone with a sound mind call Israeli bombings a rational, non-emotional and balanced reaction to Hamas rockets that did not inflict even 0.1 percent of the damage the recent Israeli terrorism in Gaza did? Israelis -- as Peres told Erdoğan in Davos -- say Turks would do the same if İstanbul was under similar rocket fire. This is Zionist demagogy. How do you know what Turks would do? Is İstanbul an illegally occupied territory that actually belongs to some other nation as declared repeatedly by the UN? Are there many illegal settlers who emigrated from their comfortable Western European homes for ideological and religious reasons and illegally built villages at the expense of the real and legal owners of the land? Is a city neighboring İstanbul an open-air prison like Gaza, which has not even been able to get humanitarian aid for months? Are these city's innocent civilians killed regularly by İstanbul soldiers?
Israel and its Western supporters (that now to a certain extent include even the BBC -- all in the name of impartiality) have condemned the Gazans to a kind of genocide just because they voted for Hamas and not for Fatah. But then again, was Israel not bombing the ailing old leader of Fatah, Yasser Arafat, when there were no Hamas missiles?
Come on, Turks may be economically and politically weak, but they are not stupid. That is why 90 percent of them are now united in greeting post-Davos Erdoğan with "Turkey is proud of you." The Israelis, the Zionists and their Western supporters should analyze this. Yes, we are inhumane goyim, but they can at least listen to several humane Jewish academics that agree with us and protest Israeli policies.
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