PM David Cameron of England, yesterday, gave a speech in Turkey in which he pandered to the Islamist Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan, in which he alleged, among other things, that Gaza was a “prison camp.” As is typical of the New York Times’s The Lede blog, Robert Mackey takes great delight in highlighting criticisms of Israel. Mackey, at least, posted an objection from the Israeli ambassador, but still the focus of the post is on the condemnation of Israel and not on how accurate it was.
In reference to a snarky article in the Independent, Elder of Ziyon writes:
The problem in Gaza has never been available goods – it has been poverty for the many unemployed people, unemployed in a large part because of Hamas policies. Remember the Erez Industrial Zone and what happened to that? Israel kept it open as long as it could until the terror attacks that Hamas performed there became too much. Thousands of employees lost their jobs as a result.
We seething conservative bloggers, as the Independent condescendingly refers to us, are pointing out that all the “aid” ships that the British newspaper fawns over were based on the same lies that the Independent itself peddled – that Gaza was a large prison camp. Now that the absurdity of that characterization has been destroyed by the Gaza Mall and other quite nice hotels, restaurants and tourist spots that we have discovered and publicized, the Independent refuses to admit its mistakes and instead reframes the discussion to minimize its lies.
The Independent is now moving the goalposts, not willing to admit that the myth of Gaza as a “prison camp” was one that it helped to push and now deriding those who proved that this very newspaper was among the worst purveyors of that very myth.
No, the Elder wasn’t addressing Cameron, but the critique applies to the PM too.
And Daniel PIpes, points out a different aspect to the Turkish hypocrisy regarding Israel that Cameron validated. (Again, this was written before Cameron’s remarks, but it applies to his “prison camp” comment.)
This Turkish rage prompts a question: Is Israel in Gaza really worse than Turkey in Cyprus? A comparison finds this hardly to be so. Consider some contrasts:
- Turkey’s invasion of July-August 1974 involved the use of napalm and “spread terror” among Cypriot Greek villagers, according to Minority Rights Group International. In contrast, Israel’s “fierce battle” to take Gaza relied only on conventional weapons and entailed virtually no civilian casualties.
- The subsequent occupation of 37 percent of the island amounted to a “forced ethnic cleansing” according to William Mallinson in a just-published monograph from the University of Minnesota. In contrast, if one wishes to accuse the Israeli authorities of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, it was against their own people, the Jews, in 2005.
- The Turkish government has sponsored what Mallinson calls “a systematic policy of colonization” on formerly Greek lands in northern Cyprus. Turkish Cypriots in 1973 totaled about 120,000 persons; since then, more than 160,000 citizens of the Republic of Turkey have been settled in their lands. Not a single Israeli community remains in Gaza.
- Ankara runs its occupied zone so tightly that, in the words of Bülent Akarcalı, a senior Turkey politician, “Northern Cyprus is governed like a province of Turkey.” An enemy of Israel, Hamas, rules in Gaza.
- The Turks set up a pretend-autonomous structure called the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.” Gazans enjoy real autonomy.
- A wall through the island keeps peaceable Greeks out of northern Cyprus. Israel’s wall excludes Palestinian terrorists.
Contrary to Cameron’s assertions, Israel was justified in stopping the flotilla and Gaza is not a prison camp. These are points that Mackey could have emphasized in opposition to Cameron’s reckless charges.
But it’s the New York Times, you can’t really expect better.
UPDATE: To his credit, Jackson Diehl isn’t impressed:
Standing alongside Cameron, Erdogan compared Israel to the “pirates of Somalia” and added that people in Gaza “are living under constant attacks and pressure in an open air prison.” That was fairly mild stuff for the Turkish PM, who regularly accuses Israel of “state terrorism” and last month called it an “adolescent, rootless state.”
If Cameron was troubled by such rhetoric, or by Turkey’s role in the ferry incident, he gave no indication of it. Instead he proclaimed that “when I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a NATO ally… it makes me angry that your progress toward E.U. membership can be frustrated in the way it has been.”
That may win the new British government some points in Ankara. But the price will be paid by Israel, which has just seen the international campaign to delegitimize it gain a little more momentum.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
