Cold Turkey

McClatchy's Ipek Yezdani reports:

ISTANBUL — Turkey sees no possibility of resuming full diplomatic relations with Israel unless Israel apologizes and pays damages for the deaths its commandos caused last year aboard a Turkish ship that was trying to run Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, Turkey's foreign minister said Friday.

"Israel buried our friendship in the deep waters of the Mediterranean," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in response to a question on whether Turkish-Israeli relations would recover in the near future.

Turkey, which became the first Muslim country to recognize Israel in 1949, was considered Israel's closest ally in the Middle East until September, when Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador, canceled all military cooperation agreements and downgraded its relations with the Jewish state after Israel refused to apologize for the deaths of nine Turkish citizens

One of the good things about Bernard Avishai's piece on right of return in Harper's is that he emphasizes the spiritual nature of the damage, and the importance of apology. But there is never any sense of accountability... Spoiled child of the west... Erdogan said that.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Gaza, Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government, Nakba

{ 9 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Chaos4700 says:

    I keep saying it, though I hope it never comes true. Israel will cost us NATO.

  2. pabelmont says:

    I wait for more than words. Words are cheap. Turkey has had the best words. I wait for some proposals at UNGA. Mere complaining about Israel is about as ineffective as complaining about Hitler was. (I compare thick skins, not the quality, extent, etc., of evil deeds.)

    Come to think of it, complaining to the 1% by 99% doesn’t get much done in the real world, either, whether in USA or elsewhere.

  3. yourstruly says:

    apologizing to turkey is only the start

    reparations to the victims should come next

    same goes for israel’s having to apologize & pay reparations to the victims of the nakba, along with recognizing the palestinians’ right of return

    the zionist settlers, of course, are going to refuse

    that’s where bds enters the scene

    especially in the u.s. of a., as the public finally grasps the connection between the zionist entity’s occupation of palestine and the wars that kill u.s. troops in that part of the world

    bringing about a mass exodus of jews from the settler-entity to the lands in which they have second passports, or to wherever else will accept them

    delegitimizing said entityl (no settlers, no entity)

    with palestine at long last returned to its people

  4. patm says:

    “One of the good things about Bernard Avishai’s piece on right of return in Harper’s….”

    I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with that piece, Phil, but I knew something was. It was so laboured. He practically turned himself into a pretzel working out his plan for a return. I await with interest the letters to the editor.

    You called him a liberal Zionist. Now I know what they sound like.

  5. here is a very interesting NEWS.
    “Dr. Evil and Mini Me were found guilty of war crimes by the The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal which held a four day hearing in MALAYSIA.

    The five panel tribunal unanimously decided that BUSH and BLAIR committed genocide and crimes against peace and humanity when they invaded Iraq in 2003 in blatant violation of international law.

    The judges RULED that war against Iraq by both the former heads of states was a flagrant abuse of law, act of aggression which amounted to a mass murder of the Iraqi people.
    In their verdict, the judges said that the United States, under the leadership of Bush, FORGED documents to claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
    They further said the findings of the tribunal be made available to members of the Rome Statute and the names of Bush and Blair be entered into a war crimes register.
    Both Bush and Blair repeatedly said the so-called war against terror was targeted at terrorists.”
    link to youtube.com

  6. I was just skimming through some news of what was going on ,within the last few days in my “old” country,Poland, as well as in Russia, in Europe, etc.
    I bumped into some disturbing info reg. my Church, situation in Libya, Syria,
    Japan (radioactivity). I watched a few, short videos about a pathetic , demoralizing to the very core state of so called “pop culture”, directed especially at kids and youth.
    In short, everywhere SUCKS. It sucks BIG TIME.
    Most, (if not all) of European governments have leaders, who are corrupted, ill willed, organised mafia members, who go against their own people. Poland, Russia included.
    In Poland, it is especially visible after a plane crush (assassination) that happened last year (04.10.2010) in Smolensk (Russia) where our president Kaczynski died ,along with the majority of people from his government. Since then, everything goes down the hill in the country with a speed of light. Mission was accomplished.
    Many people start seeing the dark clouds that are gathering above our heads. The main problem is what can we do about it ??
    Is there anything that we can do about it, apart from being knowledgable on the subject?? Granted, many people are still very ignorant of what is going on and they WANT to stay this way. Some of my friends say something along these lines:
    “I do not want to talk about it, it is too depressing, too frustrating. I prefer not to know. We can’t do anything about it anyway. ”
    Can’t we??????

    • Here a video of a Wonderful man, Nigel Farge, talking to a bunch of useless, nonchalant Euro-hyenas ,who are sitting happily in ther Euro-sits ,and just laugh in the face of the whole world.
      They know that they are building an EMPIRE and they do not care what anybody thinks about it . They just do ,what they got to do.
      Did any “Empire Builder” ever cared what people think about him??
      As long as he had a strong, loyal army of “useful, dispensable idiots” ,ready to die for him and defense his actions, he didn’t give a minute of thought to “people’s opinion”.
      Now, modern Emperors have the Main StreamMedia ,who take care of the business of poisoning the public with lies and manipulations that serve the Emperors.

      here is Nigel Farage’s talk to euro-hayenas.
      link to youtube.com