The Redhunter

But of course these six ships weren't about relief. They were about the destruction of Israel. The goal was to delegitimize the state of Israel by creating the no-win situation described above.

Thankfully, most Democrats as well as Republicans in the United States see this for what it is, a shameful attempt by Islamists so destroy Israel. In January 2009 both houses of Congress issued strong bipartisan statements of support for Israel in their current war with Hamas. I'm sure President Obama will support Israel. A few on the far left and far right will say otherwise, but they're in the minority.

Unfortunately we cannot say the same for many in the rest of the world. They seem to be afflicted with either outright anti-Semitism, moral blindness, or both.

A few quick excerpts from various articles and then I've got to run off to work. First up is a post over at Powerline that's got some great links:

Those manning the Turkish Hamas flotilla seeking to run the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza were no fools. They knew exactly what they were doing -- see Jonathan Schanzer's "The terror finance flotilla" -- and they accomplished their mission in part.

The fools weren't on the ship. The fools are on dry land, as can be deduced from the ship-of-fools quality to the response to Israel's encounter with the flotilla. See Wesley Pruden's "A shocking story of Israeli survival" and Caroline Glick's "Ending Israel's losing streak." See also Mona Charen's "Flotillas and falsehoods" (query: "Don't members of the press ever resent being so used?") and David Hornik's "World regrets death of jihadists, vilifies Israel." For a footnote involving the New York Times, see Seth Lipsky's "Mavi Marmara and the Exodus."

Claudia Rosette has more on the Turkish IHH:

For details on what led a French magistrate in the 1990s to explore IHH connections to terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda, a piece of required reading is a working paper released in 2006 by the Danish Institute for International Studies: "The Role of Islamic Charities in International Terrorist Recruitment and Financing." The entire report is illuminating, but for the section on the IHH, scroll to pages 10-14. When this report was written, the IHH was active in providing "charitable donations" to what were then "rebel-dominated areas of restive Sunni central Iraq."

Not too long ago I naively thought that Turkey could lead the way, or at least play a role, in the reform of Islam that is so desperately needed. But the Turkey of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is going, going..... It is dying a death of demographics (his secular supporters in the cities are being out-babied by those more inclined towards radicalism) and the general rise of Islamism around the Muslim world.

Victor Davis Hanson has more:

The virulent worldwide reaction to Israeli's handling of the Gaza flotilla has been quite instructive. The bankrupt Greeks, for example, are taking a holiday from railing at the Germans to demonstrate in solidarity with the Turkish-organized Gaza effort, which puts them on the same side as those whose government supports the occupation of much of Greek-speaking Cyprus and its divided capital.

No one in Europe worried much about the constant shower of missiles from Gaza in the past. No one in Europe said a word when North Korea torpedoed and slaughtered South Koreans on the high seas. No one objected when the Iranians hijacked a British ship and humiliated the hostages.

We ourselves seem to be getting a sort of novel pass for executing scores of suspected terrorists -- and anyone in their vicinity -- in our new, stepped-up Predator drone assassinations.

But the Western and Islamic worlds have a preexisting furor at the Jewish state that can be tapped at will by almost any pro-radical-Palestinian group clever enough to do proper P.R. after a desired asymmetrical confrontation. The fallout from Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, the distortions around the 2002 terrorist storming of the Church of Nativity, the 2006 Lebanon war -- over time, these incidents do their part, in weird fashion, to incur hatred for a liberal democracy while creating sympathy for a theocratic thugocracy like Hamas.

What explains this preexisting hatred, which ensures denunciation of Israel in the most rabid -- or, to use the politically correct parlance, "disproportionate" -- terms? It is not about "occupied land," given the millions of square miles worldwide that are presently occupied, from Georgia to Cyprus to Tibet. It is not a divided capital -- Nicosia is walled off. It is not an overreaction in the use of force per se -- the Russians flattened Grozny and killed tens of thousands while the world snoozed. And it cannot be the scale of violence, given what we see hourly in Pakistan, Darfur, and the Congo. And, given the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish histories (and reactions to them), the currently outraged Turkish government is surely not a credible referent on the topic of disproportionate violence.

Perhaps the outrage reflects simple realpolitik -- 350 million Arab Muslims versus 7 million Israelis. Perhaps it is oil: half the world's reserves versus Israel's nada. Perhaps it is the fear of terror: Draw a cartoon or write a novel offending Islam, and you must go into hiding; defame Jews and earn accolades. Perhaps it is anti-Semitism, which is as fashionable on the academic Left as it used to be among the neanderthal Right.

Perhaps there is also a new sense that the United States at last has fallen into line with the Western consensus, and so is hardly likely to play the old lone-wolf supporter of Israel in the press or at the U.N.

At this point, it doesn't much matter -- as this latest hysterical reaction reminds us, much of the world not only sides with Israel's enemies but sides with them to such a degree as to suggest that, in any existential moment to come, the world either will be indifferent or will be on the side of Israeli's enemies.

Quite frightening, when you think of it.

Indeed. I feel a big war coming on in the Middle East, one that will make the recent ones against Hizbollah and Hamas look like small potatoes. No matter how it starts or proceeds, the "international community" will be against Israel. Any U.S. president will support Israel, but whether he does so strongly or tepidly remains to be seen. Even Reagan criticized Israel for it's 1981 attack on the French-built nuclear power plant in Osirak, Iraq, even though it should have been clear at the time that Saddam Hussein was going to use it to build nuclear weapons.

I have relatives of Greek extraction, and they are very worried about Turkey, a worry that wasn't quite as intense not too many years ago. The forces of evil are aligning in a very malign way. The growing influence of radical Islam in Europe, Ahmadinejad's bogus reelection and the coming Iranian bomb, Hugo Chavez' consolidation of power in Venezuela, the Turkish-Brazilian-Iranian nuclear agreement, even the incessant Chinese military buildup seem part of an aligning of forces against the United States and Israel. Is it 1939 again?