|
In this mailing:
by Bassam Tawil
• January 12, 2015 at 5:00 am
Hamas
should be the last to denounce assaults on journalists and free speech.
Its security forces in the Gaza Strip continue to arrest and intimidate
Palestinian journalists on a regular basis. Just hours before the Hamas
statement, a Hamas-affiliated website, Al-Resalah, tweeted a photo of the
three slain French terrorists and described them as "martyrs."
Hamas's
condemnation of terrorism -- which apparently fooled many good people who
sincerely hoped that maybe "this time" Hamas was actually
reforming -- should be seen only as efforts to appease the EU and
persuade its governments that they were right to remove Hamas from the
terrorist list.
In
French, Hamas said "it condemns the attack... and insists that
differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder." Hamas,
however, was extremely careful not to condemn the terror attack on the
Jewish supermarket in Paris -- because Hamas believes that attacks
against Jews are legitimate. Condemning the killing of Jews would have
meant that Hamas would also have to denounce its own terror attacks
against Jews.
In
case you are thinking that abuses apply only to Hamas, Fatah posted a
drawing on its official Facebook page, showing a pile of skulls and
skeletons with Jewish stars on them, later removing the image.
|
Fatah's image from its official Facebook page,
celebrating their killings of Jews.
|
The two Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah, are once again proving
that when it comes to terrorism, they are masters of double-talk, saying
one thing for the international community, which has so recently been
good to them, while at home practicing the opposite. Mahmoud Abbas's
denunciation of the Paris terror attacks and his decision to participate
in the anti-terrorism rally in the French capital is also a sign of the
ongoing hypocrisy and double standards of both Fatah and Hamas.
Hamas should be the last to denounce assaults on journalists and
free speech. Its security forces in the Gaza Strip continue to arrest and
intimidate Palestinian journalists on a regular basis.
by Burak Bekdil
• January 12, 2015 at 4:00 am
What
happens if an army kills Turkish civilians? It seems to depend on which
army does the killing.
The
nine Turkish citizens killed aboard the Mavi Marmara remain so dear to
the official Turkish memory. The 34 Turkish citizens killed in Uludere by
a Turkish airstrike are mere casualties that the official Turkish memory
wishes to forget.
|
The funeral procession for the victims of the 2011
Uludere/Roboski massacre in Turkey.
|
What happens if an army kills Turkish civilians? It seems to depend
on which army does the killing.
On May 31, 2010, the Israeli Defense Forces raided the Mavi Marmara,
the Turkish vessel leading a flotilla in order to "end the illegal
Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip."
During the raid, nine Turkish activists lost their lives due to what
later Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted were "operational
errors." (A United Nations-sponsored investigation known as the U.N.
Palmer report later determined Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip to be
legal, but stated that the "decision to board the vessels with such
substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no
final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and
unreasonable.")
In response, Turkey downgraded its diplomatic ties with Israel and
threatened to isolate the Jewish state in an international campaign.
Since then, Turkish-Israeli relations have never normalized.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment