Hamas Blackmail, Media Silence

by Bassam Tawil • August 9, 2018 at 5:00 am

Hamas's strategy is to remain in power forever; to achieve that goal, it is prepared to do anything. Hamas has always acted out of its own narrow interests while holding the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip hostage to its extremist ideology and repressive regime.
"Those who claim to be confronting Israel are nothing but corrupt, extortionist bribe-takers. Today, every politician in the Gaza Strip is well aware of the fact that the corruption at the border crossings has become the norm of the official establishment, and not actions by individuals or a certain apparatus." — Hassan Asfour, former Palestinian Authority minister, human rights activist and political columnist.
Here one always needs to ask: where is the role of the international media in exposing Hamas's corruption and exploitation of its own people? Why is it that the mainstream media in the West does not want to pay any attention to what Asfour and other Palestinians are saying? The answer is always simple: As far as foreign journalists are concerned, if Israel is not the one asking for bribes or blackmailing the Palestinians, there is no story there.

The Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, says it wants Israel and Egypt to keep the border crossings with its coastal territory open on a permanent basis. The message that Hamas has been relaying to Israel and Egypt has been along the lines of: If you seek a cease-fire, you must reopen, on a permanent basis, the Kerem Shalom commercial border crossing (with Israel) and the Rafah terminal along the border with Egypt.

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New Heights of Turkish Hypocrisy

by Uzay Bulut • August 9, 2018 at 4:00 am

According to a 2015 news report, there were only 1,244 Greeks left in Istanbul at that time. In addition, even those tiny minorities are reportedly leaving Turkey in increasing numbers, to escape the instability and aggression they suffer in the country.
Many Muslim Turks who are on the receiving end of Erdogan's human-rights abuses, seem shocked by the current undemocratic events in Turkey. They should not be; such abuses have been going on in the country for decades. The Turks are likely to continue living under the oppression that they themselves have created.
Erdogan needs to be reminded that it is not Israel -- a vibrant and flourishing democracy with equal rights for all its citizens -- whose behavior is reminiscent of dark chapters in history. It is Turkey.

In this photo from September 1955, a mob of Turks in Istanbul is destroying stores owned by Greek Christians. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

During a parliamentary meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on July 24, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel the "most Zionist, fascist, and racist state in the world." Referring to the recent passage by Israel's Knesset of the "Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People," Erdogan attacked the Israeli government's view as "no different from Hitler's obsession with the Aryan race."

In fact, there is nothing "fascist" or "racist" in Israel's new law. On the contrary, as David Hazony noted in the Forward:

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