Jerusalem News (1 July, 2015, 14 Tammuz, 5775)
Contents:
1. Turkey's Double Game with ISIS by Burak Bekdil
2. Sweden: Rising Anti-Semitism and Funding Islamic Relief (terror)
By: Tobias Petersson And Nima Gholam Ali Pour
3. Pictures the Media Does not Usually Show You.
Armed Israeli Border Guard helps Palestinian woman change a tire.
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1. Turkey's Double Game with ISIS by Burak Bekdil
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2015 (view PDF)
http://www.meforum.org/5317/turkey-isis
Extracts:
Ankara's support for ISIS and other jihadist groups became undeniable in January 2014 when Turkish prosecutors sent a team to search three trucks in the southern province of Adana. The Syria-bound trucks carried a cargo of more than fifty missiles and nearly forty crates loaded with ammunition. An ISIS jihadist later indicated that the Turkish government had delivered stocks of weapons and military hardware to the group's fighters in Syria.
Turkey's Islamist government has had rational reasons to support discreetly its own Frankenstein monster: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The jihadists who have conquered large swathes of Syria and Iraq since the summer of 2014 may have the habit of beheading every infidel they catch, Muslim or non-Muslim. But they are merely the excessively savage next of kin to Turkish Islamists, who pursue similar political goals in Western-style suits and neckties instead of Arab gowns imitating the Prophet Muhammad's attire.
Their kinship diverges over methodology rather than objectives. But there is also a pragmatic attachment built on a shared obsession with common enemies. The Shiites whom ISIS militants love to slaughter are privately viewed by Turkey's Sunni supremacists as heretics (therefore, infidels). Likewise, Ankara views Syria's Kurds as a major security threat. The Turkish government believed that investing in ISIS (and its brothers in arms such as Ahrar ash-Sham and an-Nusra Front) would facilitate the downfall of Syrian president Bashar Assad, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdo an's friend-turned-nemesis. They miscalculated, and thus began Turkey's own Frankenstein story.
Ankara's quiet support for any jihadist, ISIS or otherwise, has long been an open secret. It became undeniable in January 2014 when Turkish prosecutors sent a team of gendarmerie officers to search three trucks in the southern province of Adana. The Syria-bound trucks, with a bizarre cargo of missiles, rockets, and ammunition in boxes marked in Cyrillic [Russian], were escorted by Turkish intelligence officers.[1]
A prosecutor arrested the men and seized the cargo, but then all hell broke loose. The governor rushed to the scene and declared that the trucks were moving on orders from then prime minister, now president Erdo an. They were then handed back to Turkish intelligence. One of the drivers testified that the cargo had been loaded from a foreign airplane at Ankara's Esenboga Airport and that "we carried similar loads several times before."[2]
In the summer of 2014, a military prosecutor took charge of the legal proceedings and ruled that "this is a military affair."[3] Shortly afterward a court ordered a total media blackout on the incident. Today, the law enforcement officers who searched the trucks stand trial on charges of "international espionage."[4]
But what was the destination of the cargo in Syria? The answer, once again, is an open secret. Two months after the seizure of the cargo, an audio recording was leaked to the social media by unknown sources. It contained full minutes of a top-secret meeting at the Turkish foreign ministry's premises of some of Turkey's most important men: then-foreign minister Ahmet Davuto lu (now prime minister); his undersecretary Feridun Sinirlio lu; chief intelligence officer Hakan Fidan; and deputy chief of the general staff, Gen. Ya'ar Goler.
The recording offered a realistic reading of Ankara's Syria policy. For instance, the Turkish bigwigs were heard saying that "an attack on Syria 'must be seen as an opportunity for us [Turks].'" The spymaster is heard saying that a false flag operation would be very easy, and he could "send a few men to Syria to attack Turkey." Fidan is also heard saying that "he had successfully sent two thousands trucks into Syria before."[5] That solved the mystery of the trucks with the curious cargo two months earlier.
A year later, further evidence of support for ISIS emerged when an ISIS jihadist indicated that the Turkish government had delivered stocks of weapons and military hardware to the group's fighters in Syria. Mehmet Askar, now being tried in a high criminal court in Turkey along with eleven other suspected ISIS fighters, revealed that a 2011 plan to transfer arms to ISIS and to an-Nusra Front, as well as to the more moderate Free Syrian Army, was hampered by the Syrian army's capture of a key border town. Askar's accomplice, Haisam Toubalijeh, who was involved in a weapons transfer thwarted in 2013 by Turkish forces, reassured him that contacts inside the Turkish state would help facilitate the movement of the cache, which included some one hundred NATO rifles.[6] The secret was out.
Ideological Fault Lines
As the Arab upheavals spread across the region, then-foreign minister Davuto lu hoped that a belt of Sunni Muslim Brotherhood-ruled regimes, subservient to an emerging Turkish empire, would proliferate in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Libya. Therefore, Syria's Alawaite strongman, President Bashar Assad, had to go. In August 2012, Davuto lu predicted that Assad's days in power numbered only "a few weeks."[7]
Assad's downfall was a priority for Ankara, so it began to cultivate both ideological and pragmatic ties with and support for a rich array of jihadist groups in Syria, from moderates to ISIS and its variants.[8] These jihadists would ward off Shiite influence in Syria, fight and topple Assad, and rebuild the country according to Ankara's ideological and geostrategic preferences.
In June 2014, ISIS captured Mosul, Iraq, and raided the Turkish consulate compound, taking forty-six personnel hostage, including the consul-general. Here, Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davuto lu (right) kisses Turkish consul- general Ozturk Yilmaz on his return to Turkish soil after the hostages were freed. Davuto lu claimed the release was the work of the country's intelligence agency although it is thought that cash switched hands.
The Turkish government's support for ISIS and other jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has not been cost-free. In June 2014, ISIS captured Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and raided the Turkish consulate compound, taking forty-six personnel hostage, including the consul-general.[14] In doing so, the organization apparently sought to prevent the Ankara government, deemed too pragmatic and "Western" by its standards, from betraying the Islamist cause.
In reality, ISIS had seized not merely forty-six hostages but the entire nation, serving as a wakeup call for Ankara: If you deal with jihadists, you can one day become their victim. Turkey's 910-kilometer-long border with Syria had become an open highway for jihadists from around the world flocking to join ISIS. Border crossings and medical treatment for injured ISIS fighters that had been officially tolerated were upgraded to create a de facto hub that augmented ISIS's logistical base and firepower.[15]
Turkey's border with Syria had become an open highway for jihadists flocking to join ISIS.
In the aftermath of the incident, Turkish intelligence heavily lobbied Sunni tribal leaders in both Iraq and Syria and managed to broker a deal with ISIS. Although the precise terms remain unknown, Ankara is believed to have freed several ISIS prisoners from Turkish jails and pledged not to attack ISIS strongholds directly in neighboring territories in return for the safe return of the hostages. Generous amounts of cash and other Turkish niceties were reportedly granted to ISIS, leading to the release of all hostages after 101 days of captivity. This, according to the Ankara government, "shows the level achieved by the great Turkey."[16]
In fact, the Erdo an government has a love-hate relationship with the "more barbaric comrades of the same cause [da'wa]," whose violent conduct threatens to undermine its carefully contrived narrative of Islam's peaceful ways. But the family feud began to threaten Ankara and its interests in Syria. ..
A major divergence between the Turks and ISIS ensued when Ankara, under increasing pressure from its Western allies, switched to more cautious support for the jihadists, provoking ISIS to threaten to capture Turkish soldiers and bomb the Syria-based tomb of Suleiman Shah, grandfather of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire and a revered figure for the Turks. ISIS chose this threat because its followers believe that tombs are sinful and must be destroyed. The tomb was built in 1886, and in 1921, when France controlled Syria, a peace treaty granted Ankara sovereignty over the small plot of land containing the tomb. That land is Turkey's only sovereign land outside its own territory.[18]
Had the group made good on its threat and killed dozens of Turkish soldiers guarding the tomb, this would have greatly embarrassed the Turkish government. By way of preempting this eventuality, on February 21, 2015, the Turkish military sent 572 troops, 39 tanks, 57 armored vehicles, and 100 other vehicles to Syria to extract its besieged soldiers from the tomb. Shortly afterward, Davuto lu and chief-of-staff Necdet Ozel proudly announced that the tomb had been relocated just a stone's throw away from the Turkish border.[19] Privately, the Turkish government was resentful of ISIS, which until recently had not been viewed as a security threat.
Following months of Western media accusations over Turkey's quiet support for ISIS, the Turkish leadership, in early 2015, decided to launch its own public diplomacy offensive. In January, the government announced that, for the first time, it had arrested a Turkish national on charges of joining ISIS. About a month later, on February 11, the Turkish General Staff announced that security forces had arrested thirteen foreign nationals and one Turkish citizen en route to joining ISIS.[20] On March 12, Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgi, Â said that Ankara was glad its Western allies were now sharing intelligence more freely (about potential ISIS fighters crossing Turkish territory). He claimed that the government had a list of 12,000 such names and had so far arrested and deported 1,100 people who would have otherwise joined ISIS.[21] Commenting on the news to this author, a European Union ambassador said, "This is merely window dressing. We still have strong evidence that Turkey's counterterrorism officials do not wholeheartedly cooperate [with us] in our efforts to fight ISIS."
The West is thus reluctant to trust Turkey's loyalty to the anti-ISIS alliance. In the words of a New York Times editorial:
For months, the Western allies have pressured Turkey to close its porous border, which has allowed thousands of jihadists to cross into Syria to join the Islamic State ... and has enabled ISIS to smuggle in weapons andsmuggle out oil on which it relies for revenue. Although the Turkish government has taken some steps to make transit harder, it has been unwilling, or unable, to stem the flow, according to Tim Arango and Eric Schmitt's reporting in The [New York] Times. One smuggler said that while his job has become more difficult, sometimes the Turkish border guards look the other way.[26]
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2. Sweden: Rising Anti-Semitism and Funding Islamic Relief (terror)
By: Tobias Petersson And Nima Gholam Ali Pour
Published: June 30th, 2015
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/sweden-rising-anti-semitism-and-funding-islamic-relief-terror/2015/06/30/
In April, the Swedish NGO and think tank Perspectives On Israel (PPI) in a Jerusalem Post op-ed brought attention to the fact that the NGO Islamic Relief (IR) was receiving funding from the Swedish government aid agency SIDA. There exists clear evidence that the IR project 'Cash for Work' has benefited Hamas and its institutions in the Gaza strip. In addition to PPI's criticism of IR, there exists international criticism against IR for its ties to terror organizations. Israel has banned IR from working in Israel, including Judea and Samaria, and declared it an illegal organization. According to news reports, the decision was made by Israel after the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and legal authorities provided incriminating information against IR. In addition to this the UAE lists IR as a terror organization. PPI is awaiting a political reaction in Sweden to our findings and the international criticism-so far, silence. Unfortunately, Sweden is a country where the majority accepts that tax money goes to an organization that aids terrorists.
In May, PPI's spokesperson Nima Gholam Ali Pour revealed in the newspaper Samtiden that Islamic Relief's country director in Sweden is spreading anti-Semitic myths on Facebook. Some of the anti-Semitic myths that were spread on Facebook by IR's country director were that Jews are behind the Holocaust and that they control the World Bank. Again this was met with silence from our politicians and journalists in Sweden.
The Swedish media that is so interested in writing one after the other news articles on alleged 'apartheid' in Israel was not interested in writing that the Swedish government aid agency SIDA is funding an organization which has benefited Hamas institutions and has a leading representative in Sweden that seems to have racist views. Neither the Swedish government nor SIDA has commented on this scandal.
While SIDA chooses to continue its co-operation with IR more and more Jews are fleeing from Sweden's major cities because of growing anti-Semitism in Sweden. In a situation, where the Swedish government and major social institutions in Sweden should make a clear repudiation of anti-Semitism, they choose not to do so, by not distancing themselves from IR.
PPI regrets to announce that Sweden more and more is becoming a country where anti-Semitism is acceptable. The scandal around IR is one example of many. Information that IR has close connections to Hamas institutions and has benefited them have been presented. No political actions have been taken against IR. Sida has yet not showed any interest in knowing which the more than hundred organizations are that IR has involved in its aid projects in the Gaza strip and there by benefited with Swedish funding. Information that IR's country director has been spreading anti-Semitism on Facebook was presented. No one did anything. Sweden's political establishment seems to have the same values as the Germans had in the 1930s. PPI invites everyone opposing anti-Semitism to write to the Swedish government and ask them to stop SIDA's funding of IR, an organization that have benefited the anti-Semites in Hamas and whose representatives are spreading anti-Semitism. Racism must never be accepted in any society.
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3. Pictures the Media Does not Usually Show You.
Armed Israeli Border Guard helps Palestinian woman change a tire.
http://www.britam.org/tire.jpg
Picture obtained from the Facebook page of Yair Davidi
[This is NOT the Yair Davidiy of Brit-Am/Hebrew Nations who wrote  "The Tribes", etc,  but another person who is also important and works for the Ramat Gan Municipality and is married to Miriam Davidi!]
https://www.facebook.com/yairdavi?fref=ts
Yair D. in turn first took the picture from:
Statisim Mitsitsim
https://www.facebook.com/pages/%D7%A1%D7%98%D7%98%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%99%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%9D/1583704058513358?pnref=story