quarta-feira, 28 de setembro de 2011

Is Fatah Moderate?

Fatah Central Committee Member Abbas Zaki Calls Netanyahu and Obama "Scumbags" and Says: "The Greater Goal Cannot Be Accomplished in One Go"
Al-Jazeera TV (Qatar) - September 23, 2011 - 01:49

quarta-feira, 21 de setembro de 2011

Maior parte dos "palestinos" prefere ser israelense

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-09-19/east-jerusalem-palestinian-state-arab-israel/50470736/1?csp=34news


Há dois dias o jornal americano USA Today publicou uma pesquisa feita pelo 'Palestinian Center for Public Opinion' que mostra que 35% dos 288.000 árabes que vivem em Jerusalém oriental preferem ser cidadãos de Israel, enquanto só 30% querem ser cidadãos de um estado palestino.

Ou seja: a maioria dos árabes que vivem em Israel querem ser israelenses, e não palestinos. O duro é explicar isso pra imprensa e governantes que não acreditam que esses árabes devam ter opinião ou que Israel deva existir…

Os outros 35% dos entrevistados preferiram não responder a pergunta. O motivo é fácil de entender, já que por lei qualquer palestino que venda terras a um judeu ou seja considerado um "colaborador" de Israel é condenado a morte depois de um julgamente que deixaria Cuba parecendo um paraíso democrático...

segunda-feira, 19 de setembro de 2011

Por “proteção”, minorias na Síria defendem o regime

Natural de Homs, cidade que virou o centro dos protestos contra o regime sírio, o cristão Shaher Meida explica em bom português por que apoia incondicionalmente o ditador Bashar Assad. “Com ele temos proteção”, diz ele, que morou um ano em Belo Horizonte. “Sem Assad, o risco é a Síria virar um novo Iraque”. O temor de Meida é uma das explicações por trás do apoio que as minorias do país devotam ao regime, ainda que muitos critiquem o Estado policial e anseiem por mais liberdade. Formado por cristãos, muçulmanos, alauítas, drusos, ismaelitas e uma microscópica comunidade judaica, a Síria é o único país do Oriente Médio em que diferentes grupos religiosos e sectários coexistem, afora o Líbano.

Mas essa aparente harmonia começou a sofrer rachaduras com os protestos iniciados em março, despertando fantasmas de uma guerra sectária. Esse risco é ressaltado pelo regime. A alternativa a Assad, adverte, é o caos. Real ou exagerado, o perigo colocou as minorias em pânico, sobretudo a cristã, que constitui 10% da população de 23 milhões. O temor é que se repitam as perseguições ocorridas no Egito e no Iraque ou um cenário de guerra civil, como no Líbano.


________________________________________________

Setenta e cinco anos atrás um grupo de seis notáveis alauítas (grupo religioso do qual faz parte o ditador Bashar el-Assad e a elite política da Síria) enviaram uma carta aos franceses, na época em que eles e os britãnicos dividiam arbitrariamente o Oriente Médio, destruindo comunidades milenares para apaziguar os muçulmanos. Na carta eles explicavam o motivo de se recusarem a fazer parte da Síria muçulmana e dominada por sunitas [que os consideram infiéis]. Como exemplo eles apontam o tratamento dispensado aos judeus pelos muçulmanos na Palestina:

“The condition of the Jews in Palestine is the strongest and most explicit evidence of the militancy of the Islamic issue vis-à-vis those who do not belong to Islam. These good Jews contributed to the Arabs with civilization and peace, scattered gold, and established prosperity in Palestine without harming anyone or taking anything by force, yet the Muslims declare holy war against them and never hesitated in slaughtering their women and children, despite the presence of England in Palestine and France in Syria.
Therefore, a dark fate awaits the Jews and other minorities in case the Mandate is abolished and Muslim Syria is united with Muslim Palestine… the ultimate goal of the Muslim Arabs.”


Entre os signatários estava Suleiman (Sulayman) el-Assad, avô de Bashar el-Assad.

Syria's crackdown
The Lost Cause of Alawite Zionism

sábado, 17 de setembro de 2011

The Other Tsunami

There is no parallel on earth to what “Jew” means to millions of Muslims.

It is very difficult to hate babies.

It takes a special person.

As morally wrong as it is to murder innocent adults, mankind seems to have a built-in revulsion against killing babies. If a baby does not evoke any tenderness, if a baby is regarded as worthy of being deliberately hurt or murdered, we know that we have encountered a degree of evil that few humans — even among murderers — can relate to.

That is why what Palestinian terrorists did to a Jewish family on the West Bank this past weekend deserves far more attention than it received. Normally Palestinian atrocities get little attention — certainly far less attention than an Israeli apartment building on the West Bank receives. But this particular atrocity got even less attention than usual because the world was focused on the terrible tsunami that hit Japan.

On Friday night, Palestinian terrorists slipped into a Jewish settlement, entered a home, and stabbed the father, the mother, and three of their children to death: an eleven-year-old, a four-year old, and a three-month-old baby.

In order to understand what those actions mean, a seemingly separate incident needs to be recalled: the prolonged sexual attack by up to 200 Egyptian men on Lara Logan, chief foreign-affairs correspondent for CBS News, in Tahrir Square, Cairo, a few weeks ago. It was reported that after stripping her naked and then molesting and beating her, the men kept shouting “Jew, Jew!”

The two incidents tell the same tale. In much of the Arab Muslim world, and some of the non-Arab Muslim world (such as Iran) today, “Jew” is not a person. “Jew” is not even merely the enemy. In fact, there is no parallel on earth to what “Jew” means to a hundred million, perhaps hundreds of millions of Muslims.

Think of any conflict in the world — Pakistan–India, China–Tibet, North Korea–South Korea, Tamil–Sinhalese. There are some deep hatreds there, and atrocities have been committed on one or both sides of each of those conflicts. But in none of those conflicts nor anywhere else is there something equivalent to what “Jew” means to millions of Muslims.

There really is only one historical parallel, and it, too, involved the word “Jew.” The Nazis also succeeded in fully dehumanizing the word “Jew.” Thus, for Nazism, it was as important (if not more so) to murder Jewish babies and children — often through as cruel a means as possible (being burned alive, buried alive, or thrown up in the air and impaled on bayonets) — as it was to murder Jewish adults.

The human being does not have to learn to hate. It seems to come pretty naturally. Nor does the human being have to learn to murder, steal, or rape. These, too, seem to be in the natural human repertoire of evils.

But the human being does have to learn to hate children and babies, and to regard the torture and murder of them as morally desirable acts. It takes years of work to undo normal protective human attitudes toward children.

That is precisely what the Nazis did and what significant parts of the Muslim world have done to the word “Jew.” To them, the Jew is not just sub-human, the Jew — and his or her children — is sub-animal.

Palestinian and other Muslim spokesmen and their supporters on the left argue that this unique hatred is the fruit of Israeli policies, not decades of Nazi-like Jew-hatred saturating Islamic education, Islamic television and radio, and the mosque. But for this to be true, unique hatred would have to be matched by unique evil on the Israelis’ part. Yet, among the injustices of the world, what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians would not even register on a moral Richter scale. The creation of Israel engendered about 750,000 Palestinian refugees (and an equal number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries) and the death of perhaps 10,000 Palestinian Arabs. And all of that came about solely because Arab armies invaded Israel in order to destroy it at birth. Yet, when Pakistan was yanked from India and established as a Muslim state at the very same time Israel was established, that act engendered 12.5 million Muslim refugees, and about a million dead Muslims (and similar numbers of Hindu refugees and deaths). Why then doesn’t “Hindu” equal “Jew” in the Muslim lexicon of hate?

Israel Palestinian Conflict: The Truth About the Peace Process



Israel's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon explains the historical facts relating to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The video explains that the reason there is no successful peace process is because of decades of Palestinian and Arab recalcitrance and the main reason for the conflict is not Israel's presence in the West Bank, but successive Palestinian leaders resistance to Jewish sovereignty.

sexta-feira, 16 de setembro de 2011

Note to Erdogan: Nobody Likes the Turks

In 1822, the Ottomans dispatched 40,000 Turkish troops to the Greek island of Chios with orders to kill all infants under three-years-old, all males over 12-years-old, and all females over 40-years-old, except those willing to convert to Islam. Some 20,000 Greeks were killed and the island was depopulated, eradicating a 2,000 year culture. Two years later, Ottoman soldiers burned the island of Kasos to the ground and killed 7,000 of its inhabitants. Eventually, Europeans navies dispatched by Britain and France, and a navy dispatched by Russia, intervened to stop the atrocities.

In 1876, 8,000 Turkish troops were dispatched to the Bulgarian town of Batak where, after promising to withdraw in exchange for the Bulgarians disarming, they beheaded or burned alive 5,000 of the city’s now-unprotected civilians. The massacre was part of a broader Turkish campaign in which 15,000 Bulgarians were eventually murdered, and which a British investigator described as “perhaps the most heinous crime” of the 1800s. Eventually, the Russians intervened to stop the atrocities.

I only bring these up because Israel and Greece just signed a military cooperation pact, and Israel and Bulgaria just signed a military cooperation pact, and European Union officials are slamming Turkey for sabre-rattling, and the Russians today committed to patrolling Eastern Mediterranean waters in response to borderline explicit Turkish military threats against Cyprus’s gas drilling.

Erdogan and his neo-Ottoman ilk seem to have forgotten a fairly straightforward regional reality: nobody likes them.

Per JE Dyer’s trenchant analysis, the collapse of Pax Americana has caused the region to revert to somewhere in between 18th century Ottoman naval hegemony and the 19th century Pax Britannica. There are a lot of reasons for everyone to be worried about that dynamic – you’ll recall that this book ended badly – but it has predictable consequences for Turkey’s current resurgence. The AKP’s years of trying to repair regional relations with “good neighbor” and “zero problems” policies — which as recently as last year involved removing historical rivals like Russia, Bulgaria and Greece from Ankara’s “threats list” and replacing them with Israel – have been reversed in a few months.

Presumably, the Turks intend to compensate for alienating Europe by expanding their influence into the Arab and Muslim world, an “eastern turn” that fits their neo-Ottoman pretensions nicely. They’ve opened up border crossings and boosted trade with Iran. They’ve conducted unprecedented joint military drills and emphasized cultural exchanges with Syria, resulting in New York Times articles with fawning lines like – quote unquote – “people in Syria love Turkey because the country supports the Arab world, and they are fellow Muslims.” Erdogan became a Palestinian champion, valorizing Hamas while hosting confabs to hammer out strategies for the Palestinians’ Fatah-driven UN gambit. He even offered the Taliban an office in Istanbul, because why shouldn’t they have an outpost in the revived center of all Muslim life?

And of course most recently, Ankara immodestly declared it was shaping the Arab Spring via its Islamist engagement.

Except the AKP is screwing all of that up, too. Egypt’s Islamists are in a row with Erdogan, which is a little ungrateful on their part given how he empowered them by calling for Mubarak’s ouster early and often (albeit in the context of anti-Israel bluster, naturally). Even worse, having invested so much in now-impossible Iranian and Syrian alliances – to such an extent that Ankara’s efforts strained relations with the 2010 Obama White House – Turkey’s foreign policy is now in shambles:

The bottom line is that from aspiring to having zero problems with neighbors, Turkey has today surrounded itself with problems with all of its key neighbors, and other countries in the region. Ties with Israel are all but broken, dialogue with Syria is all but non-existent, and the extremely warm atmosphere between Tehran and Ankara of only a year ago has all but dissipated due to serious differences over Syria, as well as Turkey’s decision to participate in NATO’s missile defense shield… As for ties with Armenia, they are not going anywhere.

There’s also a limit on how long Turkey can keep boosting Hamas while routinely killing hundreds of Kurds. Something’s going to give and, as Michael Rubin explained not too long ago, it might already be giving.

Meanwhile the Israelis – much to the chagrin of Turkey and the Arab world – cooperated closely with the Europeans to shut down Flotilla II. Israel’s military, economic, and cultural ties with Greece are blossoming, in contrast to the physical wall Greece is building on its Turkish border. The Bulgarian foreign minister recently chastized his Turkish counterpart over Turkey’s anti-Israel diplomacy.

No one is under any illusions that there’s love lost between the Jewish state and many European countries and publics (witness the ongoing hand-wringing over Palestinian UDI and Durban 3). But in between the smug “analysis” declaring that Israel is isolated — a literal Erdogan talking point that’s been gleefully parroted by the likes of Robert Malley and Roger Cohen – it might be worth noting that, at least versus Turkey, the Jewish state is actually slightly up on allies gained during the last few months.

quinta-feira, 15 de setembro de 2011

Judenrein: PLO Ambassador Says Jews NOT Allowed in Palestinian State

So this is what they mean by a "two state solution:"



"After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated," Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador, said during a meeting with reporters sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. He was responding to a question about the rights of minorities in a Palestine of the future.


Such a state would be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany, which sought a country that was judenrein, or cleansed of Jews, said Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. National Security Council official.

Israel has 1.3 million Muslims who are Israeli citizens. Jews have lived in "Judea and Samaria," the biblical name for the West Bank, for thousands of years. Areikat said the PLO seeks a secular state, but that Palestinians need separation to work on their own national identity.

The Palestinian demand is unacceptable and "a despicable form of anti-Semitism," Abrams said. A small Jewish presence in a future Palestine, up to 1% of the population, would not hurt the Palestinian identity, he said.

"No civilized country would act this way," Abrams said.

Abrams should know that using the terms "Palestinian" and "civilized" in the same sentence can't be reconciled.

See also: The Progressive West Supports the Quest for a Judenrein State of Palestine

segunda-feira, 12 de setembro de 2011

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, os muçulmanos americanos e a Veja

Ao contar a história da somali que abandonou o Islã após os ataques terroristas de 11 de setembro, a jornalista Nana Queiroz omite números da pesquisa que ela própria cita para desqualificar as opiniões da entrevistada.



http://veja.abril.com.br/noticia/internacional/a-historia-da-muculmana-que-abandonou-o-isla-apos-o-11-9

"A escritora diz ainda que não acredita que o islamismo esteja aberto a "modernizações". Contudo, pesquisas mostram que muçulmanos americanos, mesmo sem deixar a religião, estão mais abertos à assimilação dos princípios ocidentais do que a história sofrida de Ayaan lhe permite acreditar. Entre os muçulmanos questionados em um levantamento feito recentemente, 56% afirmam querer adotar os costumes americanos e 90% defendem até que as mulheres deveriam trabalhar fora de casa (confira os números no quadro ao lado). Em média, eles são também mais felizes que os demais cidadãos americanos: 56% dizem estar satisfeitos com a forma como as coisas transcorrem nos Estados Unidos."


O que não é mencionado em momento algum pela jornalista é que, de acordo com a mesma pesquisa:

19% dos muçulmanos americanos acreditam que o terrorismo suicida é aceitável. Na faixa dos 18-29 o número sobe para 31% (um em cada três)

30%
têm uma visão positiva/pouco negativa da Al-Qaeda

28%
dizem ser contra a adoção de costumes americanos. Se somados aos que dizem que é preferível adotar alguns costumes, mas mantendo-se distintos do resto dos americanos o número sobe para 44%

60%
dos muçulmanos americanos dizem não acreditar que os responsáveis pelo 11/9 foram muçulmanos. Entre os imigrantes muçulmanos vivendo nos EUA o número sobe para 78%.

35%
dizem não se preocupar com o extremismo islãmico

31%
dizem que há conflito entre ser um muçulmano e viver numa sociedade moderna.

Pew Research Center survey on Muslims in America

sábado, 10 de setembro de 2011

The Economist: Palestinos estão entre os mais obesos do mundo

De acordo com o jornal britânico The Economist os palestinos então entre as populações mais obesas do mundo - as mulheres estão em terceiro lugar (42.5% das palestinas são consideradas obesas) e os homens palestinos estão em oitavo lugar (23.9%).

http://www.economist.com/node/8846631

الاتفاق المنسي بين الدولة العربية واليهودية -- اتفاق فيصل – فايتسمن ١٩١٩

في عام ١٩١٥، وخلال الحرب العالمية الأولى، أجرى القيادي العربي، أمير مكة المكرمة وملك الحجاز الشريف حسين بن علي، مفاوضات مع البريطانيين الذين أرادوا من عرب الإمبراطورية العثمانية مساعدتهم ودعمهم في مواجهة الأتراك.
طالب العرب خلالها التخلص من الحكم العثماني، القاسي والعنصري، وإقامة دولة عربية تمتد على شبه الجزيرة العربية، سوريا، لبنان، العراق وارض إسرائيل التاريخية.

وافق البريطانيون في المبدأ على طلب الشريف حسين بعد سلسلة من المفاوضات جرت بينه وبين الممثل الأعلى لبريطانيا في مصر هنري مكماهون الذي اشترط ان لا تشمل الدولة العربية ارض الاسكندرون ومرسينا في سوريا وأيضا الأراضي الجنوبية الغربية لدمشق ضمنها لبنان وارض إسرائيل باعتبارهم أراض غير عربية.

وبناء على ذلك دعم العرب برئاسة الشريف حسين البريطانيين عام ١٩١٦ معلنين الثورة العربية الكبرى ضد الامبراطورية العثمانية، بحيث قامت القبائل البدوية بمهاجمة القوات العثمانية وتمكنت من السيطرة على شبه الجزيرة العربية حتى السهل الخصيب.
الدولة العثمانية
مطالب الحركات القومية اليهودية والعربية
على اثر الإعلان عن انتقال الحكم في ارض إسرائيل التاريخية إلى البريطانيين، توجه وجهاء سياسيين يهود برئاسة حاييم عزريئيل فايتسمان بطلب استعادة سيادتهم على منطقة فلسطين. على إثر ذلك، حصل شعب إسرائيل من الانكليز على موافقة نسبية عبر وثيقة بلفور عام ١٩١٧ التي اعترفت بحق اليهود بأرضهم التاريخية.
بعد هذا الاعتراف، أجرى الأمير فيصل بن الحسين والقائد فايتسمن جلسات حوار لتضييق الفجوات في مطالب الطرفين، مثنين على اهمية التعاون بين الجانبين.

وخلافا للخط الإيديولوجي الذي يمثل جزءا من القادة العرب والإسلاميين اليوم، لم يجد شريف مكة وملك الحجاز حسين بن علي، وابنه الأمير فيصل، بالدولة اليهودية تهديدا للعرب أو الإسلام، لا بل اعترفوا بحق شعب إسرائيل في إقامة دولة له، مباركين حقه في استعادة سيادته على أرضه التاريخية. لا بل أكثر من ذلك، اعتبر الشريف حسين بان عودة المنفيين اليهود وانضمامهم إلى إخوتهم في منطقة فلسطين لهو عمل رائع.
في عام ١٩١٨ نشر في جريدة القبلة التي صدرت في مكة آنذاك، مقالة حول منطقة فلسطين جاء فيه:

"حتى ألان لم تُستثمر موارد البلاد، إلا انه سيتم تطويرها واستغلالها على أكمل وجه على أيدي اليهود المهاجرين، لقد شهدت منطقة فلسطين في الآونة الأخيرة ظاهرة مدهشة تمثلت برحيل الفلسطيني من بلاده باتجاه الاوقيانوس، ولم تكن الأرض القاحلة قادرة على الاحتفاظ به، بالمقابل تشهد المنطقة تدفقا يهوديا من كافة إرجاء العالم، عاكسةَ سببا لا يمكن تجاهله، يتمثل بقوة العلاقة العميقة التي تربطهم بالعلي، وهم على يقين أن هذه الأرض عُدت لأبناءها الأصليين ورغم اختلافهم، تبقى مرتعهم وأرضهم المقدسة والعزيزة….عودة المنفيين هؤلاء إلى وطنهم ستؤول إيجابا على إخوتهم الموجودين معهم في الحقول والمعامل، على كل الأصعدة الحياتية لا سيما تلك المتعلقة بالأرض والرزق، ماديا ومعنويا على حد سواء".
اليهود في أرض اسرائيل التاريخية (منطقة فلسطين) عام 1900 اليهود في أرض اسرائيل التاريخية (منطقة فلسطين) عام 1910
الشريف حسين بن علي يعترف بهوية أرض اسرائيل
اللقاءات التي تمت ابتداء من عام ١٩١٨ بين الأمير فيصل مندوب مملكة الحجاز ومندوب الحركة القومية اليهودية حاييم فايتسمان، نتج عنها التوقيع على اتفاق نهائي بينهم أوائل العام ١٩١٩، عرف ب"اتفاق فيصل فايتسمان".
في الاتفاق عبر ملك الحجاز عن دعمه لوثيقة بلفور الذي نادى بوطن قومي لليهود في أرضهم التاريخية، معترفا بهوية ارض منطقة فلسطين اللاعربية، مناديا بالتعاون المشترك وحسن الجوار في حال قيام دولة عربية برئاسته مع الدولة اليهودية – ( من اتفاق فيصل فايتسمان عام ١٩١٩).


في الصورة فيصل ابن الحسين (من اليمين) وحاييم عزريئيل فايتسمان ، العقبة، عام ١٩١٨
فيصل ابن الحسين وحاييم فايتسمان
وفي مسعى لطمأنة اليهود الذين عبروا عن قلقهم من قيام دولة عربية ككيان امبريالي إضافي في المنطقة، قال الأمير فيصل بعد شهر من ذلك : "حركتنا العربية هي قومية وليست امبريالية، ويوجد في سوريا الكبرى مكان للطرفين اي اليهود والعرب"، كما انه لم يتردد البتة من إجراء مقابلات مع صحف يهودية في ارض إسرائيل لكي يعبر عن نواياه هذه.
ترأس فيصل بن الحسين بنفسه الوفد الإسلامي من الشرق الأوسط، في "مؤتمر باريس للسلام" عام 1919، حيث اعترف بان مطالب الحركة القومية اليهودية (الصهيونية) في ارض إسرائيل هي مطالب متواضعة ومقبولة: "وفدنا هنا في باريس على علم كامل بالمطالب التي تقدمت بها المنظمة الصهيونية لمؤتمر السلام، ونعتبرها مطالب متواضعة ومحقة" – (مؤتمر باريس للسلام ٣ آذار ١٩١٩).
فيصل بن الحسين  في "مؤتمر باريس للسلام" عام 1919
لقراءة وثيقة "اتفاق فيصل – فايتسمن" كاملة ، اضغط هنا : الاتفاق المنسي بين الدولة العربية واليهودية / الجزاء الثاني (نص إتفاقية فيصل – فايتسمن ١٩١٩)
وصلات خارجية
مؤتمر باريس للسلام (انكلزي)

9/11 in "Palestine"

Fox News:


CNN:




Fox News reported that in Ein el-Hilweh, Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, revelers fired weapons in the air, with similar celebratory gunfire heard at the Rashidiyeh camp near the southern city of Tyre as well.

Reports and images of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, Nablus, and Lebanon taking the streets in celebration, were broadcast around the world with many newspapers, magazines, web sites and wire services running photographs. The PNA claimed such celebrations were not representative of the sentiments of the Palestinian people, and the Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said the PNA would not allow "a few kids" to "smear the real face of the Palestinians".

In an attempt to quash further reporting, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, Arafat's Cabinet secretary, said the Palestinian Authority could not "guarantee the life" of an Associated Press (AP) cameraman if footage he filmed of post-9/11 celebrations in Nablus was broadcast. Rahman's statement prompted a formal protest from the AP bureau chief, Dan Perry.

Pew Report: 1/3 of US Muslims Support Al Qaeda, Suicide Bombs; 25% Came to US Under Bush, Obama

UN: Israel's Gaza blockade is legal; Turkey fumes

UN: Israel's Gaza blockade is legal; Turkey fumes

The United Nations on Friday officially approved Israel's maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip as a legal and legitimate measure. The result was the start of a Middle East "cold war" between Israel and former ally Turkey.

For more than a year Turkey has been demanding that Israel publicly apologize for intercepting a so-called "humanitarian aid" flotilla that tried to break the Gaza blockade in May 2010. That operation ended in the deaths of nine Turkish nationals who attacked the Israeli boarding party aboard the flotilla's largest ship, the Mavi Marmara.

Turkey insisted that the entire affair had been an act of piracy by Israel, and openly sided with Gaza's Hamas rulers.

But the Palmer Commission report into the incident that was submitted to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged that Israel is facing "a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza."

Israel set up a limited blockade of Gaza, including a naval blockade, to ensure that local terrorists do not smuggle advanced weapons into the territory, which they have repeatedly tried to do.

The Palmer Report confirmed that Israel's naval blockade "was imposed as a legitimate security measure...and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law."

The report justified Israel's ongoing refusal to apologize to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara raid further enflaming the Turkish government, which responded by expelling the Israeli ambassador in Ankara.

"Turkey-Israel diplomatic relations have been reduced to a second secretary level. All personnel above the second secretary level will return to their countries," said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Turkey also suspended all military agreements with Israel, and threatened to file charges against individual Israeli soldiers who took part in the raid at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Perhaps most worryingly, Turkey also reportedly decided to bolster its own naval forces in the eastern Mediterranean.

A Turkish diplomatic source told Hurriyet Daily News that a "more aggressive strategy will be pursued. Israel will no longer be able to exercise its bullying practices freely."

Meanwhile, a vindicated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement that Israel had adopted the Palmer Report and was pleased with its findings, even though it was also critical of Israel.

The Palmer Report found fault with Israel for sending so many commandoes to board the Mavi Marmara, and for doing so at such a distance from Gazan waters.

But Israeli officials, who are disputing those particular findings, noted that there were five other ships in the flotilla, and none of them were subjected to violence. The fighting aboard the Mavi Marmara was instigated by terrorist-linked activists, and not the Israeli soldiers, who only resorted to deadly force when several of their number were taken hostage below deck.

"Israel believes that the committee did not sufficiently consider the operational limitations," said Joseph Ciechanover, the Israeli representative to the Palmer Commission.

The Obama Administration voiced increasing concern over the situation, which threatens American interests in the region. Last month, the White House tried to strong-arm Israel into apologizing on Turkish terms, or risk losing American support at the UN when the Palestinians motion for independence.

But at least a few members of Congress said that it was Turkey who was in the wrong, and lashed out over Ankara's hypocrisy in expelling the Israeli ambassador, but allowing the Syrian ambassador, whose government is massacring its own people, to remain.

"Turkey should be ashamed of itself," said US Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY). "In an almost unbelievable act of hypocrisy, the Syrian ambassador sits comfortably in Ankara, while the Assad regime kills more than 2000 of its own people, but Turkey has expelled the Israeli Ambassador for Israel’s proper enforcement of a legally-established blockade. Rather than bashing the only real democracy in the Middle East, Turkey should focus on its own problems, such as ending its occupation of Cyprus once and for all."

Not a few people have also pointed out that while Turkey is busy demonizing Israel for defending itself, the Turkish air force has been killing hundreds in northern Iraq in raids on suspected Kurdish militants. Both Ankara and the mainstream media have been silent on that comparison.

At the end of the day, Israelis fear Turkey is looking to increase its power in the Muslim world, and there is no better or quicker way to do that than become an outspoken enemy of Israel. Whether or not the belligerent rhetoric and behavior results in open violence remains to be seen, but clearly Israel and Turkey are on a collision course.