How to Stand with Israel

 

by Jennifer Rubin

 

Not every Jewish organization is taking the path of least resistance in opposing Obama's approach to Israel. This report explains:

The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) declined to meet with a delegation from Turkey's ruling party, the AKP, this week. JINSA views the AKP invitation as an attempt by the Government of Turkey to avoid dealing with the Government of Israel by appealing to the American Jewish community. As such, the effort failed.

JINSA executive director Tom Neumann stated, "The negative trend in Turkish government statements and actions regarding the United States and Israel, however, ultimately has made the AKP an unacceptable interlocutor." JINSA provides an ample list of Turkish actions to support its decision:

Examples of this negative trend include the Turkish government's growing closeness with the Iranian government and Turkey's negative vote in the UN on international sanctions aimed at preventing a nuclear-capable Iran; new military relations with Syria, which is on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorism supporting countries; increasing closeness with the Hamas government in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both of which are U.S.-designated terrorist organizations; open support for the flotilla that sought a violent confrontation with Israel as it attempted to break the Israeli-Egyptian security cordon designed to prevent the smuggling of weapons and materials to Hamas; and the poisonous anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric the AKP has issued over the last several years.

Neumann added that, "JINSA regrets the choices made by the AKP and will not be used to provide political cover for those choices."

Well, that's a breath of fresh air — and certainly a far cry from the Woodrow Wilson Center, which is giving the Turkish foreign minister a pat on the back and a prize. There is no shortage of evidence of Turkey's dangerous turn to the "radical camp," Elliott Abrams recently wrote:

In the flotilla incident, it not only sided with but also sought to strengthen the terrorist group Hamas—a group that is anathema not just to the United States and Israel, but to the governments of Jordan and Egypt. The recent photo of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar Assad in Damascus is an emblem of this change, and Turkey's work to undermine U.N. sanctions against Iran shows its substance. Turkey's U.N. Security Council vote against the newest round of sanctions this past week put it in Iran's camp against Europe, the United States, Russia, and China. That's quite a realignment for a NATO ally.

For now, however, most Jewish groups are not doing much at all to call attention to the growing Islamic, and hence anti-Israel, inclinations of the Turkish government. The Pope-Peters letter, for which AIPAC is rounding up support, lightly — almost invisibly — tiptoes around the Turkish connection. The letter has a single sentence on the topic that explains the "sinister element" that infiltrated the flotilla:

Furthermore, as confirmed by the State Department and intelligence agencies around the world, the Turkish aid group that sent out the flotilla … IHH, has met with senior officials of recognized terrorist groups over the last three years.

That's it.

There are two approaches Jewish groups might take with regard to Turkey. The JINSA tactic is to call attention to Turkey's role in the flotilla incident and its increasingly hostile behavior toward the West, thereby applying some pressure on the Obama administration to demand some answers on Turkey's role in the flotilla and to rethink its policy toward a NATO ally that has turned unmistakably away from the West. The other is to ignore the whole thing and hope the Obama team doesn't give Turkey a pass on its efforts to assist Hamas (which would thereby embolden the radical camp and undermine the "peace process" of which Obama is so enamored).

It is disturbing that so few groups have decided to follow JINSA. It is yet another failure to stand up to the administration — and stand with Israel.

 

Jennifer Rubin

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.