Four Dutch NGO's - including the local branch of Oxfam - are laying off significant portions of their staff. But note where their activities are being cut back: In countries like Sudan and Rwanda where such activities are critical. Note where they're not being cut back: In 'Palestine' or 'Palestinian territories' where they're more political advocacy than humanitarian (Hat Tip: Mike P).
Minister Lilianne Ploumen of Foreign Trade and Development
Cooperation announced the cuts earlier this year. From January 1st 2016
the development aid organizations will be losing more than 80 percent of
their government subsidy, going from about 50 million euros per year to
between 7 and 15 million euros per year.
The Minister wants to limit subsidies to initiatives that helps
people in third world countries defend their rights – something she
calls “lobbying and advocacy”. She therefore largely stopped the subsidy
for normal development, such as helping small farmers in Africa break
into the local market. She called the cuts “painful”. But according to
Ploumen, the world has changed and the importance of official
development funds for the development of a country is decreasing. “It is
also no longer the only funding stream”, she said when she presented
the new policy, according to the Volkskrant. “Businesses now contribute
in many ways. The concept of development aid will eventually disappear.”
This translates into layoffs for the four large development aid
organizations. Hivos will be laying off 50 of its 145 employees at the
Dutch office, Oxfam Novib will be laying off about 75 of its 325,
Cordaid 69 of its 250 and Icco will lose 175 of its 350 employees. The
organizations will also stop funding to projects all over the world next
year. Hivos will be withdrawing support from, among others, a project
to stop female genital mutilation in Iraqi Kurdistan – a project that is
internationally regarded as successful. Icco is withdrawing from South
Africa, Colombia, Peru and Brazil. Oxfam Novib is stopping all
initiatives in Bangladesh, Rwanda, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
According to the four development aid organizations, focusing only on
lobbying and advocacy is a risky strategy. “You only have legitimacy to
lobby and advocate for something if you’re already active in the
place”, Marinus Verweij, director of Icco, said to the Volkskrant.
“Otherwise it is not credible.”
Report: Erdogan's daughter running clinic for wounded ISIS fighters
Over the weekend, there were numerous reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (President Hussein Obama's best friend forever) had ordered his troops to attack Kurds in Turkey and Iraq as part of his 'help' in combating ISIS (Islamic State).
But Erdogan's assistance to ISIS is not limited to the indirect assistance of allowing its fighters to regroup by attacking the Kurds who had them on the run. Erodgan's daughter, Sümeyye Erdoğan, is running a clinic in Southeastern Turkey that is treating wounded ISIS fighters, providing direct assistance to the people her father has told the world he is fighting.
Living in a dilapidated apartment in Istanbul’s outskirts along with
her two children, a 34-year- old emaciated nurse who spoke on the
condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, disclosed her seven-week
agonizing ordeal of working in secret military hospital in Şanlıurfa,
150 km (93 miles) east of Gaziantep and 1,300 km (808 miles) southeast
of Istanbul. “Almost every day several khaki Turkish military trucks
were bringing scores of severely injured, shaggy ISIS rebels to our
secret hospital and we had to prepare the operating rooms and help
doctors in the following procedures.
I was given a generous salary of $ 7,500 but they were unaware of my
religion. The fact is that I adhere to Alawite faith and since Erdoğan
took the helm of the country the system shows utter contempt for Alawite
minority – Alawite faith is an esoteric offshoot of Shia Islam,” Said
the nurse, recoiling in horror from the thought of imminent persecution
by Turkish much-vaunted secret police, known by its acronym MİT.
And Sümeyye is not the only member of the Erdogan family helping ISIS. So is the President's son, Bilal.
Mr. Erdoğan who always sheds crocodile tears for the plight of Syrian
trapped between the hammer of hunger and the anvil of ISIS’ extremism,
conceals the fact that his own son, Bilal Erdoğan, is involved in
lucrative business of smuggling the Iraqi and Syrian plundered oil.
Bilal Erdoğan who owns several maritime companies, had allegedly signed
contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to
different Asian countries.
Turkish government unwittingly supports ISIS by buying Iraqi
plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi sized oil wells.
Bilal Erdoğan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and
Ceyhan ports transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil
tankers. The Turkish opposition parties also accuse the belicose
President Erdoğan of desperately trying to whitewash inordinate number
of scandals concerning Bilal’s involvement in transporting Iraqi oil and
thus making ISIS the wealthiest global terrorist group. “President
Erdoğan claims that according to international transportation
conventions there is no legal infraction concerning Bilal’s illicit
activities and his son is doing an ordinary business with the registered
Japanese companies, but in fact Bilal Erdoğan is up to his necks in
complicity with terrorism, but as long as his father holds office he
will be immune from any judicial prosecution,” Gürsel Tekin ,a senior
CHP party official said in Ankara on Tuesday.
The leading CHP official further underscored that Bilal Erdoğan’s
maritime company, BMZ Ltd, is considered a family business and president
Erdoğan’s close relatives hold shares in BMZ and they misused public
funds and took illicit loans from Turkish banks. Weak, dependent,
lugubrious though defiant; the Turkish nurse pleaded for Turkish
judiciary help, imploring the last bastion of freedom, Turkish Army, to
overthrow Erdoğan’s corrupt regime.
Of course, if that happened, President Hussein Obama would step in to protect his friend....
It's amazing that the world continues to ignore Erdogan's duplicity. What hold does he have on NATO and Europe? It seems that his hold is his friendship with US President Obama. One may only hope that the next US President will relate to Erdogan more honestly.
Is Kurdistan stashing oil in Israel? Consider this:
Of the 25 tankers that have left Turkey loaded with Kurdish oil since
May, 13 have gone dark—just as the Kalavryta did on Aug. 26. Most of
the time this happens somewhere in the Mediterranean, either off the
coast of Malta or Cypress or Israel, or sometimes only a few miles away
from Ceyhan. Although it’s not quite smuggling, “it’s about as dicey as
it gets on the open seas,” says Charlie Papavizas, a maritime lawyer at
Winston & Strawn, a law firm in Washington. “What the Kurds are
doing is at the margins of the business, no doubt about that.”
Rather than delivering oil directly from port to port and creating a
public record of the shipment, the Kurds are instead transferring oil
from tanker to tanker at sea, often at night and often after switching
off the ship’s electronic transponder that reports its position to
satellites. When the transponder comes back on, the ship is usually
miles away from its last known position and sitting higher in the water,
which means its cargo is lighter. Shuffling the oil from ship to ship
masks the ultimate buyer and makes it almost impossible to track.
ClipperData, a New York-based company founded in 2012, uses customs data
and ship-tracking information to follow the movements of tankers and
estimate import volumes. Every time a ship docks in the U.S., Customs
and Border Protection releases data on what it’s carrying. “It’s a real
dog’s breakfast,” says Abudi Zein, ClipperData’s co-founder and chief
operating officer. “You have to separate the olive oil from the crude
oil.” ClipperData sells its information to about 50 clients, mostly oil
traders and financial firms. The Kurdish ghost tankers have provided a
particular challenge. “This is among the weirdest things we’ve ever
seen,” Zein says. “You feel like a submarine chaser.”
Once a ship’s transponder goes off, detecting whether it’s unloaded
its cargo to another ship is a matter of being able to narrow down the
handful of vessels that are in its vicinity. ClipperData has built
algorithms that can tell when two ships get within a tenth of a mile, or
about 500 feet. “When they’re that close, they’re either transferring
the oil or they’re crashing into each other,” Zein says. ClipperData has
tracked one shipment of Kurdish oil going to Croatia, where it was
bought by MOL,
a Hungarian company, to run its refinery there. Three shipments have
been delivered to Israel, each containing roughly 200,000 barrels, Zein
says. Because neither of Israel’s two refineries is well-suited to
process Kurdistan’s heavy crude, “what we’re now convinced of is that
Kurdish crude is being stored in Israel,” he says.
One ship in particular caught Zein’s attention. On Aug. 2, about 15
miles off the coast of Malta, a tanker called the Genmar Strength
suddenly got heavier, indicating some 200,000 barrels had been loaded
onto it. At the same time, in almost exactly the same location, a ship
called the Agisilaos unloaded the same amount of oil. The cargo was
listed as a heavy crude consistent with Kurdish oil; it had been loaded
onto the Agisilaos 10 days earlier at Ashkelon, Israel, while the ship’s
transponder was off, Zein says. The Genmar Strength immediately headed
west across the Atlantic. On Aug. 19 it delivered about 200,000 barrels
of cargo to an asphalt plant outside Philadelphia. The plant is operated
by Axeon Specialty Products, a chemical and asphalt company owned by
private equity firm Lindsay Goldberg. A shipment of similar heavy oil
arrived at the same plant in June. Axeon has said it is not buying
Kurdish oil until the dispute over the Kalavryta is settled. Lindsay
Goldberg did not reply to requests for comment.
Read the whole thing. Nigerian oil is also sometimes sold through what's known in the business as TTL (tanker top loading). But I've never heard of the tankers disappearing like that. Hmmm.
ISIS is busy neutralizing the Syrian factions that might make common
cause with the United States. On Thursday, Breitbart London reported
that several dozen leaders of Syrian rebel factions opposed to ISIS,
who were gathered at a meeting in northwestern Syria, were killed in a
massive explosion on Wednesday.
Huffington Post on Friday evening summarized reports
that ISIS has signed a non-aggression deal with a separate group of
rebel factions in Syria, nominally so that all of the factions can
continue to fight the Assad regime.
The SRF has been losing ground in recent weeks, suffering a major blow when one of its top commanders was killed
at the end of August. At the same time, the SRF was reported to be
fighting alongside al-Qaeda-affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra in southern Syria,
including the battle for the crossing point with Israel in the Golan over which the rebel factions claimed control on 27 August.
Now it appears that the non-aggression pact with ISIS was brokered by
Jabhat al-Nusra. None of this comes as a surprise to those who’ve been
following along with Patrick Poole at PJ Media. On 3 September, Poole
outlined the continuing cooperation of factions in the Free Syrian Army
with ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra – cooperation that has resulted in a flow
of U.S.-supplied weaponry to the latter two armies. On 9 September, he
expounded on a report from the Los Angeles Times that one of the “vetted moderate” groups, Harakat Hazm, is quite open about fighting alongside Jabhat al-Nusra.
The U.S. has already given this group anti-tank missiles. Appended
to Poole’s analysis is the tweeted text of an alliance agreement
concluded by “vetted moderate” faction Harakat Hazm and other similar
groups with Jabhat al-Nusra. The text was tweeted on 8 July.
It’s not just credible, it’s highly bloody likely that some of the
rebel factions – including U.S. client SRF – have indeed made a pact
with ISIS. The fact that it won’t be worth a bucket of warm spit ought
to serve not as an encouragement to U.S. delusions of a meaningful
alliance in Syria, but as a warning.
...
In fact, ISIS hasn’t sat still. Once Obama made his speech
on Wednesday, the option of mounting coordinated attacks on ISIS’s
strategic rear in Syria immediately became a major threat posed by the
U.S. If we could do it effectively, we could force ISIS to defend its
rear: shift resources away from the campaign in Iraq, and perhaps even
rework its overall strategy.
So ISIS promptly took out nearly 50 opposition rebel leaders and
signed its non-aggression agreement with America’s potential partners in
Syria.
Remember that ISIS doesn’t have to show good faith over time with any
of those Syrian factions. It just has to preempt their cooperation
with the United States. The mechanism for that is straightforward.
We’re an easy read – ponderous making decisions, easily spooked,
committed to at least perfunctory public transparency – and our
president is a slow learner.
If ISIS can prevent anyone in Syria from cooperating with the U.S.,
ISIS can concentrate its effort in Iraq, where our forces on the ground
will be: small, scattered, un-concentrated, embedded with local
groups which may not all be fighting for the same objectives. Remember
this also: Obama is determined not to overlay an obtrusively coherent
U.S. framework on this operation. Kurds fighting in northern Iraq and
Sunnis fighting along the Euphrates in Anbar – each with a separate
ill-defined connection to the struggling Shia-majority government in
Baghdad – will have the lead.
Even in Vietnam and Somalia, I don’t think we’ve ever backed into
anything with our hindquarters flapping quite so egregiously in the
breeze. Military success doesn’t just happen. It’s as much a matter of
political will, and a coherent strategy and operational plan, as it is
of training, expertise, and weapons superiority at the tactical level.
Assuming we do go ahead with the plan-deficient, few-boots non-war the
Obama administration has been proclaiming for the last 72 hours, I am very concerned that American troops could find themselves vulnerable under fire and fighting for their lives within weeks.
I would actually feel better at this point if we weren’t enlarging
our footprint in Irbil at all, but instead planned to just keeping
flying strike-fighters from Kuwait and Qatar. There are sound
operational reasons to be gravely concerned about Obama’s decision to dismiss the advice of his military leaders and go with a toxic brew of half-measure objectives and exposed deployment situations.
The rapid, cynical, homicidal initiative shown by ISIS in seeking to
neutralize Obama’s Syria option is a pretty good indicator of what we’ll
be up against. Pundits and officials who are vocally criticizing the
president are not just showing partisan sour grapes. This is real, and
it’s bad.
In his war speech last night, President Obama was at strikingly adamant about what the US mission to "degrade and destroy" ISIS would not entail:
American ground troops in a combat role. The 475 additional personnel
being deployed to the region are only authorized assist with "training,
intelligence and equipment." Direct American intervention will be
limited to a protracted campaign of airstrikes, in Iraq and -- for the
first time -- Syria. The Washington Postreports today
that when the president tasked military leaders with devising the best
strategy to defeat ISIS, the Pentagon presented a plan that involved a
limited number of combat "boots on the ground." They were rebuffed, in
favor of a more politically-palatable light footprint approach:
Such a mission was not the U.S. military’s preferred option.
Responding to a White House request for options to confront the Islamic
State, Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top commander of U.S. forces in the
Middle East, said that his best military advice was to send a
modest contingent of American troops, principally Special Operations
forces, to advise and assist Iraqi army units in fighting the militants,
according to two U.S. military officials. The recommendation, conveyed
to the White House by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, was cast aside in favor of options that did not
involve U.S. ground forces in a front-line role, a step adamantly
opposed by the White House...Recommitting ground combat forces
to Iraq would have been highly controversial, and most likely would have
been opposed by a substantial majority of Americans. But Austin’s
predecessor, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, said the decision not to send ground troops poses serious risks to the mission. “The
American people will once again see us in a war that doesn’t seem to be
making progress,” Mattis said. “You’re giving the enemy the initiative
for a longer period.”
This turn of events was inevitable, given the instincts and priorities of the Oval Office's current occupant. According to the New York Times' bureau chief in Baghdad, the Obama administration has serially misled
the American people about on-the-ground realities in Iraq in order to
protect a politicized "receding tide of war" illusion. The president
shrunk from his own red line in Syria last year due, at least in part,
to heavy domestic pressures, ultimately resorting to a fake "solution" that has since collapsed.
Having ignored and dismissed ISIS for years, the president has finally been pressed to play catch-up with events. Public opinion has turned sharply
in favor of intervention, likely spurred by grisly images of beheaded
American journalists broadcast around the world, but most are still wary
of ground troops. Obama -- once again leading from behind with no discernible strategy
beyond 'win the current news cycle' -- is giving the public what it
wants at the moment. Nothing more, nothing less. Following that "best
military advice" would have required the president to forcefully make
the case that a limited American ground force was vital to victory. He
clearly had no appetite to do so, as it would have entailed further
eroding his anti-war cred and infuriating his core base ahead of an
election.
I've seen a lot of commentary on this, but the bottom line is that the military is horrified at Obama's 'strategy,' and the guy who is supposed to advocate for the military in the White House - Chuck Hagel - has been predictably silent.
This is Islam: ISIS systematically beheading Christian children in Iraq
This is what Islam is really all about. ISIS, the Islamic group that has taken over Iraq (thank you President Hussein Obama) is systematically beheading Christian children. By the way, the nearest part of Iraq is about 300 miles from Israel.
A quick scan of Youtube shows the truth of what Arabo is saying -
there are gruesome videos of heads on spikes, and many of live
beheadings (one poor Christian is forced to say the Shahada 'there is no
God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet' and then beheaded anyway.)
Warning: don't google these things unless you have a strong stomach.
"They are absolutely killing every Christian they see," Arabo said of
ISIS. "This is absolutely a genocide in every sense of the word. They
want everyone to convert, and they want sharia law to be the law of the
land."
When George Bush left office, United States armed forces were protecting Iraq. At the rate this is going, Barack Hussein Obama is becoming the enemy of all humanity.
Aren't you proud that Obama got the US military out of Iraq? The message of that 'withdrawal' resounds throughout this region. And if the Islamists can, God Forbid, they would do the same to all of us.
Turkey’s concerns, from its point of view, are easy to grasp. Contrary to endless media reports that the situation in Syria has entered its “endgame,” the civil war now under way in that country shows no signs of nearing conclusion. Rather, the various sides are entrenching themselves in their sectarian strongholds and preparing for a long and drawn-out struggle.
Central government in Syria no longer exists in a meaningful sense. The Kurds of Syria’s northeast have taken advantage of the regime’s desire to entrench and consolidate its forces. The Syrian Kurds are natural opponents of the Arab nationalist Assad regime.
But there is also deep suspicion of the Turkish-backed, Muslim Brotherhood dominated Syrian National Council.
There is a strong desire in the Kurdish northeast of Syria to stay out of the fight. Kurdish paramilitaries in that area have sought to prevent the rebels of the Free Syrian Army from activity that could bring down regime retribution.
The regime is now seeking to concentrate its forces in the most volatile and vulnerable areas and is pouring troops into the battle for Aleppo. To free up personnel from its limited pool, it has carried out a withdrawal from the main parts of Kurdish-dominated Hasakah governate.
This area is now under the de facto control of a coalition of Kurdish forces. These forces, in turn, are dominated by the PYD (Democratic Union Party).
This is the franchise of the PKK among the Syrian Kurds. The area now controlled by the coalition led by the PYD includes a long swathe of the 900-kilometer border between Turkey and Syria. This raises the possibility of a new front, directed by the PKK and its allies, from an area of Kurdish autonomy.
The PKK currently maintains its main stronghold in the Qandil mountains between Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and southern Turkey. Ankara is now dealing with the possibility of this situation being duplicated on another of its borders.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan has made clear that Turkey sees intervention against rebel bases in northern Syria as its “most natural right.”
Turkish forces and missile batteries were moved to positions adjacent to the Kurdish enclave in Syria in recent days.
Ankara maintains good relations with the Kurdish Regional Government of Massoud Barzani in northern Iraq. But Turkey was further concerned by Barzani’s brokering in his capital, Erbil, of the agreement between the PYD and the non-PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurdish factions of the KNC (Kurdish National Council), which has made possible joint Kurdish control of the areas abandoned by Assad.
Kurdish leaders in Iraq are denying that the Mossad is operating from within their territory against Iran (Hat Tip: Joshua I).
Kurdish authorities described the claims, made in previous weeks, as "untrue", after Iran's consul in regional capital Erbil said Israeli spies were using Kurdistan as a base to work against neighbouring Iran.
"This is not the first time that Iranian officials are saying this without presenting evidence or reasons," the Kurdish regional government said in a statement.
"The government is not able to be quiet faced with these accusations anymore, so we confirm to the public there are no centres or offices of Israel in Kurdistan, and we deny this accusation."
The statement continued: "It is untrue."
"This is an attempt to draw Kurdistan into the fight between Israel and Iran, and we do not want to be part of this," it said.
On May 5, Tehran's consul in Erbil, Azim Hosseini, said Iran's security agencies had found evidence that "Israelis are in Kurdistan, and they are working against Iran."
"Israelis are working under different passports and names and banners," he told Safil, a Kurdish weekly published in Erbil.
And on April 21, Iranian MP Esmaeel Kosari told Al-Alam, an Iran-based Arabic-language news channel,www.ekurd.net that Kurdistan and Azerbaijan "should know that the presence of the Zionist regime on their soil will be harmful to them."
"The neighbouring nations should not allow this regime to have any activities against Iran."
Turkey worried that Iraqi Kurdistan could become a state
Turkey is urging the United States to ensure that Iraq does not break up into ethnic enclaves, one of which would be Kurdish.
In the face of escalating sectarian tension inside Iraq, Ankara has recently issued multiple messages to Baghdad and Washington, sounding the alarm about what might occur in Iraq in the post-US period, the Turkish daily Sabah reported. The daily claimed that Ankara got in touch with US officials, warning them against “spoiling” Maliki, who took charge of the Iraqi government after years of trying to reconcile the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish blocs in the country.
Turkey also warned the US of “the increasing possibility of Iraq being partitioned,” which would seriously jeopardize security in the region, Sabah noted.
In the wake of a Shiite bloc move against senior Sunni officials in what appears to be an attempt to strip them of their power to increase Shiite dominance in the coalition government, Ankara reportedly contacted Maliki to urge him to keep the promises he made when he rose to power and protect the multicultural structure of Iraq. Turkish officials further called on Maliki “not to meddle in Syrian politics,” on the grounds that the sectarian situation in Iraq is not connected to the situation in Syria, which is experiencing a bloody uprising to force a change of power in that country.
...
Warning that Turkey’s door in the south might close if Iraq -- already a dangerous area -- becomes more hazardous after a possible partition, expert and academic Mensur Akgün voiced concern that Turkey’s ties with the semiautonomous Kurdish administration in the north will need fine tuning, the daily Taraf reported in an interview on Monday.
“If Iraq falls apart for a reason that lies outside the Kurdish bloc, Turkey will have to recognize a Kurdish state in Iraq’s north,” Akgün was quoted by Taraf as saying, as he justified the logic of such a move on Turkey’s increased need for stronger connections with the Kurdish administration when Sunnis and Shiites wage a sectarian war in the rest of the country. Predicting that the Kurdish administration would stay out of the sectarian strife to maintain stability, Akgün suggested that an unlikely alliance has arisen between the Kurdish administration and Turkey, “sides the West did not believe would concur.”
Turkish jets bombed 28 targets on a second day of attacks on bases in northern Iraq used by the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the military said Friday.
Following bombing raids on 60 targets Wednesday the air force launched an "effective" operation Thursday against 28 targets in the Qandil, Hakurk, Avasin-Basyan and Zap regions of northern Iraq, the military said in a statement on its website.
In coordination with the air strikes, 96 more targets in the region were kept under intense artillery fire, the statement said.
"The targets were positively identified as belonging to the PKK, and the necessary sensitivity is paid to protect civilians," it said.
"The actions under the struggle against terror will go on with determination inside and outside the country based on the requirements of military needs," it added.
The military launched a first wave of bomb attacks on Wednesday against rebel targets in Iraq in response to a deadly attack by the rebel group against a military unit in Cukurca town in southeast Turkey, killing nine security officials.
The world gets all excited when Israel goes after the terrorists in Gaza who are shooting rockets at Israeli civilians. But the world is silent when Turkey invades another country, because... it's Turkey and the Obama administration (which still controls Iraq) lets them do whatever they want.
A report on Israel's YNet website, quoting Iran's Press TV, claims that Israel is deploying six unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The IDF has recently stepped up its operations in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan Region and is planning to deploy six unmanned aerial vehicles, intelligence agents and military consultants in the region, Iran's Press-TV has reported.
According to the report, Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani has agreed to the concession in return for the admission of a number of Iraqi Kurd students to Israeli universities. Barzani has reportedly approved the deployment without the permission of the central government in Baghdad.
Four of the aircraft will be stationed at the Khalidiyah airbase in the northern oil city of Kirkuk and two others will go to the airport in the city of Mosul, the report claimed. It further stated that Israeli intelligence agents and military advisers, equipped with special transmission devices, are also being sent to train security forces in Mosul.
This makes sense from the standpoint of both Israel and the Kurds. The Iraqi central government is too weak to do anything about this, and one must assume that it is being done with the tacit approval of the United States. Of course, that assumes that the report is correct....
Here's an interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from Russia Today, an English-language channel based in Russia. Ahmadinejad talks about a potential attack by or on the US or Israel between 5:20 and 6:40 of this video. Note how he does not preclude a first strike against Israel.
Let's go to the videotape.
That sounds like a good motive for Israel to deploy drones against Iran, doesn't it?
Delicious: 'If they screw Israel, they screw themselves too'
Guy Bechor argues that by voting in favor of a 'Palestinian state,' Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria would be sealing the future existence of a Kurdish state on major portions of their current territories. And to make it even better, that Kurdish state will be an ally of Israel (Hat Tip: Joshua I).
Some 850 Kurdish politicians and leaders from Turkey convened in Diyarbakir [on July 15] in order to declare the democratic autonomy’s formation. The participants included 30 Kurds who are Turkish parliamentarians. Five such representatives are in prison, by the way.
When Erdogan heard about the declaration he was furious, as the possible future implication of this is Turkey’s collapse. Turkish prosecutors then undertook an illogical step, declaring that they will indict all participants in the declaration ceremony, a move that will get Turkey in trouble with the world. The Turks were also mulling the dismissal of Kurdish parliamentarians in Ankara. These were desperate moves. The Turks can address violence and refer to it as terror, but what can they do against politicians?
...
And in Syria, that very same day, we saw another important development. For the first time, a Kurdish liaison committee was established that brings together all the new Kurdish parties in Syria on the basis of the “Kurdish people’s unity.” They demand Kurdish autonomy in the wake of the Assad regime or at least a federation within Syria.
The Syrian Kurds enjoy a particularly sympathetic home front in the Kurdish autonomy in Iraq. Slowly, the pieces of the Turkish puzzle in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran are connecting into a giant state that will be home to 18 million people. At this time already, the Kurdish region of Iraq is in fact a state with its own flag, leadership and sovereignty. In Iran too, the Kurds are rebelling and closely monitoring the progress achieved by their brethren in neighboring countries. Autonomy in one place will draw a demand for autonomy and sovereignty elsewhere.
If the two million Palestinians in Judea and Samaria deserve a state, why shouldn’t there be a state for the 18 million Kurds, who were discriminated against and exploited in the past 100 years? We can now understand the kind of dilemma faced by the four above-mentioned states – Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey – with the notion of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. They realize that if today the Palestinians do it, the clear implication is that tomorrow the Kurds may have a UN majority. Suddenly these states understand: If they screw Israel, they screw themselves too.
And another thing: The Kurdish state will be a close ally of Israel, just like South Sudan. The Kurds are close to Israel and view it as a twin sister with a difficult history and non-Arabic identity. What we see are four states hostile to Israel in one way or another that will have to fall apart in order to give rise to an ally of Israel.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
