Israel is nothing but propaganda

After 21 days Israel "kindly" ceased fire, but it has agreed neither to lift the blockade on Gaza nor to withdraw from Gaza. Even Israel itself gives credence to all the justifications it puts forward regarding the ceasefire talks only so long as it is allowed to have its own way.

It openly declares that it does not recognize, and will not recognize, UN resolutions, and goes on its way with boundless confidence that no sanction will come to it for this. It tries to rouse the UN against things that have only a fraction of the likelihood of what it itself actually does. Unfortunately, the UN's present established order has placed Israel's security above every value.

"Israeli exceptionalism" is the most important logic determining the UN's way of working in all fields.

We know plenty of examples in which those who did not recognize UN resolutions were sorely put in their place. In the first Gulf War, the UN, abiding by the principle of "the territorial security of nations", rose up against Iraq's attempt to annex Kuwait's territory and made the world too narrow for Saddam. The same Saddam, because he objected to the UN's inspection powers regarding weapons of mass destruction and "could not sufficiently dispel the suspicion of possessing these weapons", faced a sanction as heavy as the occupation of his country.

Yet Israel does not recognize the existing UN resolutions on withdrawing from the territories it has occupied since 1967. Let alone condemning Israel, which does not recognize its resolutions, the UN does nothing but protect and shield it.

If the humanism of our age, which normally produces a thousand and one dramas from the thrashing of a bald ibis drowned in an oil slick, plays the three monkeys before Israel's criminality that so easily attempts the lives of civilians, women and children, then, truly as Prime Minister Erdoğan said, a great share of this lies with an Israeli-controlled media.

The crimes against humanity and war crimes Israel committed in the latest Gaza attack alone should have condemned the state of Israel in the eyes of all humanity. But one must know that these images, laid bare in Muslim public opinion and moving the masses to action, are not perceived in the same way in the western part of the world.

One should not hasten to rejoice, thinking from a few demonstrations in the West that the whole world has seen Israel's true face. One would have to be very optimistic to think, from one or two conscientious voices in Israeli public opinion, that this war has caused outrage among the Israeli people as well. Such open cruelty, such ruthless murders are perceived in Western public opinion exactly as Israel wishes to project them: "A nation defending its own people against terrorism." That is why neither among the American people nor among European peoples is there as serious a discomfort as supposed about these pitiful scenes that have roused the Muslim world, so long as the one dying is a Palestinian. Yet an Israeli whose nose bleeds from Hamas rockets can be presented for days on television as a victim of terror.

We wrote that Israel could not achieve any of the goals it had set for itself in the Gaza attack, and that the only thing it accomplished was the massacre of civilians... Truly, there is one more area in which Israel is very successful: propaganda.

Israel owes its existence to a propaganda, and that its existence and legitimacy, and even that it can still be seen as innocent, victimized and in the right throughout the world despite everything it does, are possible thanks to this propaganda. Moreover, both in its power and in its invincibility, Israel is nothing but a propaganda.

This propaganda machine is very good at turning everything to its own advantage. For instance, it commits massacres, cruelties and racisms that are no less than the Nazis', and yet it can immediately suppress, with the charge of "anti-Semitism", any comparison of what it does with that of the Nazis, any association of it with the concept of genocide, or any association of it in any way with its Judaism.

Truly, sensitivity to anti-Semitism is a sensitivity so necessary and humane that it cannot concern only Jews. It is a sensitivity that everyone who is against racism to any degree would not hesitate to share. It is not acceptable for protests against Israel to produce a kind of hostility to Jews or counter-racism either. But it is a clear fact both that Israel exploits this sensitivity to the hilt, and that it cannot be said that Israel's policies have nothing to do with its perception of Judaism. Even if it cannot be said that all Jews share, or even regard as legitimate, the existence of the state of Israel and its Zionist policies, it is also a fact that all of these rest on an interpretation of Judaism. For that reason, to suppress criticisms of Israel with an accusation of anti-Semitism that lies in wait for every reference to Judaism ultimately serves superbly Israel's Zionist propaganda, which produces nothing for others but blood, oppression and diaspora. Because Israel exploits everything, it exploits the victimhood of the Jews, genocide, Nazi oppression, and even Judaism itself.

That is why one can only say "I give up" to the Israeli embassy's solidarity foundation's request that posters showing images of children killed by phosphorus bombs, together with "This cannot have been commanded of you by your Lord" or the commandment "thou shalt not kill", not be used in particular on the grounds that they may carry anti-Semitic connotations.

Have you ever seen anyone accuse of being a Muslim-hater a person who says "thou shalt not kill" with reference to the Qur'an to someone who commits murder with reference to his own Islam?