The Gaza agenda in America

It is often complained that American society has recently turned into a "carefree society". A huge society made up of people who care about nobody's troubles, closed in on their own narrow, individual agendas. That is why it has become customary for everyone to be absorbed in their own troubles and their own agenda, and, even if they take an interest, not to react. That this seriously depletes America's social capital makes it a real "source of concern" as well. However, it is noticed that under the Bush administration the public paid a very heavy price for this carefreeness and has therefore begun, at least, to take an interest in what goes on in its own country. The election demonstrations, the attendance at Obama's inauguration, the somewhat more collective expression of expectations in this regard, in a sense signal the revival of social concern in American society, and with it the revival of social capital.

When it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli agenda, it is hard to speak of a view that dominates the whole society. Although the Israel-guided press has been terribly successful in presenting the latest Gaza attack as Israel's right of self-defense, it has not been able to prevent a part of the American public from learning at least of other aspects of the truth. That is why, however much one shuts one's eyes, even the American media reporting the attacks on Gaza cannot avoid images of "Israel attacking incessantly", "Palestine resisting", "dying Palestinian children", "Palestinian families whose homes have been smashed to pieces". That is why Obama has to say that Hamas has no right to harass Israel with its rockets, but that one cannot be a spectator to a Palestine left hopeless under Israel's bombs and blockades either.

I had thought that the protests against Israel in many parts of America were carried out mostly by Muslims and that the American public was indifferent to them. Yet in a group of demonstrators gathered at a busy intersection in Florida, made up mostly of American citizens, there were, as far as I could see, no Arabs or Muslims at all. Waving the Palestinian flags in their hands at passing vehicles and shouting "Murderer Israel", the group was shown considerable support from the passing cars as well. Those living in America relate that similar scenes can be seen all over America.

Meanwhile it appears that the Jewish lobbies in America are concentrating more on watching Turkey's stance on the matter than on the Palestinian dimension of the event.

The Jewish lobbies, who have been watching Prime Minister Erdoğan's criticisms of Israel with care and concern, recently published a letter to Erdoğan expressing their concern about the anti-Semitic wave that his criticisms of Israel are causing. The letter, which says that protest movements against Israel in Turkey have taken courage from the prime minister's speeches, of course makes no mention at all of the baby bodies torn apart in Israel's Gaza attack, of 1,330 people, mostly children and women, burning horribly under phosphorus bombs, or, moreover, of Gaza's being condemned for months to inhuman living conditions under an inhuman blockade. In return, it openly declares that it fully supports the Israeli state's Gaza policy. That is, in a sense, it confesses to being a partner in every murder committed in Gaza.

They shamelessly complain that the "ah" cries of the 1,330 who died defenseless under Israel's death-dealing weapons, the 6,000 wounded, and the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians whose homes were smashed, carry the danger of anti-Semitism.

That every sane person must oppose those examples of protests against Israeli aggression that produce anti-Jewish rhetoric has been said repeatedly by the prime minister himself. But preventing anything beyond that is in the hands of nobody but Israel itself, or the Jews who support Israel's policies.

Carrying the Jewish identity that is being rubbed in everyone's face, you will destroy homes, torture, kill people, and then you will want no hostility toward Jews to arise. In such a case, when even the most sane people can control themselves only with great difficulty, loading the responsibility of controlling the emotions of the masses onto one's own victims is sheer comitadji-lobbyist brazenness. Excuse me, everyone, but if today a feeling of hostility on the part of Muslims toward Jews, who lived for centuries securely under Muslim rule without any serious problem, is arising, the greatest culprit for it is none other than Israel and Zionist policies, which appear to Muslims as nothing but death and oppression. Muslims cannot in essence be anti-Semitic, because Hz. Muhammad himself, like all Arabs, comes from a Semitic origin. For that reason the Muslim side of the problem with Israel cannot be seen in any way as a problem essentially about racism.

Meanwhile, not in the text of the letter but in the statements of its publishers annotating their own intentions, they do not refrain from voicing "an open blackmail that they would review the support they have given Turkey until now on the Armenian genocide claims".

As I said, everyone has their own agenda in America. The authors of the letter are at once accomplices to murder, threatening and blackmailing... And, what is more, they are very powerful (!), as everyone has turned them into a legend.

However, this may upset some people in Turkey, but no matter how great their power, even America is no longer made up of them alone. Turkey is no longer a country that would bow to the threats of blood-stained blackmailers and criminals.