An open letter to the Jewish lobbies in America

To the Jewish lobbies in the US who wrote letters characterizing as anti-Semitism the criticisms our Prime Minister, Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, directed at Israel's merciless attacks on Gaza, attacks that have turned into a massacre of civilians!

For nearly a month now, Gaza has been pounded like a carpet under Israeli bombardment, and I cannot imagine that you are unaware of the images reflected in the world media. Under bombs that rained for 21 days Gaza was razed to the ground; 1,300 people died and 5,000 were wounded. At least 400 of the dead were children, about as many were women, and about as many were civilians. Cluster and phosphorus bombs, whose use falls within crimes against humanity, did not merely kill those who are still living there; they also struck the lives of Palestinian children who will be born from now on. It is known that children to be born hereafter will also be crippled by the effects of the bombs that were dropped. In this way not only Gaza's present but also its future was bombed.

We cannot believe that the cause of this rage, this cruelty, is Hamas's rockets, which could not raise so much as a cloud of dust on Israeli streets; but even if it is, the fact that it has led to such a frenzied rage, to such disproportionate and uninterrupted violence shows that we are facing a more serious human problem. Even the Torah says "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"; Israel has been able to attempt the lives of thousands of people in order to take, up front, revenge for the not-yet-gouged eye of one of its own citizens. As it has been doing since the day it was founded...

And you, Jewish lobbies, in the age of communication, before these images of bloody massacre that all humanity is watching live, before the torn bodies of babies, the shattered lives, the suffering that orphaned and bereaved children endure and will endure, you have not felt a shred of compassion until now. You did not even think, did not feel, that those who experienced these things were human beings.

At the power center of the world system, in America, you mobilize the material and political influence and wealth you possess solely for securing the happiness and safety of the Jewish people. You deem only hell fit for the lives of people other than Jews. With the empire of influence you run, you try to make sure that Israel's spoiled misbehavior, which plunges nearly the whole world, let alone the whole region, into unrest, is tolerated.

While doing all this, you also try to brand any criticism directed at Israel or at what you do as "hatred of Jews". Your success in this regard is admirable in every respect. In this way you confer on all of Israel's policies an uncriticizability, an untouchability. We now understand that even Judaism, with the victimhood it once suffered because of the Nazis, is nothing but a subject that Israel uses as a shield for its murders and expansionist policies, and exploits to the end.

But if you are truly sincere in your concerns about the growth of hostility to Jews, know that the real culprit behind hostility to Jews is none other than Israel's aggressive policies. Know that preventing hostility to Jews is also far simpler than supposed. As, perhaps, comfortable American citizens, you may not know the region well enough. What Israel, which thinks it has come closer to Zionist goals by relying on the support you give, tells you may also be misleading you. Muslims in the region have never been, in essence, enemies of Jews. On the contrary, for centuries they lived intertwined with Jews and produced the law of living together.

You must appreciate what kind of perception Israel's manner of founding itself from the outset as a "Jewish state", by appropriating their own homeland, may produce on the Palestinian side. To attribute this to a racist, anti-Semitic reaction is, to put it mildly, a great injustice.

Despite this tragic Palestinian diaspora that the state of Israel has caused, today the Palestinian side, Hamas included, is open to recognizing Israel if it withdraws to the 1967 borders. If Israel accepts, if not all the lands of the Palestinian people, then at least the lands agreed upon in 1967, and behaves with respect for the democratic will of the Palestinian people, a large part of the region's problems will be solved. And you would no longer need to spend so much energy legitimizing Israel's unjust policies, which make it increasingly hard for you to defend.

Moreover, know that the guarantor against any hostility that might arise from Muslims toward Jews is Islam itself. Muslims have never longed for a world in which Jews or Christians never existed. Somewhere in the life established for Muslims in the Qur'an there are always Jews and Christians as well. So much so that even their food is introduced to Muslims as "pure foods", leaving an extremely open space for a culture of living together with them. In the US and in Europe, Muslims comfortably eat food bearing the "Kosher" stamp.

Even so, you must understand that the rage swelling in the Muslim world today stems entirely from Israel, and you must turn and take your own responsibility in this matter.

On the other hand, the only help you can give Israel should not be to approve, legitimize and support everything it does, but also to foresee the consequences its policies may lead to and, when necessary, to criticize it.

You must also understand that Turkey is no longer a country that can be steered, in line with Israel's existence and security, by lobbyist bribes or by comitadji-agent operations. As for your Armenian resolution policy, which you voice as a matter of blackmail, you may review that too if you wish. If you can bring yourselves to share with the Armenian diaspora the political profit of the genocide claims, which have been turned into a veritable source of rent, rest assured that your getting off Turkey's back on this matter will relieve Turkey even more.