Getting rid of the Israel burden: God gives as He gives!

The Mavi Marmara report that the UN had Geoffrey Palmer and his colleagues prepare contains all the elements that lay bare, stark naked, the way Israel has conducted its affairs until now. There is a pattern of Israel conducting all matters concerning international law through match-fixing, and it has deceived no one on this score. But this time there is a Turkey that is sensitive to the corruption of courts, wars, matches and tenders through match-fixing carried out by means of blackmail, bribery and the like.

With President Abdullah Gül's treating the report as "null and void," we can say that things will no longer proceed for Israel as they used to. The Palmer Report, incredibly, tries to pave the way for turning the whole Mediterranean into an Israeli Lake by finding Israel justified in its intervention in international waters. In addition to Gül, who disregards this report, one item of the five-point sanctions package announced by the Foreign Minister declares that Turkey, "as the guarantor of freedom of navigation in the Mediterranean," will not allow this Israeli Lake fait accompli either.

Only two years ago, a report was published, prepared by Richard Goldstone for the UN investigating the blockade of Gaza and Israel's attack on Gaza, which found Israel guilty, perhaps for the first time, this courageously and openly. Because it accused Israel so openly for the first time before an international public accustomed until then to treating Israel as exempt from every kind of judgment, criticism, international law and rule, the report caused astonishment at first. Before long it was announced that Richard Goldstone had renounced the content of this report. It is unheard of for the author of a published report to give up its content so soon, but when Israel is concerned, this too can happen. As might be expected, Israeli officials had managed to make him back down by trying every means of pressure and trickery. This incident was shamelessly described as a successful PR effort by Israel. Yet this incident, too, has provided a very good occasion to see how Israel conducts its affairs.

Israel works not only as a war and slaughter machine but also as a "propaganda machine." When propaganda requires an effort to convince people of one's rightness in matters where one is not in the right, it can find no way other than distorting the facts. Propaganda then aims at creating an ideology in which reality is shown and made to be felt differently. One has to acknowledge that Israel has done this very successfully until now. All the perceptions going around about Israel's superpower status, its intelligence, its invincibility, its irresistibility, its being beyond objection are also a product of this propaganda.

How powerful someone is matters, and how powerful he appears matters even more. And how powerful someone is also depends on how disposed others are to bow to that power.

Whenever relations with Israel are at issue, the propaganda machine, which immediately kicks in at home and abroad, goes into action in a way that strains the imagination to the utmost about what could befall Turkey should it come into conflict with Israel. Ideology is precisely this: a distorted image of reality.

Even excessive imaginings of Israeli evil reinforce this ideology in reverse. So pay no attention to the accusations of anti-Semitism; in fact, some varieties of anti-Semitism too construct fatalistic and submissive subjects before Israel by exaggerating Israeli power excessively. The curiosity that looks for a Zionist under every stone likewise produces a similar internalized fatalism.

Of course one should not ignore that there are areas in which Israel is strong: it has money, it has America behind it, a powerful intelligence service and a terror that recognizes no rules, and so on. We have seen together many times, and will keep seeing, all these elements fail in the face of a courageous and determined will.

There is a reality that is clearly seen even by those who warn Turkey about the costs of a deterioration in relations with Israel in a way that pushes it into utter cowardice: it is very clear that Turkey has lost nothing from the stance it has displayed toward Israel lately, and on the contrary has come out of it far ahead. On the contrary, the so-called good relations with Israel had excessively expensive costs for Turkey, and as Turkey returns to its own real position vis-à-vis Israel, it both gets rid of these excessively expensive costs and thrives on the blessing of alternative relations.

Turkey's relatively most convincingly profitable relationship with Israel is in the field of the defense industry. Yet even there, it is Israel rather than Turkey that needs the continuing relationship. Turkey has no loss from the severing of these relations, on the contrary it has a gain, but Israel has very clear material and strategic losses. Turkey's defense relations with Israel clearly put a brake on the development of Turkey's defense industry. In a critical matter like the fight against terror, the Herons bought from Israel turn out faulty at the most critical times. Moreover, Israel hands over, with a thousand and one pleas and favors, Herons that Turkey could very easily make itself if it had to.

One cannot help wondering what it was that convinced Turkey to engage in so costly a transaction. Part of it must stem from Israel's propaganda capability, but more of it must be the factors that convinced our side of this propaganda. Let no one doubt that the fact that these factors, which are probably extremely "emotional," have today become invalid offers Turkey priceless opportunities, occasions for "a blessed turn of events."