It has to be supernatural. The ongoing hatred and lies that we hear on a daily basis regarding Israel actually becomes background noise after so many years of hearing the same rhetoric over and over. But occasionally it becomes so ridiculous that you see it again.
In this instance, it defies any remnant of logic to suggest that any of this turmoil in Gaza is Israel's fault. Hamas began this latest episode with a 3 day rocket barrage - which is still ongoing - and if anything, Israel's response has been muted and to some extent - weak. Despite this, as we would predict, Israel faces condemnation from the usual suspects:
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Israeli bombardment of Gaza was blocking efforts to patch up relations undermined by a 2010 attack by Israeli commandos on a Turkish ship that had been challenging its blockade of the Palestinian territory.
"We cannot normalize (relations). First, this cruelty must end," Erdogan said during a speech in the central Turkish city of Yozgat late on Thursday.
"As long as this is not done, it is not possible that a normalization of the relations between Turkey and Israel be realized," he added, calling for a ceasefire to resume.
Israeli leaders, determined to end Palestinian rocket attacks deep into the Jewish state, have hinted they could order the first ground invasion of the coastal strip in five years.
President Abdullah Gul, speaking to journalists in the Turkish capital after Friday prayers, said such a move would "plant seeds of hatred in the region."
Ankara's recent troubled relations with Jerusalem reached a nadir in 2010 when Israeli commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, a vessel taking part in an aid flotilla challenging Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. Ten people were killed.
"As long as this is not done, it is not possible that a normalization of the relations between Turkey and Israel be realized," he added, calling for a ceasefire to resume.
Israeli leaders, determined to end Palestinian rocket attacks deep into the Jewish state, have hinted they could order the first ground invasion of the coastal strip in five years.
President Abdullah Gul, speaking to journalists in the Turkish capital after Friday prayers, said such a move would "plant seeds of hatred in the region."
Ankara's recent troubled relations with Jerusalem reached a nadir in 2010 when Israeli commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, a vessel taking part in an aid flotilla challenging Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. Ten people were killed.
Erdogan, who is running in Turkey's first direct presidential elections next month, has regularly used his vocal defense of Palestinian rights as a campaign platform with his largely conservative Sunni Muslim voter base.
Jordan's King Abdullah II fears Israel's military operation against Hamas in Gaza will compromise efforts to achieve a two-state solution, and will further entrench the plight of Palestinians, he told US Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday in Washington.
Referring to the crisis in Gaza as a "dangerous Israeli escalation," the Jordanian monarch asserted that developments over recent days "would increase the suffering of the Palestinian people and foil attempts to resume peace talks between Palestinians and the Israelis."
Israel's Operation Protective Edge, now in its fourth day, has featured over 1,000 Israel Air Force strikes on the coastal Gaza Strip. Hamas and other Islamist groups in the strip have fired 500 rockets from the territory since its initiation on July 8, and several hundred more in the three weeks prior to the beginning of the Israeli campaign.
Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu says that initial, unprovoked rocket fire forced his government to respond. Hamas accuses Israel's government of willfully killing Palestinian innocents.
In a readout of the same meeting, the White House made only passive mention of discussion between Biden and Abdullah on the Gaza crisis. The two also discussed the threat of ISIS to the region, and how advances by the group in Iraq and Syria will require a regional response.
"The King also warned against the vacuum caused by the stalled negotiations on the final status issues which are based on the two-state solution," the Jordanian government described.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday vowed to fight Hamas and other Gaza terror groups until Israel was safe from the threat of missile attack, and then launched a highly unusual and extremely bitter verbal assault on would-be peace-brokers, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, who have been urging Israel to relinquish security control of the West Bank to a Palestinian state.
Speaking to the Israeli public on the fourth day of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, which he said has seen Israel attack “over 1,000″ terror targets while sustaining hundreds of rocket attacks from Gaza, Netanyahu vowed that the IDF campaign “will continue until we are sure that Israel’s residents have quiet.” He said that no terrorist target was off-limits, and accused Hamas’s leaders and gunmen of “hiding behind Gaza’s residents” — using them as human shields — and thus being responsible “for any harm that comes to them.”
While Israel did everything to protect its citizens, he said, and had “spent billions to protect the homefront” in recent years, Gaza’s terror groups deliberately put Gazans “in harm’s way.” Israel does its utmost not to harm Gaza’s civilians while targeting the terrorists, whereas Hamas targets Israel’s civilians, he said.
Netanyahu said he had made this point in conversations with a series of world leaders, including Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, in recent days, and that all the world leaders with whom he spoke understood Israel’s imperative to act. “No state would allow its citizens to be targeted without a harsh response,” he said.
Asked if he was interested in a ceasefire, Netanyahu said, “We are in the midst of a struggle” and that it would end only when his goal of guaranteed, long-term calm had been achieved.
He praised the success of the Iron Dome missile defense system — which has intercepted about 100 Gaza rockets heading into residential areas this week — calling it “an immense asset” and “proof of Israel’s technological supremacy.” And he said his ultimate goal was to protect all of Israel from missiles of all ranges. He praised Israelis’ resilience, as most of the country has found itself within the range of Hamas’s extended missile capabilities over the past few days.
Departing from his prepared text to take questions, Netanyahu said Israel was “weighing all possibilities” for expanding the campaign against Hamas in Gaza, including the possibility of a major ground offensive. “We’ve prepared for all options… That’s what I told the army to do, and it has done so… My uppermost consideration is to restore quiet for all of Israel’s citizens in all of Israel’s cities. I will do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal. Beyond that, I cannot go into details.”
At present, Hamas continues to attack, he noted. “You see it. You hear it. You all live it,” he said. “Five million Israelis are in rocket range right now. So when they fight us, we fight them.”
Indeed, precisely as Netanyahu was speaking, Hamas launched a rocket barrage at central Israel, apparently seeking to embarrass him. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
Netanyahu then expanded the scope of his press conference to talk about the rise of Islamic extremism across the Middle East. He said Israel finds itself in a region “that is being seized by Islamic extremism. It is bringing down countries, many countries. It is knocking on our door, in the north and south. We will defend ourselves on every front, defensively and offensively. Nobody should mess with us.”
While other states were collapsing, said Netanyahu, Israel was not — because of the strength of its leadership, its army and its people.
Amid the current conflict, he elaborated, “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan” — a reference to the Jordan Valley and the West Bank — as Kerry had urged during a US-led peace effort that collapsed in April.
Citing by name both Kerry and the US security adviser Gen. John Allen, who was charged by the secretary of state to draw up security proposals that the US argued could enable Israel to withdraw from most of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, Netanyahu said passionately, “I told John Kerry and General Allen, the Americans’ expert: We live here, I live here, I know what we need to ensure the security of Israel’s people.”
He said the current conflict also underlined the importance of retaining territory, noting that Hamas had tunneled relentlessly under Gaza’s borders with both Egypt, for smuggling purposes, and Israel, for terrorism purposes. “If we were to pull out of Judea and Samaria, like they tell us to, there’d be a possibility of thousands of tunnels” being dug by terrorists to attack Israel, he said. There were 1,200 tunnels dug in a 14-kilometer stretch between Egypt and Gaza alone, which Egypt had sealed, he noted.
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