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Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has reacted strongly to the Israeli attack on the relief ships, the largest of which sailed from Turkey. According to one report, Turkey has served warning that Turkish Navy ships will escort future relief convoys to Gaza.
Erdogan has had it with Israeli mistreatment of Muslims in his eastern Mediterranean neighborhood. On Jan. 29, 2009, at the economic summit in Davos, he leveled harsh criticism to Israeli President Shimon Peres's face, labeling Gaza "an open-air prison."
Erdogan angrily cited "the sixth commandment -- Thou Shalt Not Kill," adding, "We are talking about killing" in Gaza. Erdogan's one-and-a-half-minute tirade was captured on camera by the BBC.
Five days before Erdogan's outburst, the Brazilian government also condemned Israel's bombing of Gaza and its effect on the civilian population as a "disproportionate response."
It seems to have been the atrocity in Gaza--plus a common determination to prevent war from spreading to Iran--that galvanized the successful joint effort by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to defy Israel. They persuaded Iran to agree to transfer half of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey for further processing, rendering it unusable for a nuclear weapon.
Defy Israel? you ask. Confused? If the Israeli leaders truly believe that low-enriched uranium comprises an essential part of an "existential threat" to Israel from eventual nuclear weapons in Iran, would they not be delighted at Iran's agreement to send half of that uranium out of the country? Good question.
Truth be told, Israel cares a lot less about Iran's uranium that it does about forcing "regime change" in Tehran. Netanyahu does not want any agreement with Iran; he wants sanctions against Iran, and eventually a military conflict, with the U.S. jumping in to help finish Iran off.
And this twin wish is shared by American neocons who remain influential in the Obama administration and in the FCM.
The pro-Israeli hardliners are the ones running U.S. policy on the Middle East, not Obama, who seems only nominally in charge. Unusually clear proof of this came when the Brazilians released a letter revealing that Obama had personally encouraged the Brazilian and Turkish leaders to pursue the kind of deal they were able to work out with the Iranians.
Small wonder, then, that the leaders of Brazil and Turkey were taken aback when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other administration spokespeople trashed the tripartite Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal and pressed ahead with a new round of sanctions.
And the President? Did he step up and acknowledge that he had encouraged Brazil and Turkey to seek the uranium deal? Well, he don't say nothin'.
Israeli Influence
While Americans continue to be starved of real information from the FCM, better informed people around the world have come to view with disdain the degree to which Washington dogs are wagged by Israeli tails.
When I suggested five years ago before a Capitol Hill hearing chaired by Rep. John Conyers that Israel was right up there, together with oil and military bases, as comprising the real rationale for war on Iraq, I, too, was called anti-Semitic. But the evidence has always been as clear as it is abundant.
An inadvertent remark by a major player on Iraq, former British Prime Minister Blair, has provided insight -- straight from the horse's ass, I mean, mouth.
In early February 2010, the British press revealed that Blair, testifying to the Iraq war commission in the U.K., offered the following account of his discussions with Bush in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. (That's when Bush said war was the only way to deal with Saddam Hussein, and Blair acquiesced.) But Blair's remarks revealed that Israeli concerns were a major part of the equation and that Israeli officials were involved in the discussions.Thus, Blair:
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