Turkish Elections -- A Guardian Op-ed by Yavuz Baydar

Turkey’s people have acted to prevent an autocratic nightmare

by Yavuz Baydar

Editorial: The challenge now is for a fractured society to make multiparty politics work

There is only one loser from Turkey’s historic elections on Sunday, which was without doubt a referendum. The president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, made it a vote about his “way”, and found himself rejected by a large group of “democrat” voters – and almost completely abandoned by his long-term allies: pious Kurds. The wound was self inflicted.

Erdoğan, with one erratic move after another, brought this situation about. It is the end of an era.

The electorate, reacting to his murky attempts to grab more and more power, simply said “enough is enough”, and applied the handbrakes. Their message is that Erdoğan is an undesired player in active politics. By implication, he now risks being seen as a liability for his party, the AKP.

After four long years of a terrible choreography, his attempt to establish a new order – a “new Turkey” – is over. It is clear that voters in sufficient number realised that the real aim was to establish an Orwellian structure – a “Mukhabarat state” consolidated around the AKP and run by an inner circle of sycophants.

Erdoğan lost his daredevil gamble. He now faces defeat and eventual isolation. He tested the “moral” segment of Turkey’s silent majority to its limits in terms of intelligence and patience. That was his undoing.

What Erdoğan and his inner circle failed to understand was that the grassroots of the party that ruled Turkey for more than 12 years was and still is a social coalition, which, among other groups, was backed by a large bulk of Kurds, a coalition that would crack if pushed too far.

By resorting to denialist rhetoric about the Kurdish issue, Erdoğan ended up losing almost the entire bulk of the Kurds, as well as votes from Turks who expect more, not less, freedom and rights.

He is a charismatic leader, polluted by power, who became a victim of his own success. Erdoğan has never been defeated, his party has never been forced to endure opposition since its inception 14 years ago. Blinded by a series of sweeping victories, he forgot that the public saw in him not only stability, but also a hope for decentralisation and redistribution of power.

Instead, the AKP became embroiled in corruption allegations, symbolised by raids in December 2013, which were ruthlessly covered up. But the cover-up could only extend so far. There for all to see are tangible products of a corrupted mentality – the massive palace in Ankara, and a smaller but equally excessive one, overlooking the Bosphorus in Istanbul.

His repression of the Gezi Park protests in 2013 – when it is estimated that eight people died and 8,000 were injured, further exposed his dark side. Ever since he has been perceived as a leader with a hammer who sees every problem and act of dissent as a nail.

Freedoms of expression, speech, media and assembly have been severely restricted; journalists, judges and prosecutors have been jailed or charged in courts for doing their jobs.

The press has been muzzled, large chunks of the state’s checks and balances lie in ruins. And it was no accident. It is clear that the ruling party’s plan was to sever Turkey from the democratic values of the west, possibly for good.

What is positive is the reaction of the voters. They may only have been able to slow the process, to apply the brakes. Still, they showed the world that with a single vote it is possible to pull back from the brink, pull back from the autocratic nightmare that now afflicts states such as Egypt.

The people of Turkey took a risk that could have ended in disaster. But when it seemed that the channels to democracy might be tightly shut, they moved to keep them open. It will become a historic example of strategic thinking.

My Personal DNR Order

After putting it off a long time I finally got around to a little detail that has nagged me for some time -- a personal Do Not Resuscitate Order. My wife and I completed our advance directives for medical care some time ago, both of which include a so-called "living will." But those documents are only needed if someone is unable to communicate (coma, stroke, dementia, anesthesia, otherwise). Advance directives appoint one or more agents for medical decision-making should questions arise while we are under medical care.

But there can be an accident or some other life-threatening event when the only medical resources are those responding to a 911 call or a nurse or doctor who might be available. Those people will be trained to immediately begin life-saving CPR and first aid. I know this because I am CPR and First Aid certified myself and have been most of my adult life.  And if I am knocked unconscious and bleeding, I want by all means to have someone stop the bleeding, clear an airway, keep me safe and covered, treat for shock, and do whatever is necessary to keep me from dying. 

However, should my heart stop beating and my breathing stop I am prepared to die. The statistics for cardio-pulmonary resuscitation in a hospital setting are not impressive, and bystander life-saving using CPR are even worse. Moreover, lack of oxygen to the brain damages cognition and memory more than a restored blood supply can repair. If I were younger ten years or more I would (and did) want to take my chances with CPR under emergency conditions. 

Having passed seventy and given the matter a lot of thought I have come to terms with the inevitability of dying. According to the actuarial tables of the Social Security people, I have a life expectancy of thirteen-plus more years. That's pretty good, and I hope to beat it. In fact, every year that we survive we do, in fact, "beat the odds." If I am still alive ten years from now my life expectancy will not have diminished ten years. In fact I will pick up four additional years simply by surviving another decade. As a male aged 81 my life expectancy becomes seven-plus years! That's pretty cool when you think about it. There is an actuarial life expectancy even for centenarians and beyond. As long as there is life, there is hope.

To Dr. H---- or whom it may concern: 

I want a DNR bracelet and/or tag to wear around my neck indicating that in the unlikely event my heart and breathing stop no CPR or intubation will be used to resuscitate me. I realize this is an unusual request and that despite clear instructions to the contrary EMR teams or others trained in CPR, motivated by the best of good intentions, may intervene anyway.

A copy of my advance directive for medical care is in your file, but it’s not practical to carry on my person all the time. A bracelet or tag with my ID and telephone (or other validating contact) is more suitable.

To be clear, I do not want to die. But that is not the same as saying I am not ready to die. As many military and first responders know, being ready to die and wanting to die are not the same and must not be confused.

My reasons for carrying a DNR are easy to explain. At this writing (age 71) I have spent the last twelve years working as a caregiver, mainly with seniors. During five years in a retirement community and seven years as a non-medical caregiver via an agency I have had many assignments and have seen the effects of age and disability in a way that most people never do. When I die I want to be remembered as someone leading a full life, productive and helpful to others. As I now approach the end of the actuarial tables, the longer I live the less likely that outcome will be.

I have seen too many people dying a little at a time, increasingly dependent on others even for the simplest needs. The decline may be physical, cognitive or both. But in all cases the quality of life is compromised a little at a time until the dying person is left in a miserable condition, often for years, waiting, waiting for that final appointment with the Angel of Death. That is a condition I want to prevent, if possible, by deciding now against heroic life-extending measures. 

This is not an appeal for everybody to follow my example. I am a firm believer that end of life and beginning of life issues are among the most private of all human decisions, involving as few others as possible. Making final arrangements we need the input and advice of family, friends, clergy and legal council. But there is no substitute for thoughtful reflection and doing lots of homework. I provide this, my personal journey notes, as a friendly reminder that we all have and share one final appointment with the Angel of Death. 

My decision is influenced in part by what happened to my father following a stroke which incapacitated him for almost a year before he died of another cause. During that time he was not the person I had known as my father. He was not interested in eating and was kept alive by nutrients and hydration via a PEG tube in his stomach. He was in a good skilled nursing environment, well cared for and not in pain. But I want nothing like that to happen to me. If possible I want to be remembered full of vitality, alert and productive to the end.  

I could also cite many examples from my work as a caregiver, but that could be interpreted as a violation of the rules. No matter. There are numerous on-line places with tons of information. I just recently came across a Facebook page for The Caregiver Space. And I am happy to answer any questions in the comments. 

Legal and practical requirements vary from state to state, and even when everything is in order, it is possible that a bystander with the best of good intentions will apply CPR anyway. The same is apt to happen with EMT personnel or others not aware of my decision. To that end I wear a medical alert tag around my neck that says look in my wallet. In my wallet I have a small copy of my DNR order, together with my ID, that of the doctor and a contact phone number. I read once about a doctor, knowing that his DNR might not be readily available, had "Do not resuscitate" tattooed on his chest. 

Stop Blaming the Victims

We can thank Bernie Sanders that the wealth gap will be discussed during the 2016 election cycle. That gap has always been around, but over the last forty years has become almost insurmountable for most Americans. We don't yet know what the official party responses will be, but I suspect both will advance variations blaming the victim. It will be presented with compassion and civility, but after all the packaging has been stripped away, it will be the old bootstraps argument in a new package.

I just came across a wise-sounding link, now two years old, offering the following advice.

The fact is the poor are poor because they have too many Poverty Habits and too few Rich Habits. Poor parents teach their children the Poverty Habits and wealthy parents teach their children the Rich Habits. We don’t have a wealth gap in this country we have a parent gap. We don’t have income inequality, we have parent inequality.

Included was a string of statistics reflecting the lifestyle contrasts between rich and poor, none of which is controversial. For example "9% of the wealthy watch reality T.V. shows vs. 78% of the poor." Do tell! The list might well have included how many wealthy people have vintage wines with meals instead of beer among the poor.

GOP contenders position themselves in the "work your way up" camp while Democrats talk about "jobs, jobs, jobs" but neither side is courageous enough to argue (as does Bernie Sanders) that the way our of the quagmire requires more than just "work, work, work."

The way out and up must include some pro-active political moves having little or nothing to do with the behavior of the poor and much to do with attitudes of those who are already wealthy. A handful of rich people have set good examples, but even those who express admiration for them stop short of following their good examples. At the core of their reluctance is that nagging belief that if poor people would just shift gears and embrace better habits, make better choices, they would somehow escape the penalties keeping them down. 

Thanks to Bernie Sanders' stirring the pot once again, I'm getting flashbacks to thoughts that struck me following Hurricane Katrina. The following is what I posted then.

~~~~~~~~

I can't remember a time of so much blaming. Attempting to make sense of the tragedy that has happened, nearly every voice is seeking to simplify a blindingly complicated scene, to finish every sentence, every paragraph, on a note of insight leading to understanding. Pundits, preachers, politicians and other word peddlers are busy trying to make themselves look good as they reel out ream after ream of empty words.

A lot has been said about those who are suffering because they failed to follow instructions to get themselves out of harm's way. It reminds me of the way we blame those suffering from substance abuse, obesity, gambling addiction, or any number of human problems, both medical and behavioral, because those who suffer most from those problems are not doing all they can to ameliorate their various conditions. Who has sympathy for the cancer victim still smoking, the morbidly obese patron going back to the buffet for yet another plate of food, for the panhandler wanting money because the bottle in his little brown bag is empty, for a laborer in line at the unemployment office instead of being out there in the street looking for work, for the young mother with two kids in tow and no dad in sight, pregnant again with another kid she can't afford?

Yes, it's easy to blame victims, to look past our own motes to those in other eyes. I have heard it for years, and I'm hearing it again.

The head of FEMA said the people in New Orleans shared some of the responsibility for their plight and the reaction was official indignation, but when I mentioned that remark to someone I know he replied "He's right. I know it's not good politics to say that, but he spoke the truth. I'm glad he said it."

A screaming headline over a picture of people at the Superdome had a quote about "They are treating us like animals..." and someone else said "Just look at that! Damn liberal paper trying to stir something up...I wish I could go down there and kick some butts."

Check any comment thread, look at most any weblog and find someone looking to assign responsibility for what has happened. Either the problem should have been averted or the response should have been more expeditious or both.

My take on the situation is more boring. What I am seeing is a clash of values, of lifestyle, of cultures. I'm not speaking of race or class in the popular sense. Or "lifestyles" in the magazine or homosexual or "extreme makeover" sense. I'm talking about what makes people get up in the morning and start their days. What makes people live and act as they do. Hard as it is for me to accept, a lot of people don't want to do the same as I, or work for the same goals.

My career has been in the public, serving cafeteria patrons, working with those who produce the food. I have met and loved many thousands of the public, their friends and families, watched their children grow, learned to admire their energy and accomplishments. I also understood that my job, along with those of fifty or a hundred others, depended on their discretionary spending.

Behind the scenes I worked with people who would never go "out to eat" in the cafeteria sense, at least not two or three times a week - or even daily - as our best customers did. They enjoyed pizza or other fast food. They might treat themselves to a full-service restaurant from time to time, but they had no use for places that charged more for service and image than for food.

But enough about me. And enough about you, for that matter. Let's back up and look at the picture. What we see is a contrast in values.

We see a population of people who would never eat in a cafeteria earning a living by working in one. It's not too different from any other workplace where people make new cars but drive to work in old ones, who clean houses for a living but live in a house with a rodent problem, who work in a grocery store but eat an unbalanced diet of starches, fats and carbs.

On the other hand, I once lived in a suburban neighborhood where substance abuse victims all happened to be "functional." They had good jobs, six-figures in some cases, but came home every day and organized their afternoons and evenings around their alcohol intake. They could afford it. They could also afford the resulting health problems and other consequences.

I watched a line of customers in a newly opened cafeteria in a very upscale community with family after family consisting of a grey-templed dad and his much-younger, fashion-conscious, pretty young wife and mother to his second family, all going out to eat. There were so many kids we had to order in another fleet of high chairs. All because they could afford it.

My point is this: there are a great many lifestyles and choices in America. We can argue that they are all determined by income, but that is demonstrably untrue. It's not about income, it's about choices. And before you jump to the conclusion that I'm about to condemn those who "choose" to be poor, back off. I have a great respect and admiration for those who, whether by choice or circumstance, are living poor. They include old people who can no longer work, simple people who would rather live humbly and have more time in their life for travel and study, those who for religious reasons eschew wealth - I'm thinking of the Amish and Catholic Worker types. Remember the old saying about all work and no play. That, too, is part of the American Dream.

And there is a vast population of people in our society whom we can call the working poor. They work, but remain poor. Why? Is it because they like being poor? Why, no. If you could choose to be good-looking or in good health or respected would you choose to be ugly or sick or hated? Of course not. But often we are not who or where we are because of choice. We are there because that is where we are and being someplace else is not part of our imagination.

How can the person born blind understand about colors? How can the person who is deaf know about musical harmony? And how can the infant born into what we condescendingly refer to as an "underclass" know that there could have been some alternative? At what point does the toddler begin to make "choices" about whether or not he wants to continue a lifestyle? What are the dynamics that produce an occasional boot-straps success despite a "poverty" mentality?

I do not have an answer to these questions, and I do not propose to find any.

What I do propose, however, is that whatever the reasons, however it happened, there are a lot of people in America who do not have what I describe as a "suburban mentality." For them life is just as challenging, just as exciting, just as painful, just as rewarding as it is for anyone else. They know that when they get up in the morning they have to eat, live, love, worry, rejoice and rest just like everyone else. The family structure may not be ideal, they have more problems as the result of that lifestyle than they would elsewhere, but elsewhere is not where they are.

They have not come to America, like immigrants, with a vision of success, working to buy into the American Dream. Nor have they jumped out of bed one morning and said "This is the pits! I can't stand living like this! No matter what it takes, I'm gonna work my ass off til I get the hell outta here!"

No, not everyone is mad as hell and not gonna take it any more. It not only takes hard work, creativity and sometimes a good break or two, it also takes role models, encouragement and a stubborn resolve on the part of the individual that is rare in the human population. Remember, we aren't talking about third-generation college grads whose parents, grandparents and extended family would look good in a magazine article.

We are talking about people who have grown up very differently. "Work" is not something you do because you like it. It is something you do because you need the money. If you learn to like it later, that's great - maybe even necessary. But as soon as you learn to like what you do, where is the motivation to do something else? If you are in tolerably good health, get a cold beer from time to time, enjoy your tobacco, play cards, and have good sex, why in the world would you want to change? I know a lot of so-called "successful" people who would toss it all in to have that much.

Transportation, for the simple lifestyle, is walking, public transportation, catching a ride with someone else or driving some old piece of a car that will have to be replaced pretty soon. (If someone "orders" an evacuation that order is as alien as it comes. It presumes a car, and the means to buy gas, and a destination, and the means to feed and shelter yourself in a place you have never even seen. It presumes you know the way, and I'm not speaking of maps.)

Health care is getting over being sick. If you can't get over it you take over the counter meds. If it gets worse you go to the emergency room and hope they can help. Dental work is about the same. Get over it. Take something for the pain. And if it gets too bad, find a dentist to pull the tooth. If they get bad enough, have them all pulled and find a cheap lab that will make you some more for two hundred dollars. Then you can smile like you used to., with teeth again. [Obamacare has eliminated these conditions for many, but the number who live this way still number in the millions, which is why Bernie Sanders' call for universal health care still has meaning.]

I'm here to tell you that the people I have just described are not optional to our economy. Their lifestyle "choices" if you insist on calling it that, is as basic to the American economic infrastructure as coins and credit. Pay attention to this: Not everyone will make a good income. Somebody is going to work for low wages, the so-called "minimum wage."Somebody is going to work for even less. And those who do will not be drawn from the much exalted middle class, They will be drawn from the young, the inexperienced, the very old and those between jobs.

But I can tell you from experience that the best of them - the core of their respective professions - will be there, year after year, generation after generation, doing a good good job, putting in their days and weeks, teaching the more transitory around them how to do their work because those in a supervisory capacity are on their way elsewhere and have not been trained to be teachers. I have watched good poor people doing honorable work and doing it well for my entire career. When I think of what happened to those people because of the hurricane it makes me want to cry.

And this week I have watched those same people on television being blamed for circumstances over which neither they nor anyone else had any real control. [Just a few hours ago I came across a link referring to Jeb Bush advocating shaming unwed mothers and people getting public assistance. That was in his book published in 1995. He may or may not have "evolved" since that time. Time will tell.] 

I have watched helplessly as many who call themselves leaders grope blindly for remedies.

I have read endless words of blame and recrimination. And I am calling for an end to meanness and counterproductive arguments. Now is not the time to be lecturing poor people about their bad "choices." No one need tell them about the consequences of lifestyle. They understand better than most the problems of hypertension, obesity, substance abuse, unplanned babies, short age spans for black men, under-employment and unemployment, dependence on welfare, and everything else that goes with the picture. No need to beat anybody up any more.

The time has come for everyone to do or say something positive. Like we were taught as children, if you have nothing good to say, then please don't say anything at all. If you are sitting there reading from a monitor and think you have had a reality check, you are right. But your "reality check" is nothing compared to what happened this week to a lot of folks. Let's work to make it better, not worse.

Fisk on Palmyra

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-slaughter-in-the-sacred-syrian-city-of-palmyra-the-survivors-stories-10297989.html?fb_action_ids=10207027522787374&fb_action_types=og.shares#

Isis slaughter in the sacred Syrian city of Palmyra: The survivors' stories
When the black-cowled gunmen of the 'Islamic State' infiltrated the suburbs of Palmyra on 20 May, half of Assad Sulieman’s oil and gas processing plant crews – 50 men in all - were manning their 12-hour shift at the Hayan oil field 28 miles away. They were the lucky ones. Their 50 off-duty colleagues were sleeping at their homes next to the ancient Roman city. Twenty-five of them would soon be dead, among up to 400 civilians – including women and children – who would die in the coming hours at the hands of the Islamist militia which every Syrian now calls by its self-styled acronym ‘Daesh’.

Oil engineer ‘Ahmed’ – he chose this name to protect his family in Palmyra – was, by chance, completing a course at Damascus University on the fatal day when Palmyra fell. “I was appalled,” he said. “I tried calling my family. It was still possible to get through on the phone. They said ‘Daesh’ (also known as Isis) wasn’t allowing anyone to leave their home. My brother later went onto the street. He took pictures of bodies. They had been decapitated, all men.

[photo caption -- Destruction of the Jezaa gas and oil processing plant Destruction of the Jezaa gas and oil processing plant “He managed to send the photographs out to me from [the Isis-controlled city of] Raqqa on the internet which is the only communications working there.”]

Some of the photographs are too terrible to publish. They show heads lying several feet from torsos, blood running in streams across a city street. In one, a body lies on a roadway while two men cycle past on a bicycle. So soon after the capture of Palmyra were the men slaughtered that shop-fronts can still be seen in the photographs, painted in the two stars and colours of the red-white-and-black flag of the Syrian government.

“The Daesh forced the people to leave the bodies in the streets for three days,” Ahmed continued. “They were not allowed to pick up the bodies or bury them without permission. The corpses were all over the city. My family said the Daesh came to our house, two foreign men – one appeared to be an Afghan, the other from Tunisia or Morocco because he had a very heavy accent – and then they left. They killed three female nurses. One was killed in her home, another in her uncle’s house, a third on the street. Perhaps it was because they helped the army [as nurses]. Some said they were beheaded but my brother said they were shot in the head.”

In the panic to flee Palmyra, others perished when their cars drove over explosives planted on the roads by the Islamist gunmen. One was a retired Syrian general from the al-Daas family whose 40-year old pharmacist wife and 12-year old son were killed with him when their car’s wheels touched the explosives. Later reports spoke of executions in the old Roman theatre amid the Palmyra ruins.

The director of the Hayan gas and oil processing plant, Assad Sulieman, shook his head in near-disbelief as he recounted how word reached him of the execution of his off-duty staff. Some were, he believes, imprisoned in the gas fields which had fallen into the hands of the ‘Islamic State’. Others were merely taken from their homes and murdered because they were government employees. For months prior to the fall of Palmyra, he had received a series of terrifying phone calls from the Islamists, one of them when gunmen were besieging a neighbouring gas plant.

He said: “They came on my own phone, here in my office, and said: ‘We are coming for you.’ I said to them: ‘I will be waiting’. The army drove them off but my staff also received these phone calls here and they were very frightened. The army protected three of our fields then and drove them off.” Since the fall of Palmyra, the threatening phone calls have continued, even though 'Daesh' have cut all mobile and landlines in their newly-occupied city.

Another young engineer at Hayan was in Palmyra when the 'Islamic State' arrived. So fearful was he when he spoke that he even refused to volunteer a name for himself. “I had gone back to Palmyra two days before and everything seemed alright,” he said. “When my family told me they had arrived, I stayed at home and so did my mother and brother and sisters and we did not go out. Everyone knew that when these men come, things are not good. The electricity stopped for two days and then the gunmen restored it. We had plenty of food – we were a well-off family. We stayed there a week, we had to sort out our affairs and they never searched our home.”

The man’s evidence proved the almost haphazard nature of Isis rule. A week after the occupation, the family made its way out of the house – the women in full Islamic covering – and caught a bus to the occupied city of Raqqa and from there to Damascus. “They looked at my ID but didn’t ask my job,” the man said. “The bus trip was normal. No-one stopped us leaving.” Like Ahmed, the young oil worker was a Sunni Muslim – the same religion as ‘Daesh’s’ followers – but he had no doubts about the nature of Palmyra’s occupiers. “When they arrive anywhere”, he said, “there is no more life”. The ancient Palmyra theater (Reuters) The ancient Palmyra theater (Reuters)

Syria’s own oil and gas lifeline now stretches across a hundred miles of desert from Homs in the midlands to the strategic oil fields across the broiling desert outside Palmyra. It took two hours to reach a point 28 miles from Palmyra; the last Syrian troops are stationed eight miles closer to the city.

To the west lies the great Syrian air base of Tiyas – codenamed ‘T-4’ after the old fourth pumping station of the Iraqi-Palestine oil pipeline – where I saw grey-painted twin-tailed Mig fighter bombers taking off into the dusk and settling back onto the runways. A canopy of radar dishes and concrete bunkers protect the base and Syrian troops can be seen inside a series of earthen fortresses on each side of the main road to Palmyra, defending their redoubts with heavy machine guns, long-range artillery and missiles.

Syrian troops patrol the highway every few minutes on pick-up trucks – and make no secret of their precautions. They pointed out the site of an improvised explosive device found a few hours earlier - more than 30 miles west of Palmyra. Further down the road was the wreckage of truck bombs which had been hit by Syrian rocket-fire. Assad Sulieman, the gas plant director, declares that his father named him after President Bashar al-Asasad’s father Hafez. He described how Islamist rebels had totally destroyed one gas plant close to Hayan last year, and how his crews had totally restored it to production within months by using cannibalized equipment from other facilities. His plant’s production capacity has been restored to three million cubic metres of gas per day for the country’s power stations and six thousand barrels of oil for the Homs refinery. Ancient sites in Palmyra (EPA) Ancient sites in Palmyra (EPA)

But the man who understands military risks is General Fouad – like everyone else in the area of Palmyra, he prefers to use only his first name – a professional officer whose greatest victory over the rebels on a nearby mountain range came at the moment his soldier-son was killed in battle in Homs. He makes no secret of “the big shock” he felt when Palmyra fell. He thinks that the soldiers had been fighting for a long time in defence of the city and did not expect the mass attack. Other military men – not the general – say that the ‘Islamic State’ advanced on a 50-mile front, overwhelming the army at the time.

“They will get no further,” General Fouad said. “We fought them off when they attacked three fields last year. Our soldiers stormed some of their local headquarters on the Shaer mountain. We found documents about our production facilities, we found religious books of Takfiri ideas. And we found lingerie.”

What on earth, I asked, would the Islamic State be doing with lingerie? The general was not smiling. “We think that maybe they kept captured Yazidi women with them, the ones who were kidnapped in Iraq. When our soldiers reached their headquarters, we saw some of their senior men running away with some women.”

But the general, like almost every other Syrian officer I met on this visit to the desert – and every other civilian – had a thought on his mind. If the Americans were so keen to destroy Isis, did they not know from satellites that thousands of gunmen were massing to strike at Palmyra. Certainly they did not tell the Syrians of this? And they did not bomb them, either – though there must have been targets aplenty for the US air force in the days before the Palmyra attack, even if Washington does not like the Assad regime. A question, then, that still has to be answered.

Hamas and Israel -- Detente? Rapprochement?

This is hugely important. 

IS tried to bait Israel into another conflict with Hamas by launching rockets from Gaza, which would have put Hamas into the ISIS camp. But Israel did not take the bait. I have not seen this mentioned in the US press (yet) but the key players certainly took note.

Here is a Google translation. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suddenly Israel remains the most important friend of Hamas
A security official explained that harming the Hamas response to the attack last night serve Daas and Egypt looking from the side and refuses to believe - a key ally in talks with Qatar and Turkey, but refuses to talk to Abbas.  

Avi Issacharoff

Monday, 07 June 2015 13:30

The Israeli response this morning (Sunday) the rocket yesterday from the Gaza Strip largely represents Jerusalem's new policy against Hamas - the bride and instead embrace a military confrontation. On one side of the air assault was empty buildings not signed to produce the appearance of a reaction, while there were statements by security officials, appears to be seeking to defend Hamas.

"The purpose of the latest launches from Gaza is to light a fire between Hamas and Israel, "said a senior security official this morning. According to him, the Salafist organization is identified with Daas and launched the rocket attack 'Israel expects Hamas and do the job for him. " In other words, the same anonymous source explained to the Israeli public that harming the Hamas response to the attack would serve the "Islamic State" (Daas), and the conclusion is that we must exercise restraint. 

Hamas good for the Jews. [Video at the link -- no captions]
No longer an enemy, but a partner in maintaining the peace. Ismail Haniya (Photo: Reuters)

The change in perception regarding Hamas Israel is nothing less than amazing. No longer an enemy, not another terrorist organization that calls for Israel's destruction, but a partner in maintaining peace and perhaps even more in the future. In terms of defense and decision-makers in Jerusalem, control of Hamas in Gaza is an Israeli interest, and therefore strive to overthrow it. To recall the last election spots, presenting Hamas as an enemy of Israel and those who want ousting Netanyahu, then to understand that the reality is 180 degrees different.

No longer an enemy, but a partner in maintaining the peace. 

Ismail Haniya (Photo: Reuters)

Today, Israel is one of the few factors that work in the preservation of the rule of Hamas in Gaza. Moreover, it also works with the world's most outstanding representative of the "Muslim Brotherhood" - Qatar and Turkey - in order to keep the peace in Gaza. Israel allows representatives of both countries to mediate between it and the organization born from the "Muslim Brotherhood". The biggest absurdity is that when he tried to Foreign Minister of the United States John Kerry to end the fighting in Gaza last summer through Doha and Ankara, Israeli politicians attacked him and accused him of amateurishness and innocence.

Still sees Netanyahu partner, but the credit can be expended.
Egyptian President al-Sisi (Photo: Reuters)

Likewise, should examine this situation from the perspective of the most important ally of Israel in the region, Egypt. Much has been written and said about the cooperation between the parties and honeymoon between Jerusalem and Cairo. And now, one can only imagine how the Egyptians are looking at Israel's modus operandi in recent months.First, Israel refuses to communicate with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas , despite the urgings of a few non-Cairo. On the other hand, the Netanyahu government talks with Hamas indirectly, from the creator of "Brotherhood" is the biggest enemies of Cairo. To do this, Israel allows foothold of Qatar in Gaza, through the Apostle Muhammad al-Amad, and even Turkey agrees to stir Palestinian issue.

An example of this occurred three weeks ago and a bit, then Israel allowed Turkish counterpart Minister of Religious Affairs, Mehmet Gormz, visit with a delegation of senior officials in the Gaza Strip. In addition, he visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque and was venerated. However, when visited by the Chief Judge of Sharia Jordan, Ahmed Khalil, hurled shoes at him. Cairo, presumably, watching all this from the sidelines and refuses to believe. Israel, which the senior partner of its most important war radical Islam, is currently conducting an entire axis of talks with "Muslim Brotherhood". Meanwhile, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi goes to see Netanyahu as a partner and ally, but the question of when this credit is over.

No less important question is whether Israel's gamble on "Muslim Brotherhood" is not far-fetched to begin with. Why does Israel refuse to examine the possibility of cooperation with Abbas, but in such a hurry to embrace Hamas? The new Israeli approach Hamas says' If not, we Daas or anarchy in Gaza. "Or, they might be the case, but whether everything was done to examine the possibility of return of the Palestinian Authority to the Gaza Strip? Is the first step, even before the rush into the arms of "Muslim Brotherhood", is not it better to the Israeli government to resume diplomatic channel with Abu Mazen?