(Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
There’s a saying that goes something like, “with friends like these who needs enemies?” This is a very applicable adage when it comes to assessing the current leader of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This is a cheeky fella, a true slick, suit-wearing islamist, about whom Barack Obama once referred as a close friend and ally.
Then again, we all know Obama himself was a rather adept Islamist sympathizer in his eight years in office. Never forget his infamous quip — among many — “Let me make myself clear, ISIS is not Islamic.” No Barry, the “I” in ISIS somehow stands for Presbyterian.
So, here we are the week after President Trump made his historic announcement, that the United States would finally adhere to the law it passed, signed into being by Bill Clinton to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and move our embassy there.
We’ve witnessed the typical militant Islamist response to their not getting what they demand — violence. There have been synagogues fire bombed in Sweden. There have been rockets fired into Israel from Gaza Strip. There has been the renewal of violence in Jerusalem itself. Funny thing — when the Muslims controlled Jerusalem from 1949-1967 the tyranny inflicted upon Jews and Christians there was abhorrent, despicable. It’s amazing to me how no one seems to remember that.
But, now it’s not just the Islamic jihadists on the streets of Malmo calling for death to Jews.
As reported by Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism (mainly Islamic terrorism), “Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan invoked a Muslim hadith commonly used by Hamas and other terrorist supporters to sanction killing Jews during a party convention Sunday.
“[T]hose who think they own #Jerusalem better know that tomorrow they won’t be able to hide behind trees,” Erdogan’s Twitter post said, according to a translation by dissident Turkish journalist Abdullah Bozkurt.
Last year, Erdogan shut down Bozkurt’s former newspaper, Today’s Zaman, which had Turkey’s largest circulation. “[This is] a veiled threat of killing each and every Jew with a shocking reference to apocalyptic prophecy of tree story,” Bozkurt wrote.
The full hadith says, “The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.”
Erdogan invoked it during a Justice and Development Party (AKP) gathering days after President Trump proclaimed Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital and pledged to move the U.S. embassy there. Erdogan also accused Israel of being a terrorist state.
Under Erdogan, Turkey has harbored and funded Hamas terrorists, provided covert support to ISIS and other jihadists in Syria, and bombed civilians belonging to his own Kurdish minority. Erdogan is more interested in appealing to his base’s anti-Semitic sentiments than inspiring foreign jihadis to fight Israel, Bozkurt told the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) via Twitter.”
So, here we have an Islamic nation’s head of state using Islamic doctrine, part of their holy faith, the Hadiths, as a justification for killing Jews…today. Where is the global outrage? Where is the outrage from NATO member nations and the European Union — who so quickly denounced President Trump for his statement on Jerusalem? Why is the world so doggone scared to look these Islamists and their leaders in the eye and call it as it is? It’s as if the 1930s are repeating itself when western global leaders knew the maniacal nature of Adolf Hitler, but just tried to convince themselves he wasn’t serious, or that he had legitimate concerns. The world sat back and allowed his racist Aryan theory of dominance to exist, and it only served to embolden Hitler, and led us into a war that killed tens of millions.
Here we are today with so-called world “leaders” who find every single reason to dismiss the anti-Semitic proclamations and violent behavior of militant Islamic jihadists…and deny it’s rooted in Islamic doctrine. There is no doggone perversion. What Erdogan is speaking of, and what he enabled ISIS to do, is pure Islam.
Years ago, when confronted with the terminology of moderate Islam, Erdogan responded by stating, “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” That kinda tells me all that I need to know about Erdogan and his perspective on the global Islamic jihad. And as I stated earlier, we need no longer make classifications of Sunni and Shia; what we need ask id are you an Islamic reformist or an Islamic jihadist, and we need be clear about what defines those delineations. That is how we must go forward in crafting a new strategy, a new focus, in the Middle East.
We’ve lived for far too long under the folly and misconception that the United States and Israel are the major impediments to peace in the region. Chuckleheads like Erdogan and others are the real obstacles, and we need point that out, and sanction them. I would love to see NATO sanction Erdogan, Turkey, and perhaps under threat of withdrawal of their membership, take serious and determined actions…after all, everyone wants to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) Israel, and for what? Their desire to survive as a nation and a people when all around seek their destruction, decimation, their death?
Just gotta wonder, what the heck do they discuss in those Trump administration National Security Council meetings?
It’s time we stop being held hostage by those who advance their objectives by coercion, intimidation, violence, and death. Then again, that’s truly the history of Islam, a faith that was promulgated not by faithful proselytization, but rather by the imposition of the sword. The same sword of Mohammed that has a koranic verse above it, and waves as the flag of Saudi Arabia.
Happy to have a debate with anyone about that…to include Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Source: Allen West
