Those Jihadi Turks

Much is made of Turkey’s alleged history of secularism. They banned the fez and the veil, etc., etc. Yet when I went to high school in Turkey’s capital city of Ankara in 1961-62, Turkish intolerance of non-Muslim religions was extreme.

Anyone openly espousing Judaism or Christianity was liable to wind up very dead— murdered in the street by the police if not stoned to death by a mob, in the name of one of the world’s most backward and certainly its most dangerous religions.

So I find it not at all surprising that a Turkish “charity” with ties to Hamas and other radical Islamic groups sent the “peace activists” to try to break Israel’s self-defense blockade of Gaza. Their goal, of course, is to destroy Israel. Here’s a video filmed by Al-Jeezera before the flotilla left Cyprus.

It is making for tense times on the Yahoo Groups email list of my old Ankara High School graduating class. Those who still laud Turkish culture, and even make infrequent trips back there, are fewer and farther between. Me, I’m going to Israel in the fall. To hell with Turkey.