Ever since the Israeli raid on a Turkish group’s boat filled with aid for the Gaza Strip, there has been a lot of attempts in the press (FAIR Blog, 6/10/10), following Israel’s lead, to label the Turkish humanitarian group IHH a supporter of “terrorism.”
The latest salvo comes from a New York Times article (7/15/10) about the Turkish group having “extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite.”
The Times reports:
On Monday, Germany banned the charity’s offices, citing its support for Hamas, which Germany considers a terrorist organization. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the charity abused donors’ good intentions “to support a terrorist organization with money supposedly donated for charitable purposes.” The newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung said that from 2007 the charity collected $8.5 million and transferred money to six smaller organizations, two belonging directly to Hamas and four with close ties to it.
The charity called the ban a “disgrace” and “misanthropic” and said it would challenge it in court.
It looks like the reporters on this story didn’t do their homework. Numerous news outlets have noted that the German organization, which shares the Turkish group’s initials, is not connected to the Turkish group that co-sponsored the aid flotilla, meaning that Germany did not ban the Turkish group over “terrorist” ties. (The Turkish group‘s initials stand for Insan Hak ve Hürriyetleri, or Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms; the German acronym stands for Internationale Humanitare Hilfsorganisation, the International Humanitarian Aid Organization.)
A report in Ha’aretz (7/12/10) states: “Despite sharing the name, the German IHH has no connection to the Turkish group that organized the flotilla”; the Financial Times (7/12/10) reports that “IHH Turkey and IHH Germany share the same roots, as they were founded as a single group in Freiburg, Germany, in 1992. But the group split in two five years later”; and a Turkish daily (Hurriyet, 7/16/10) states that “German authorities” say the group split in 1997 and “are now two separate entities.”
The Times also relays the Israeli talking point that “the group has links to Al-Qaeda,” despite the fact that independent journalist Max Blumenthal (MaxBlumenthal.com, 6/3/10) forced the Israeli Defense Forces to retract that false claim.
For crying out loud – what happened to REPORTERS and good editors with fact checkers? The world is indeed confusing, but sloppy work makes the hazards that much worse. Good people get pilloried, and the possibility for informed engagement with critical issues simply melts away. If we cannot trust the formidable NYT to get this correct, then the nation has NO paper of record any longer.
But there’s always the Muslim press!
Here’s a little information on the actual IHH that was boarded by the Israelis, with such tragic results…and I add a little about the Turkish Prime Minister, who is also getting slimed by neo-con and Israel Lobby sources. These 2 paragraphs appeared in my latest column (“An Interfaith View,”) in InFocusNews, a Muslim newspaper published in southern California.
The humanitarian items on the Marmara were mainly collected by the Insani Yardim Vakfi, or IHH, a Turkish non-governmental organization (NGO). Originally organized for relief to Bosnian Muslims after the Serbian genocide, it is active in 100 countries, and has a consultative status with the UN. Although generally referred to as â┚¬Ã…“Islamistâ┚¬Ã‚ or â┚¬Ã…“Islamicâ┚¬Ã‚ in the West, it helps people in need regardless of religion. The IHH has been engaged in helping to rebuild Gaza’s port (as well as New Orleans after Katrina), but openly opposes Israeli apartheidâ┚¬”Âwhich is probably why Israel now refers to its members as â┚¬Ã…“terrorists.â┚¬Ã‚ It also suggests that Israel may have deliberately used deadly force to discourage other NGOs from defying Israel’s system of collective punishment.
Although the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was not an official project of the Turkish government, the willingness to criticize Israel’s Gaza policy has been a defining political initiative of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoԞŸan. His party, the AKP, is heir to several important Islamist groupings, and has been remarkably successful in defining itself as a politically-astute, moderate Islamist party. Erdogan is strong on human rights, has more female representation in Parliament than any other party, and has brought the Kurdish parties into parliament. But it is his courageous and unprecedented defiance of Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza that has won him the most respectâ┚¬”Âin Turkey, in other Muslim-majority countries, and among human rights activists in the West.
I find it particularly interesting that NO American news outlet has yet mentioned that the IHH was active helping the people of New Orleans, after Katrina…or that the IHH has long been active in Israel’s occupied territories. The Israelis know all about them.
But if that was one reason why the Israelis used deadly force, neither they nor the neo-cons would want that widely known, would they?
Lawrence Swaim
Executive Director
Interfaith Freedom Foundation
Of course, the claim that the TURKISH IHH is a supporter of terrorism, as well as the even more outrageous labeling of the flotilla as a “terrorist flotilla” by Israel and its supporters, is equally bullshit.
The modern version of the Tower of Babel story goes like this. When God saw the hubris of mankind, he gave them the internet, Blackberries, iPads etc, along with the conviction that opinion is all that matters, and facts are a drag. And so the people were drowned in a flood of googledeybing.
I’d like to see the NYTimes respond above the fold to this fact-based correction of the sloppy reporting by the Times regarding the Israeli attack on a humanitarian vessel. A retraction and an apology would be the decent thing to do, and I’m just old enough to think the decent thing is the professional thing.