Two car bombs in Istanbul targeted Jews praying at a synagogue. 20 are dead and at least 250 injured:
Turkish officials said al Qaeda might have had a hand in it.
“It is clear that this is a terrorist event with international links,” Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said as emergency services struggled to treat those caught up in the blasts, which wrecked cars and buildings over wide areas.
Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said he could not rule out a role by Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, blamed for attacks on other Jewish targets around the world in the past 18 months.
[ . . . ]
Istanbul health authorities said 20 people had been killed and 257 wounded in the two attacks, which hit the central Neve Shalom synagogue and another, Beit Israel, in the Sisli district around 9:30 a.m. (0730 GMT). The Neve Shalom — “Oasis of Peace” — was especially busy for a bar-mitzvah coming of age ceremony.
But many of the casualties were not Jews but people passing by on the busy streets outside the heavily protected synagogues.
What good is heavy protection when people are killed in acts of terror regardless?
Turkey is, relatively speaking, one of the friendliest countries with Israel in the Middle East. Aside from Turkey’s Jewish population – about 30,000 in Istanbul – thousands of Israeli tourists also flock there each year on vacation. This has an uncomfortable similarity to last year’s bombings in Mombasa, Kenya.
The real question is, who is responsible?
A radical Turkish Islamist group, widely believed to be backed by Iran, claimed responsibility, but Aksu said he doubted a local group could mount such a large-scale operation.
“It is difficult for any Turkey-based organization to carry out an attack of this magnitude,” he said at the scene.
Denial and wishful thinking? Or fact? Either local Turkish terrorists are targeting Jews – praying in synagogue, of all things! – or else the international cooperation between terrorist groups is getting stronger. Neither is a pleasant prospect.
As usual, in the differences between factions in the Muslim Middle East, the Jews are the convenient scapegoat. Ironically, the terrorists who target them also want to destroy Israel – do they realize that each attack of Jews outside of Israel only bolsters the reasons why Israel must continue to be strong?
the Jews are the convenient scapegoat
Very convenient.
So Sari, 20 – 50 years into the future….
Saudi Arabia runs out of oil. They’ve inflated the estimates of their reserves so that they can borrow money at a cheaper rate. Now they are faced with a huge debt, which they can’t repay cause they got no oil left. They’ve spent all their money Rolls Royces and indoor skiing hills in the desert and haven’t really done anything about industrialising their economies. Economic catastrophe. Who do you think gets the blame?
No points for geussing. OK, they have oil now, and look how much they are seething and whingeing. Think how it will be when the run out of oil. The main stream plots will be along the lines that the jews conned them out of all their money with their zionist MTV and their jewish barbie dolls. Then there will be theories about the giant zionist vacuum cleaner that sucked out all their oil etc…
By then European history will have totally been revised if you know what I mean.
THE ENEMIES OF DEMOCRACY: ISLAMOFASCISM, JUDEOFASCISM AND CHRISTIANOFASCISM
Thanks to the desperate, failing war on “terror” vindicated by an “ideological” clique made up of hysteric neocons mixed with oil-smelling corporate satraps & poorly waged by the pathetic George II The Appointed -a caricatural christianofascist, everybody’s aware of islamofascism, ie: Oussama & Co.
However not everybody realises that judeofascism is islamofascism’s perfect double. In the youess, for instance, judeofascism is not even identified by the average youessan due to massive bushist brainwashing delivered by Pravda-like media: FoxNews, CNN & al.
Still the threat is known to France which has been the victim of a fastidious, two-year smear campaign pretending this country was the latest embodiment of nazism raised from the dead.
The slander has been pervertedly articulated thanks to false assumptions & naked forgery. True there have been SOME anti-Semitic acts of violence on the French territory, almost all of them related to Palestine-Israel-patterned hatred imported from the Middle East over to France’s muslim & jewish communities. That kind of radicalisation HITTING BOTH SIDES is conjectural by nature: it will disappear once Palestine is given its elementary status & rights in compliance with UN resolution n° 181 (29 November 1947) (1), among an endless litany of similar resolutions.
First bit of intellectual dishonesty displayed by France-hating judeofascists: anti-Semitic violence only is worth their selective indignation, not racist violence as a whole & certainly not anti-Arab or anti-muslim violence. Closed-up in their bigotry, judeofascists won’t hesitate to count all kinds of alleged disputes reported by angry neighbours or jealous competitors as a deed of anti-Semitism, as long as the “plaintiff” claims to be jewish Anti-Arab acts of violence perpetrated by radicalised jews is of no interest, of course. It goes without saying that acts of violence are an Arab or muslim monopoly. Far-right jewish militias as the Bétar (2) are not denounced, not even mentioned.
Even more vicious is the odious amalgam aiming at making any Palestine supporters feel “guilty” of anti-Semitism. Anyone who sincerely thinks that it is the lack of a Palestinian State (for Atheist, christian & muslim Arabs) is the very root of intercommunitarian tensions, is automatically deemed to use a convenient alibi to spit out their anti-Semitic pulsions. If a Palestine supporter happens to be jewish or originates from a jewish background, then the guy is a “self-hating” jew !!! If a Palestine supporter happens to be an Israeli, then the guy is a traitor… One dare not think about a synagogue-going Israeli who’d be advocating a Palestinian State The Union de