Apologize this!

Victor Davis Hanson is a splendid historian--he wrote, among other things, A War Like No Other, about how the Spartans and Athenians did Greek civilization to death. He is also a bit of a right-winger--he writes for, among other venues, Pajamas Media. What set him off yesterday was the Turkish ambassador's demand that Israel apologize for its attack on that ferry running the Gaza blockade:

"If anyone might be offering apologies, it should be Ambassador Tan, or at least an explanation for why a ship left a Turkish port headed for a planned confrontation. A ship, it should be added, staffed in large part by the Insani Yardim Vakfi organization, which according to American and European intelligence chiefs is a terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaeda — an apparent conclusion that formerly a Turkish government used to share when it periodically raided the IHH’s compounds.

"But on a larger point, the sanctimonious tone of Tan’s piece is depressing. Turkey currently quite illegally and against world opinion sponsors the occupation of Cyprus. Nicosia is a far more divided city than Jerusalem. The Turkish government has killed far more Turkish Kurds than the Israeli government has Palestinians; it has zero tolerance for foreign human rights organizations that have wished to investigate the treatment of Kurds in Turkish prisons."

Emphasis mine. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford