When I hear about the current French peace initiative for Israel and the Palestinians, I have to keep pinching myself to make sure that I am not dreaming. After the powerful United States tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to bring peace between these protagonists, what makes the French think that they can do better?

France’s boldness is particularly shocking, since France long ago lost the right to be considered a friend of Israel. In 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle imposed an arms embargo on Israel when the Jewish nation was under threat from a coalition of Arab countries. In doing so, de Gaulle threw the Jews under the bus in order to improve France’s relations with the Arab world. Thanks to Israeli ingenuity and resiliency, Israel still defeated the Arab coalition in the Six Day War and impressed the United States, which then replaced France as Israel’s main ally.

France’s peace initiative, which includes an international summit in Paris on May 30 to discuss the “parameters” of a peace deal, is French President François Hollande’s equivalent of de Gaulle’s betrayal of Israel. France has already announced that if the peace initiative fails, France will recognize a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rightly concluded that “this ensures that a conference will fail.”

France’s peace initiative, which includes an international summit in Paris on May 30 to discuss the “parameters” of a peace deal, is French President François Hollande’s equivalent of de Gaulle’s betrayal of Israel.

It is clear that no solution would be acceptable to Israel unless it protects Israel against continued Arab aggression, and unless it finds a solution to the millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees with which the Arab world insists on flooding Israel.

There is no sign that the Arab world, including the Palestinians, are anywhere close to accepting these conditions. France’s recognition of “Palestine” without any deal would mean that France does not consider those two conditions necessary.

France’s recognition of “Palestine” without any deal would provide no solution for Palestinian refugees. It would provide no solution to Palestinian terrorism. It would not make the concept of a Palestinian state any more real than it is today. It would not provide Israel with secure borders.

France’s unilateral recognition of “Palestine” would simply provide one more moral victory for the corrupt Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and one less reason for him to negotiate peace in good faith or to give his people what they really need: a thriving economy and a functioning civil society.

If France’s initiative had any chance of success at all (which is doubtful considering the U.S. failures under more favorable circumstances, when the Palestinian leadership was keener on negotiations and when Hamas was weaker), France eliminated that chance by announcing that it would recognize “Palestine” regardless of what happens.

Is the French government so naïve that it would play into Abbas’ hands and sabotage its own initiative? Maybe, but the more likely explanation seems to be that France knows that the peace initiative is pointless, but it is using it for theatrical value to embarrass Israel’s government and curry favor with Arab regimes.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which is often more “pro-Palestinian” (read anti-Israel) than the Palestinians, demands that Netanyahu accept the French initiative.

Haaretz takes the position that “there is no reason to reject the French initiative, which, even if it doesn’t resolve the fundamentals of the conflict, will at least put it back on the global agenda.” The theory that the conflict remains unresolved due to it not being on the “global agenda” is mind-boggling, considering the vocal and vicious worldwide anti-Israel movement. The conflict is very much on the “global agenda” — too much so, in fact — compared to other conflicts that are deadlier and get far less attention.

Haaretz claims that the French initiative “may also generate some original ideas and steps toward a solution.” Considering the attention that this conflict receives, the lack of “ideas” is far from being the problem. Pro-Israel and anti-Israel editorialists and bloggers have generated an immense body of “ideas,” most of which are totally impractical, and all of which are unrealistic until the Arab side of the conflict stops promoting hate against Israel and starts negotiating in good faith.

Haaretz‘s pathetic defense of the French initiative is followed by wholesale accusations, which have no substance, against Netanyahu. Haaretz, for instance, tries to convince readers that Netanyahu’s willingness to negotiate without conditions is itself a condition! As Haaretz is into the business of redefining words, why not say that the conflict is not really a conflict and be done with it!

Haaretz concludes by saying that Netanyahu “should give it [the French initiative] substance that will ensure the security and well-being of Israel’s citizens.” If this were possible, that would indeed be commendable, but as France, by promising the Palestinians recognition without negotiation, destroyed what little chance of success the initiative might have had. Asking Netanyahu miraculously to give the initiative “substance” is at best naïve, and at worst treacherous.

It could also be a trap to set Netanyahu up for failure, which, considering Haaretz‘s antipathy towards Israel’s Prime Minister, is likely.

Contrary to Haaretz‘s assertion that “there is no reason to reject the French initiative,” as the initiative is almost certain to fail, its failure will be one more weapon used by anti-Israel activists to demonize Israel, so there is every reason to not lend the initiative a legitimacy it does not deserve.

Israel survived de Gaulle’s betrayal, and it will likely survive Hollande’s betrayal. But one more failed initiative and one more meaningless recognition of “Palestine” will push peace and Palestinian statehood even farther away.

As Alan Dershowitz wrote recently, those who aided the Nazis in killing Jews, even indirectly, hold a part of the responsibility for the Holocaust. Those — in France, at Haaretz, or elsewhere — who claim to support peace but in fact work to undermine it, are partly responsible for the anti-Semitic campaign against Israel. They should be prominently named and exposed for collaborating with bigots, anti-Semites, and terrorists.

Fred Maroun, a left-leaning Arab based in Canada, has authored op-eds for New Canadian Media, among other outlets. From 1961-1984, he lived in Lebanon.

An important red line in France has just been crossed. In true dhimmi fashion, in a move reminiscent of both the Inquisition and the Dreyfus Trial, all of France’s so-called “anti-racist” organizations have joined a jihad against free speech and against truth.

On January 25, 2017, France’s “anti-racist” organizations — all of them, even the Jewish LICRA (International League against Racism and anti-Semitism) — joined the Islamist CCIF (Collective against Islamophobia) in court against Georges Bensoussan, a highly regarded Jewish historian of Moroccan extraction, and an expert on the history of Jews in Arab countries.

Georges Bensoussan, a highly regarded Jewish historian of Moroccan extraction, and an expert on the history of Jews in Arab countries. (Image source: Jusqu’au dernier video screenshot)

Not only did the Islamist CCIF and the Jewish LICRA unite against him, but also the French Human Rights League, SOS Racism and MRAP (Movement against Racism and for Friendship with People).

Bensoussan is being prosecuted for remarks he made during a “France Culture” radio debate, about antisemitism among French Arabs:

“An Algerian sociologist, Smaïn Laacher, with great courage, just said in a documentary aired on Channel 3: It is a shame to deny this taboo, namely that in the Arab families in France, and everyone knows it but nobody wants to say it, anti-Semitism is sucked with mother’s milk.”

The documentary that Bensoussan was referring to was called “Teachers in the Lost Territories of the Republic,” and was aired in October 2015, on Channel 3. In this documentary, Laacher, who is a French professor of Algerian origin, said:

“Antisemitism is already awash in the domestic space… It… rolls almost naturally off the tongue, awash in the language… It is an insult. When parents shout at their children, when they want to reprimand them, they call them Jews. Yes. All Arab families know this. It is monumental hypocrisy not to see that this anti-Semitism begins as a domestic one.”

No complaint was filed against Laacher. But as soon as Bensoussan, in the heat of a radio debate, referred to Arab anti-Smitism as “sucked in with mother’s milk”, CCIF, followed by all anti-racist associations, brought Bensoussan to supposed justice. Their accusation was simple: “mother’s milk” is not a metaphor for cultural anti-Semitism transmitted through education, but a genetic and “essentialist” accusation. It means: “all Arabs are anti-Semitic” — in other words, Bensoussan is a racist.

Professor Smaïn Laacher, of the University of Strasbourg, denied the quote and told the website Mediapart. “I have never said nor written that kind of ignominy”. He filed a complaint against Bensoussan, but later withdrew it.

Judgment will be rendered March 7.

This witch-hunt against Bensoussan is symptomatic of the state of free speech today in France. With the leading Islamist CCIF stalking “Islamophobia”, intellectual intimidation is the rule. Complaints are filed against everyone not saying that Muslims are the main victim of racism in France.

In December 2016, Pascal Bruckner, a writer and philosopher, was also brought to court for saying in 2015, on Arte TV, “We need to make the record of collaborators of Charlie Hebdo’s murderers”. He named people in France who had instilled a climate of hatred against Charlie: the entertainer Guy Bedos, the rap singer Nekfeu, anti-racist organizations like The Indivisibles, or the journalist Rokhaya Diallo and the supremacist movement for “people of color” known as Les Indigènes de la République (“The Indigenous of the Republic”).

It was not the first time that Islamists filed complaints against people they dislike. Charlie Hebdo was twice brought to court by Islamist organizations. Twice, the accusations of Charlie’s Islamist accusers were dismissed.

But with the Bensoussan trial, we are entering in a new era. The most venerable, the most authentic anti-racist organizations — some of them are older than a century — are, shamefully, lining up with Islamist organizations.

This tipping point was initiated in the 1980s by with SOS Racism. This organization, founded to organize young Muslims and help them to assimilate into French society rapidly, became a political movement, manipulated by the Socialist Party. SOS Racism and its slogan, “Don’t hurt my buddy”, rapidly became a new direction to the working class. With the working class attracted by the far-right party Front National, the Socialist party needed a new “clientele”. They chose Muslims, especially young Muslims, as the new revolutionary labor class. It did not matter that most of them were unemployed: they were “victims”.

Thirty years later, it is easy for Islamist organizations to take the reins of this ideology of victimization, and to transform “anti-racism” into a fight against “Islamophobia”.

In 2016, at a symposium in Paris dedicated to “False Friends and Useful Idiots of Secularism”, Alain Jakubowicz, president of the Jewish anti-racist group LICRA, described the anti-racist field war:

“Today, CCIF (Collective against Islamophobia) is the leading anti-racist organization. This is terrifying. Today, CCIF and Indigenous of the Republic are the leading fighters against racism… not against anti-Semitism, because they do not care. This is not the question for them. And they are very clever to recruit “useful idiots” like rap singers. And Muslim youths, who have good reason to protest being those “left behind” in French society, see their idols promoting CCIF and its accusations of “state racism”. In 2016, how is it possible to talk about a racism practiced by the state in the French Republic ? This is unbelievable!”

In 2017, what is unbelievable is to see the same Alain Jakubowicz and the Jewish LICRA sitting side by side in court with CCIF to file a complaint against a prominent historian who simply speaks what he sees about the cultural transmission of anti-Semitism within the French Arab and French Muslim community.

Richard Abitbol, president of the Confederation of French Jews and Friends of Israel, accused Jakubowicz and LICRA of obeying the “necessity for them to find a Jewish scapegoat to build a virginity in order to comply with those who fight Islamophobia”.

To evaluate the treason of this Jewish anti-racist movement colluding with its worst enemy, it is important to remember that LICRA has been created to defend Samuel Schwartzbard. In 1920, in Paris, Schwartzbard had killed Simon Petlioura, a Cossack leader responsible for killing thousands of Jews in Ukraine. Schwartzbard was acquitted. LICRA militants were also famous in the 1930s for their street-fights against far-right anti-Semitic “Camelots du roi”.

But the LICRA disarray can be generalized to all the “anti-racist” movements. SOS Racism — which in 2008 supported the firing of a veiled Muslim employee by her employer — is today a follower of CCIF.

The venerable French League of the Human Rights (LDH), in 2006, had two prominent members — Antoine Spire and Cedric Porin — resign from the LDH and publish an op-ed in Le Monde accusing the LDH “of responding to the racism experienced by young people of immigrant background by showing complacency towards the Islamist organizations that claim to represent them”.

When the French philosopher Robert Redeker received death threats from Islamist terrorists because he criticized Islam, the LDH stated that it did not share the “noxious ideas” of Mr Redeker, but conceded that, “whatever one thinks of the writings of Mr Redeker, there is no reason for him to undergo such treatment”.

Regarding the MRAP (Movement against Racism and for Friendship with People), it is enough to say that its leader, Mouloud Aounit , publicly joins Tariq Ramadan of the Muslim Brotherhood to fight “Islamophobia”.

In September 2009, Sihem Habchi, president of the feminist association Ni Putes, Ni Soumises (Neither Whores nor Doormats), wrote in France Soir: “When I see MRAP, LDH, and Ligue de l’Enseignement accept female genital mutilation as a cultural practice, I realize that these people are not ready to help me to be free”.

In court, in defense of Bensoussan, Alain Finkielkraut, philosopher and academic, explained to the judge:

“A rogue anti-racism makes you to criminalize a concern instead of fighting the cause of this concern. If the court obeys to this injunction, it will be a moral and an intellectual catastrophe”.

Finkielkraut should have added: a political and civilizational catastrophe.

Later, at the radio Finkielkraut added: “Anti-racist vigilance became a gag rule…. For a long time, racism in France had only a white face and his victims were Arabs, Blacks and Romas”. In other words, it is forbidden today in France to say that anti-Semitism comes essentially from the (not all, but a big part of) Muslim population. “Anti-racist organizations are in denial of ‘Muslim racism’. And LICRA today is joining the denial of an anti-racist party”. Finkielkraut, a senior member of LICRA, sent his resignation to the organization’s board.

Yves Mamou is a journalist and author based in France. He worked for two decades for the daily, Le Monde, before his retirement.

Last year Muslim jihadists murdered more people in France, than were killed by terrorism in the country during the entire 20th century.

In response, the Prime Minister of France, Manuel Valls, has announced a range of innovative legal measures, introduced in response to the terrorist outrages which struck France in 2015.

On January 7, of that year, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi stormed the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, massacring twelve and injuring eleven others.

In the days that followed, a comrade of the earlier jihadists committed a string of murders, which culminated in a siege at the kosher supermarket. Amedy Coulibaly killed five and injured eleven more.

On February 3, 2015, three military personnel guarding a Jewish community center in Nice were stabbed, by Moussa Coulibaly.

On June 26, the severed head of Hervé Cornara was placed on display, at the gas factory near Lyon where he worked, alongside twin ISIS flags, by Yassine Salhi.

On August 21, an attempted mass shooting on the Thalys high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris, by Moroccan-born Ayoub El Khazzani, was foiled by American tourists, leading to the wounding of four.

In two days, starting on November 13, multiple jihadist attacks once again struck the French capital. 130 were killed and 352 injured, by perpetrators operating in three teams of three, which included suicide bombers.

Last January, Amedy Coulibaly (left) murdered a policewoman and four Jews in Paris, before being shot dead by police. Right: Medics carry a victim wounded in an attack by Islamist terrorists, who shot hundreds of concert-goers, killing 90, at the Bataclan theater in Paris on November 13, 2015.

France’s Socialist Party government has unveiled a new legislative program designed to decrease the likelihood of further Islamic atrocities, largely it seems that would have ensured the success of the jihadist attacks committed so far.

“A range of measures” are set to be introduced to combat the alleged “Social, Ethnic and Territorial Apartheid” currently blighting France.

Not only were the jihadist proclivities of most of last year’s perpetrators fully known to the authorities in France, some had been released from prison early following crimes of violence involving automatic weapons.

In the measures revealed by Prime Minister Manuel Valls, however, proactively combatting criminals appears to have taken a backseat to placating the communities from which they are drawn.

The first aim of the new laws contained within the Equality and Citizenship bill, reports Le Monde, is to centralize the provision of social housing in France. Until now the growth of Islamized areas has largely been limited to suburbs around major urban centers.

Much as in Germany, where Muslim migrants to Europe are being sent directly into rural areas, the prime minister is proposing a new nationwide system designed, “to make a better distribution of the public housing supply” in France. This nationwide transformation of housing policy is aimed at curtailing “concentrations of poverty,” within problematic Islamic enclaves infamous as no-go zones.

“Recalcitrant” locally-elected mayors who oppose the construction of new housing projects in their areas will be overruled by the state in the interests of “social diversity.”

Second, in the guise of improving literacy in French amongst those of immigrant descent, a new fast-track employment scheme has also been drawn up.

The scheme “will allow youths with few or no qualifications” to enter France’s “citizens’ reserve,” a government initiative established last year which links the nation’s education system with its civil service, allowing an accelerated path into state employment.

The euphemism “youths” is used in the French media to describe the country’s increasingly problematic young Muslim population. In 2014, an ICM poll discovered that 27% of French citizens aged 18-24 supported ISIS.

The glowing account given to the proposals being forwarded by Prime Minister Valls, in his country’s leading left-wing daily, fails to mention how the newly foreseen “third path” job scheme will address the greater key issues.

Unease is growing at the level of Islamist sympathies already held by state employees in France, such as members of the military and police.

Third, as nationwide protests continue to mount over migrant chaos in French towns, spread across the coast of the English Channel, even greater criminal penalties against free speech are also set to be introduced by the new bill.

Verbal communication has, apparently, been largely exempted from legal free speech curtailment in France, unless recorded and posted online. Such cases then fall under the same strict law that governs the printed word, originally passed in 1881.

This law is why Charlie Hebdo is famous for distributing its most challenging content in the form of cartoons, thereby seeking to exempt itself from strict sanctions against “defamation” in print. Fictional novels published this year about France’s Islamic future have sought to do the same.

Under the legislation currently being proposed by Valls, this existing status quo is set for a radical shake-up. The new restrictions planned for France are more in line with the Europe-wide harmonization of hate speech offences, mandated by the European Union.

The augmented provisions against incitement to hatred, previously limited to the 1881 press law, are set to be expanded throughout the French criminal justice system, under the new bill.

Much as in the UK, the new creation of aggravated offences will also ensure that any existing crime can be claimed, by its victim, also to contain a “hate speech” component, incurring far stiffer penalties against the alleged perpetrator.

The application of existing French laws, however, after the last major atrocity in Paris, on November 13, point to the likely reasons for the new proposals being put forward by France’s government.

Since the massacre at the Bataclan nightclub and suicide bombings that struck the French capital, the Republic of France has been in a state of emergency. This gives the country’s President, François Hollande, “extraordinary powers” under Article 16 of the French Constitution.

In February, the duration of these powers, which enable warrantless searches whilst limiting freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, were extended until May 26 by the lower house of the French legislature, the Assemblée Nationale.

In the intervening period, soldiers have become such a common sight in the French capital, that they often give Paris the impression of being under martial law. Half of the country’s army is now deployed on the streets of France.

Yet, whereas protests by French people against Islamization or government policy have been rigorously curtailed by the authorities, migrant gangs have still felt able to terrorize French towns, stampede French motorways, or conduct mass armed brawls in Paris, with little fear of intervention from either security services or the law.

Although the law being introduced by Mr. Valls is chiefly claimed to be about “youth engagement,” the new bill seems more the result of a realization that one group in France — its natives — can generally be relied upon to obey the law, while apparently another cannot.

There is a certain group of young people, however, with whom Manuel Valls clearly does not wish to engage. He recently excoriated members of the controversial Europe-wide Identitarian Movement, a nationalist youth group notorious for engaging in acts of civil disobedience in response to the changing culture and demography of France and Europe.

Described as the “hipster right” by some outlets, Mr. Valls decried supporters of the movement — which began in his country — as “those who want the country closed while dreaming of going back to a France that never existed.”

“I believe in my country, in its message and its universal values,” Valls added. In the interview published by Libération, on April 12, he continued:

I would like us to be capable of demonstrating that Islam, a great world religion and the second religion of France, is fundamentally compatible with the Republic, democracy, our values, and equality between men and women.

Manuel Valls was later forced to admit, in the interview, that this “compatibility” is something doubted by “a majority of our fellow citizens.”

Some 3.3 million people have dual citizenship in France, most of them Muslim. After President Hollande had announced that his country was “at war,” in the immediate aftermath of November’s attacks, the French Prime Minister unveiled plans to amend France’s constitution.

The proposed amendment was intended to strip French citizenship from dual-nationals convicted of terrorism offences. At the time Manuel Valls was described, in the left-wing media, as a “strongman” who had taken a “hard line against terror.”

On March 30, however, after a split within the Socialist Party over the issue, the Prime Minister’s plans were dropped.

The new, more comprehensive, legislative proposals are set to go before the Assemblée nationale this month.

George Igler, a political analyst based in the City of London, is the Director of the Discourse Institute.

The notion that the creation of a state of Palestine will herald everlasting peace is naïve in the extreme.

After 50 years of a two-state failure, the French and other diplomats, in their duplicitously-named “peace initiative,” have no other idea for how to settle the Palestinian problem, except to behave like parched men trudging across a burning desert toward a distant mirage that they think is an oasis paradise. It is not, and the same diplomats will take no responsibility for cleaning up the dangerous outcome of such a disaster.

The international community is pressuring Israel to make wholesale concessions in territory and security, risking social and political upheaval, to grant the so-called Palestinians a state of their own.

The sole criterion for making this happen is for the international community to accept the Palestinian precondition of forcing Israel withdraw to pre-1967 lines, which are the 1949 armistice lines and not a defined border.

Whenever I approach a European diplomat with the following questions, none of them can give me an answer:

1) What happens when a new emboldened Palestinian government continues calls for the liberation of the “rest of Palestine”?

They call Haifa, Acre, Jaffa and the Galilee — in fact, all of Israel — “occupied Palestinian land”. Just look at any Palestinian map: it is identical to Israel.

It is little known that members of the Palestinian Authority call Israeli Arabs “Palestinians of the Interior.”

They also call Israeli Arabs the “Palestinians of ’48.” They have been joined in this by Arab Knesset Members, who also would not object to the eventual displacement of Jews by Arabs in Israel.

According to their ambition, these Israeli Arabs will be “liberated” by a new Palestine.

2) What will happen when inevitably — by the ballot or by the bullet — this Palestine is taken over by Hamas, designated an Islamic terror organization by the U.S. Department of State?

If you think this question is far-fetched, think again. The students of Bir Zeit University voted overwhelming to elect Hamas representatives to head their student body. Bir Zeit is not in the Gaza Strip. It is less than ten kilometers north of Ramallah, literally a stone’s throw from the offices of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

These Hamas-supporting students will be the Palestinians’ future opinion-makers after graduation.

And let us not forget how in the Gaza Strip, in June 2007, Hamas seized power in a bloody coup that left more than a hundred dead and more than five hundred wounded.

Hamas will continue its incendiary calls to destroy the Jewish state and to slaughter Jews.

3) Do you really think that we Israelis will call upon our government to make territorial concessions that will bring these terrorists closer to our families and homes?

So, what is the answer I get from the diplomats based in Israel to these genuine concerns? Well, nothing really. Just a throwaway line about it being up to the parties to solve their ongoing difficulties.

If the international community wants to see Israel make dangerous concessions, then they, and they alone, must ensure that Israel has a united and pragmatic peace partner, not a weak, aging, corrupt, rejectionist and undemocratic leader to our east, who constantly says he will never recognize Israel as the Jewish State, and to our south, in Gaza, a rabid Islamic terror regime bent on our destruction.

This should be Israel’s basic demand: that a united Palestinian political leadership will recognize the right of all the citizens of the Jewish State of Israel to live in peace and security, alongside the State of Palestine.

It is that simple. That is all it takes.

Let the diplomatic world spend the next 50 years educating and training the divided Palestinian political leadership to come together as a force for peace.

Then Israel will be happy to consider making concessions that might well be life-threatening, as it has done before.

If the international community wants to see Israel make dangerous concessions, then they, and they alone, must ensure that Israel has a united and pragmatic peace partner, not a weak, aging, corrupt, rejectionist and undemocratic leader to our east, who constantly says he will never recognize Israel as the Jewish State, and to our south, in Gaza, a rabid Islamic terror regime bent on our destruction. (Image source: Palestinian Media Watch)

Barry Shaw is a Senior Associate at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Western euphemism for Turkey’s supposedly mild, “post-modern” Islamists, who came to power in 2002, was problematic from the beginning. The past five years has seen the Turkish “post-modern” Islamist’s sad funeral — sad because they, in reality, never lived in this universe. They were the brainchild of the optimists sipping their coffee at a Washington café, or a London pub or a Berlin beer house. Now there is just the official funeral service with an empty coffin: there was, in fact, no such a thing as “post-modern” Islamism.

Political Islam, when it wins popular support, tends to adopt direction of the majority rather than the pluralistic route [see Turkey and Egypt]; and when mixed with cultural and religious nationalism in the Orient, it often adopts not just the direction of the majority but also a few militant turns [see Hamas].

It was not even considered shocking when the Turkish man who shot at the journalist Can Dundar outside a courthouse said in his testimony, “I was deeply annoyed by his [Dundar’s] news reporting … I knew he had been to Britain for a while… I thought he was a British spy… I planned this [shooting] in order to teach him a lesson.”

Why did the man think that a Turkish journalist, declared an undesirable by the country’s president, was a British spy? Was it actually because Dundar had been to Britain, like thousands of other Turks do every year? Hardly. It was because the president of the country had loudly labelled him a spy, a traitor, a terrorist — even without a court verdict. Dundar was eventually acquitted of the charges.

Murat Sahin (left) attempts to shoot journalist Can Dundar (crouching at right, with his back to the camera) outside a court in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 6, 2016. Sahin later stated that “I was deeply annoyed by his news reporting … I knew he had been to Britain for a while… I thought he was a British spy… I planned this [shooting] in order to teach him a lesson.” (Image source: RT video screenshot)

In his newly-published book, The Glorious Defeat: The Islamists’ Test With Power, the author Levent Gultekin, himself a figure from the Islamist ranks, concludes:

“The war [within] has been won by the Akit line thanks to [President] Erdogan. The Akit approach has captured not just the Islamists but Turkey as a whole … Erdogan has hauled the voters to this line. That [Akit’s] is the [political] lingua franca in every field.”

The “Akit” in question is the daily newspaper Yeni Akit. It is a fiercely pro-Erdogan, fiercely Islamist newspaper, whose editors often find a seat in the president’s private jet on his foreign trips — an expression of the president’s appreciation of their less than subtle editorial line.

In 2014, one Yeni Akit columnist wrote that a “Gaza fund contribution tax” should apply to Turkish Jews, as well as foreign Jews doing business in Turkey and Turkish nationals with commercial ties to Israel. He suggested that the tax should apply to any company or business that maintains a partnership with a Turkish Jew. The penalty for failing to pay the tax should be the revocation of the Jew’s business license and the seizure of his property.

Shortly before the November 1 general elections, another Yeni Akit columnist claimed that Erdogan would become the new “ecumenical” caliph once he has won the executive presidential powers he so passionately desires: the 105th Caliph!

Yeni Akit also recently published a list of companies under the headline: “Muslims who pay [buy from] these companies are bathing in Palestinian children’s blood.” The subtitle read: “Muslims who consume these products are financing Israel that occupies Palestine.”

The list includes the world’s most prominent brands: 17 in the tobacco industry, six fast-food chains, 11 soft-drink producers, 12 technology giants, 15 carmakers and brands of cars, 16 clothing and fashion brands, a whisky producer, two cargo companies, three oil companies, one battery-maker, one famous cigarette lighter producer, dairy products companies, coffee, tea, drinking water producers, detergent, margarine and ice-cream companies and… one credit card company, one of the usual top three that we all use — call it X.

This author asked a friend to call Yeni Akit’s subscription office for our little socio-political experiment. This was the conversation:

– Hello, is that subscription?

Yeni Akit: Yes, how can we help you?

– Could I subscribe to your newspaper and pay by credit card?

Yeni Akit: Of course you can. What region or city are you in?

– Ankara, (…) neighborhood. Can I pay with my X credit card?

Yeni Akit: Sure, you are more than welcome.

Ah, those Muslims who bathe in Palestinian children’s blood…

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.