Terrorists at the helm

NY Post ^ | June 02, 2010 | Editorial

[Scanian]

Turkey's Islamist prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, knows better than most why Israel found it necessary to confront that phony "peace" flotilla off Gaza Monday.

Certainly he knows that the convoy was organized and manned by the Foundation for Human Rights & Humanitarian Relief -- as bloody-handed a terrorist gang as exists in the Mideast.

Known by its Turkish acronym, IHH, the group has strong and enduring ties to Hamas and al Qaeda.

Indeed, the Turkish government itself raided IHH's Istanbul office in 1997, uncovering guns, explosives, bomb-making manuals and jihadist flags -- along with documents showing that its members had been dispatched to war zones like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.

And a 2006 report by the Danish Institute for International Studies linked IHH to a foiled al Qaeda bombing plot against Los Angeles International Airport.

No surprise, then, that the one vessel whose passengers violently resisted boarding by Israeli commandos seems to have been the IHH flagship -- and that most, if not all, of those who died in the ensuing struggle were IHH members.