{"id":1964,"date":"2003-11-15T12:42:00","date_gmt":"2003-11-15T17:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sandbox.blog-city.com\/sandstorm_the_jihad_against_the_jews_reaches_istanbul.htm"},"modified":"2003-11-15T12:42:00","modified_gmt":"2003-11-15T17:42:00","slug":"the-jihad-against-the-jews-reaches-istanbul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/2003\/11\/the-jihad-against-the-jews-reaches-istanbul\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jihad Against the Jews Reaches Istanbul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s bombing of two synagogues in Istanbul recalls the bombing of the Jewish community building in Buenos Aires, Argentina, almost ten years ago (July 18, 1994). At the time, I wrote a background article (for Commentary<\/em>) entitled The Jihad Against the Jews<\/a>. Back then, many analysts thought the attack was the work of right-wing antisemites. I argued otherwise, and concluded with these words:<\/p>\n

The greatest threat today comes not from neo-Nazis but from those fundamentalists of Islam who see in every Jew a political target in their war against Israel. Much more must be done by Jews to thwart them, including in-depth research, defensive measures, close cooperation with law-enforcement agencies, and dialogue with responsible Arab and Muslim organizations. If such activity is not made a priority, Buenos Aires may turn out to be only the first strike in a global jihad against the Jews.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the piece<\/a>; it explains the mindset behind that bombing, and probably this one too.<\/p>\n

Back then, I suggested that the jihadists chose Argentina because the authorities were unlikely to solve the case. That impression was reinforced a year or so later, when I visited Argentina as an official guest, and lectured their law-enforcement agencies on Islamist terror. They were hopelessly out of the loop. What’s worrisome this time is the possibility that the jihadists chose Turkey because it has an Islamist-led government. There may be a hope among the killers that the authorities won’t roll them up quite as relentlessly as they should. In the current issue<\/a> of the Middle East Quarterly<\/em>, which I edit, Gregory Burris has an article<\/a> on the current state of Israeli-Turkish relations, entitled “Turkey and Israel: Speed Bumps.” The main speed bump, he argues, is the new ascendancy of the Islamists, which has made Turkish politics much less predictable.<\/p>\n

The solving of this bombing case will be a major test of Turkish democracy’s accommodation of Islamists\u2014a test Turkey can’t afford to fail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s bombing of two synagogues in Istanbul recalls the bombing of the Jewish community building in Buenos Aires, Argentina, almost ten years ago (July 18, 1994). At the time, I wrote a background article (for Commentary) entitled The Jihad Against … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}