The absolute cluelessness of the IDF beggars belief at times and this is one of them. Amidst a mystifying warming trend between the Israeli and Turkish governments which I wrote about last night, the Israeli army has appointed a new military attaché for Turkey. Since Turkey is one of the most sensitive countries in the world in terms of Israeli relations you’d think they’d appoint an individual with some background in Turkey, perhaps familiar with the language, definitely someone who has relationships there and would be seen as sympathetic by the Turks. Who did they appoint? None of the above.
Yediot reports the new attaché is Col. Moshe Levi, past administrator of the Gaza siege. He’s the guy responsible for making cardamom treif for Gaza. They guy starving Gazan babies. The guy preventing Gaza from rebuilding after the devastation wrought by Operation Cast Lead, a massacre denounced fulsomely by Turkey’s prime minister. The guy who had the chutzpah to say the following in May 2010 as last year’s fateful Gaza flotilla was getting underway:
Colonel Moshe Levi, commander of the Gaza District Coordination Office, told reporters Wednesday that there is no shortage of food or equipment in the Hamas-ruled territory.
“The sail is a provocative act that is unnecessary in light of the figures, which indicate that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is good and stable,” he said, adding that Israel allows the transfer of many products to the Strip,
Now, how do we see this appointment? Is it an act of provocation by the IDF against Turkey’s civilian government? Is it an appointment vetted with the Israeli prime minister (and thus is Bibi in on it too)? Or is it cynicism or just plain obtuseness? Or are they punishing the guy for not starving Gaza enough? Or all of the above? Yediot reports that the position in Ankara is no longer thought to be the attractive one it once was due to the frigidity of bilateral relations between the two countries. So they had to exert pressure on Levi to take the post. Gee, you’d think those responsible for this brilliant piece of personnel management might’ve stopped to think whether P.M. Erdogan might see it as a slap in the face given Levi’s past.
This passage from the Yediot article indicates that the IDF remains clueless about how Levi’s past will appear to his new Turkish interlocutors:
Tzahal hopes that the new winds blowing from Turkey will renew strategic collaboration between the two nations and ease the service of the new attaché.
I’d say: not likely, unless they think a CV that would be specially attractive to the Turks would include past service that produced profound suffering for Gaza’s 1.5 million civilians. One wonders whether Levi plans to put Turkey on the same type of “diet” he put Gaza on?

Israel, the Middle East gun-runner, complains about incitement!
In three bloody weeks from December 27, 2008, during ‘operation cast lead’, white phosphorus and other weapons were used against the people of Gaza, killing 1400, the majority of whom were civilians including over 300 children, plus the destruction of schools, houses and public buildings. The Likud government of Israel that exports Uzi machine guns and other munitions to regimes worldwide, and imports billions of dollars of military equipment – (including cluster bombs, rocket & grenade launchers, surface to air missiles, F15/F16 strike aircraft, aerial bombers, Apache attack helicopters, Dolphin nuclear-armed submarines, armoured personnel carriers, unmanned drones, aerial vehicles and electronic warfare equipment from the US and Europe) – wants the world to believe that its blockade of the starved, bankrupt people of Gaza, is legal in order to prevent imaginary arms shipments to a besieged enclave of 1.6 million, mainly unemployed people who are desperate for food and medicines, not guns.
This situation exists only by courtesy of the EU which continues its billions of dollars of bilateral trade with a non-European state under an Association Agreement, the existence of which is the key economic factor that keeps the Likud government in power – and the blockaded and bombed enclave of Gaza, under siege. The EU and the UN must take action. It is now more than 5 years that the world has stood silent.
He might tell the ‘kill a Turk, then rest’ joke. That would certainly go down well.
Any “warming trend” is probably because Assad is killing his own people pretty much within sight of Turkish soldiers and using his tanks to threaten those Turkish soldiers and the Syrian refugees behind them. (Given the size, equipment and proficiency of the Turkish army, this tells you all you need to know about Assad’s state of mind.)
It might be a very opportune moment for Israel to behave rather better than Assad, but I’m not sure if they can manage this or if they will even see the need.