Israel apologized to Turkey on Friday for killing nine Turkish citizens in a 2010 naval raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla and the two feuding U.S. allies agreed to normalize relations in a surprise breakthrough announced by U.S. President Barack Obama.
Mind you, the Israelis only apologized for the deaths as the result of identifiable operational errors, but we got Turkey to accept it as an apology for the incident.
Which grates, mind you. This was an incident provoked by those sailing from Turkey as an ambush, so Turkey should be the one apologizing, in my view.
But diplomacy is honorable men sent abroad to lie for their country, eh? Israel took one for the larger goal of re-engaging Turkey. We want Turkey and Israel on the same page over Syria and Iran as much as possible.
UPDATE: This writer is more than a little grated by the apology and our role in getting it done. I concede that Turkey should have done the apologizing. But I'll repeat that in my reading of the press report of the "apology" it was a non-apology apology where Netanyahu apologized for operational errors in the mission to stop the vessels rather than an apology for the mission. And Israel did make errors by falling for the ambush. So if we got Turkey to accept that as an apology? I think it is fine.
If this gets Turkey back to cooperating with Israel, I'm fine with this. If, of course.
