Ceylan Özbudak is a political analyst on Turkish television and an executive director of Building Bridges, an Istanbul-based NGO associated with the Harun Yahya organization.I know next to nothing about Harun Yahya and therefore cannot speak to its nature, but I know that Ceylon wrote this to me in an email:
"Whoever is using al-Aqsa mosque for provocation, whoever starts a fight in the mosque is shameless, this is not an action Muslims should support. On the contrary, this is an action Muslims should shun. Israel may have malpractices. But I experienced personally many times that whenever we ask them about the details of an incident, they give us detailed explanations and they are open to agreement, they are usually civil people. The system is also democratic in Israel."This is a friend, among many friends, of the Jewish people and I am going to acknowledge her as so.
The Jewish people throughout the world are a tiny minority. We represent 2 percent of the American population and .2 percent of the world population.
The pro-Israel / pro-Jewish on-line community has definitely accepted both Chloe Valdary and Ryan Bellerose as great friends to the Jewish people. Because they are humanitarians they do not want to see us persecuted in our own homeland. Because they know what it is like to be under constant ugly and unjust pressure by a much larger majority population they are friends to the Jewish people.
This is an important trend and one that we need to acknowledge and encourage.
Ceylan's note to me came prior to the recent synagogue attack in which anti-Jewish Jihadis killed rabbis during prayer.
I just want to thank her for standing up.
It is not every Muslim woman - not to mention a beautiful television personality in Turkey - who is willing to represent hope for the end of this conflict and to contact someone such as myself, a Jewish blogger and analyst half a world away.
You have my thanks, Ceylan.
