Furkan Dogan, 19, an American born in New York, was shot dead with multiple bullets in the head and chest early Monday morning on a Turkey flagged ship in international water near Gaza by elite Israeli commandos.
From the MSM--especially the New York Times--coverage of this tragedy, you may get the impression that Mr. Dogan was a religious fanatic, ready to be a martyr for an Islamic course. One of saddest things after 9/11 has been the MSM and politicians' relentless dehumanizing of the Muslim religion.
This coverage of Mr. Dogan's funeral by Marc Champion of the WSJ is refreshing because of its humanity.
Nineteen-year-old Furkan Dogan was born in Troy, N.Y., and spent his first two years there, his father said. For the first time since, his father said, Furkan was planning to return to the U.S. this summer. But first, he signed on with a Turkish aid group to cruise toward blockaded Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid.
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Early Monday morning, as the Mavi Marmara steamed toward Gaza, Israeli commandoes interdicted the ship. Furkan was shot once in the chest and four times in the face.
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Ahmet Dogan, a 49-year-old assistant professor of accounting at Kayseri University, says no one has been able to shed light on his son's final moments. He thinks Furkan may have drawn the Israelis soldiers' attention with the video camera he took with him to document the voyage.
"He thought his American passport would protect him—he thought the Israelis wouldn't harm an American," said Mr. Dogan, interviewed in the yard behind the family's apartment block as his elder son, Mustafa, stood behind his chair and stroked his hair.
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The were no evident signs of radicalism or political diatribes just hours after the Dogan family had traveled to a cemetary six miles from town to bury their young son.
According to friends and relatives, Furkan was the smart kid of the family—a freshly minted high-school graduate with good enough marks to study medicine at university. He subscribed to "Young Brains," a Turkish magazine with puzzles and articles on new technology, and liked to play chess.
"He only had an American passport, and it was very important to him," said Mr. Dogan. "After medical school, he said he wanted to go work in the United States for a while."
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Furkan's family says he wasn't interested in politics. He played soccer online, and also played a decent midfield in the scratch games he and his brother played on weekends, said a friend, Murab Ergunes. He liked to stream American movies and music on his computer.
But he also talked about going to Africa to treat people once he qualified as a doctor. Stories about how people in Gaza were suffering made him want to get involved, said Mr. Dogan.
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The funeral took place on a sunbaked hillside outside Kayseri. "Don't be like the Israelis. Don't kill anyone," the Imam conducting the rites said before choking up. "Murderer Israel must go to Hell."
At a word from the imam, the crowd dispersed in silence, leaving friends and relatives to push roses into the loose soil over the grave.
Mr. Dogan, calm though visibly distressed, seemed mainly confused and upset by the role the U.S. has played so far. Mr. Dogan said he studied in New York, at the University at Albany-SUNY and at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, returning with his family in 1993.
He said the cautious U.S. response, in which it has avoided criticizing Israel over the incident, has made him begin to think: Had Furkan been a Christian living stateside, what would the U.S. response have been? "I lived in the U.S. I know what people do there when a cat gets stuck in a tree," he said.
As far as I am concerned, Mr. Furkan Dogan is as American as any Christian or Jewish kids living in the United States. On the one hand, U.S. officials, including President Obama, have refused to condemn Israel for its action, citing the need for more facts. On the other hand, they resist calls for an international investigation and insist on an Israelis investigation. How is it possible that the Natanyahu government will produce facts to incriminate itself? When does the perpetrator of a crime allow to run the investigation? Is this a bad joke? This just defies logic.
As Secretary Clinton said, protecting American citizens is a fundamental responsibility of the U.S. government. Will the Obama administration relinquish this fundamental responsibility to a foreign government in this case? We will see.