Despite Turkey’s increasingly obvious anti-Israel / pro-Hamas position in the world, it remains a NATO ally of the U.S. When State Department spokesman Marie Harf was asked why Turkey is continuing to receive high tech arms shipments from the U.S. shortly after it was learned that Turkey is harboring a senior Hamas figure, she deferred to Turkey’s NATO-member status.

Saleh Al-Arouri: In Turkey

The Hamas operative is Saleh Al-Arouri who was also involved in the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers earlier this year that helped contribute to the recent fighting in Gaza. Such alliances between Turkey and Hamas is not new and Al-Arouri’s presence there is not an outlier. It’s an increasingly disturbing trend.

Via the Washington Free Beacon:

Reporters at Harf’s daily briefing expressed confusion as to why arms shipments would be stopped to Israel yet permitted to Turkey, despite the latter nation’s increasing anti-Semitism and efforts to bolster Hamas terrorists.

Israeli security officials revealed early Monday that it had disrupted a plot to infiltrate the West Bank and overthrow the moderate government. It is believed that the plot was orchestrated by a Hamas leader in Turkey who also helped plan the kidnappings and murders of three Israeli teens earlier this year.

Harf was asked Monday afternoon to explain why President Barack Obama is giving Turkey high-tech arms while holding up shipments to Israel, a move that has drawn outrage in the pro-Israel community.

Harf defended the “extra care” the Obama administration is exerting over Israeli shipments and said that it is “important” to give Turkey arms right now.

“Turkey is also a NATO ally,” she said. “So for all of us who are—talk a lot about the importance of the NATO alliance, particularly when it comes to Russia and Ukraine and what’s happening there, we think it’s important to provide our NATO allies with resources. We think that’s an important use of our resources. The two [cases] aren’t comparable, but those are the facts behind them, I would say.”

Just last week, it was learned that the Obama administration was restricting the shipments of ammunition to Israel as Shoebat.com relayed.

Earlier this year, Shoebat.com reported on the consequences of the U.S. being aligned with Turkey has been both the Christian holocaust taking place across the Middle East today as well as the Benghazi attacks. It has been our contention that either the U.S. should leave NATO or Turkey should.

In that report, we included a quote from Foundation for Defense of Democracies Vice President Jonathan Schanzer, who said the following about why the U.S. needs to remain allies with Turkey:

“We’ve got early warning radar systems in Turkey, we’ve got Patriot missile batteries, we’ve got massive airbases, we’ve got investments… the Turks have served as an important ally for us. If we lose that, I think it would be very detrimental to American foreign policy.”

In today’s Free Beacon report, Schanzer is giving signals that he may be moving away from that position:

Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Treasury Department, said there is no evidence that the Obama administration and its partners are expressing dismay with Turkey and attempting to address its support for Hamas.

“I am deeply concerned that NATO and the State Department have yet to raise this issue with Turkey,” Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told the Free Beacon.

“The fact remains that Turkey’s Hamas policy is a deeply troubling one,” he said.

“It is not appropriate for a U.S. ally or a NATO ally to be providing Hamas operatives with safe haven.”

Schanzer further suggested that there may be more than one Hamas operative currently residing in Turkey at this time.

It has become a self-evident truth that Turkey is an enemy of Israel, which since its formation in 1948 has been considered the U.S.’s strongest ally. Therefore, a continued U.S. membership in NATO increasingly alienates Israel.

Article 5 of the NATO charter states:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Article 13 of the NATO Charter states:

After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America, which will inform the Governments of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation.

The fact is that by remaining in NATO with Turkey, the U.S. is aligned with an anti-Semitic regime whose newly elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a student of Hitler.

Of course, this says nothing of a scenario in which the U.S. may be forced – under the NATO charter – to defend Turkey in any conflict the latter nation may have with Russia.