Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for labelling Israel a “terror state” and refused to take any “lectures” from Ankara which he said supported the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Netanyahu said: “There are forces that support the terrorists. And one of them is President Erdogan of Turkey who calls Israel a terror state, but actually supports the terror state of Hamas,” according to Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth.
Netanyahu added: “[Erdogan] has himself bombed Turkish villages inside Turkey itself, so we’re not going to get any lectures from them,” likely in reference to Turkish military action in Kurdish areas over the years.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen also responded to Erdogan’s comments, saying: “Anyone who hosts arch-terrorists and encourages terrorist organizations should not preach morality to… Israel. The Turkish president distorts reality and finds himself once again on the wrong side of history, alongside those who praise massacres in Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.”
Turkey’s foreign ministry rejected Netanyahu’s “unfounded slander” and said that Israeli officials had “no right to talk about the law.”
“Israeli officials, who have entered the dark pages of history with the oppression and massacres committed against the Palestinian people, have no right to talk about the law… Benjamin Netanyahu and Eli Cohen, who are both uncomfortable with the truth being expressed, will not be able to cover up their own crimes with their unfounded slander about Erdogan,” Anadolu cited the ministry as saying.
The report added: “Israeli authorities, who have already lost their legitimacy in the conscience of humanity, will not be able to conceal the crimes they committed by bombing hospitals and killing women and children in front of the whole world and will not be able to divert attention.”
Erdogan had said on Wednesday that Turkey will take steps to ensure that political and military leaders who “ruthlessly” massacred people in Gaza face trial in the international courts, and called Israel a “terrorist state”, according to state news agency Anadolu. “If Israel continues its massacres, it will be seen everywhere in the world as a ‘universally condemned terrorist state’.”
Erdogan had addressed Netanyahu saying: “You are threatening with an atomic bomb, a nuclear bomb. It does not matter what you have, you are a goner,” referring to Israeli Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu’s remark about the option of launching a nuclear strike on the Gaza Strip.
Erdogan stated: “Those who kill babies in incubators, those who rain bombs on innocent people they have displaced from their homes, those who condemn people to death by cutting off their water, food, and fuel, those who talk about destroying over 2 million civilians with an atomic bomb… No matter how many nuclear bombs you have or whatever you possess, you are on your way out. Those who have lost everything in terms of ethics, conscience, and honor are not human; they can only be monsters.”
Source: Al Arabiya