Turkey: ‘Israel Will Soon Be Destroyed’
By Worthy News’ George Whitten and Stefan J. Bos
ANKARA/JERUSALEM (Worthy News) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has warned Israel it will “soon” be destroyed and that Ankara designates Israeli settlers in Palestinian territories as “terrorists,” Worthy News learned Thursday.
“Hey Israel: You have an atomic bomb, a nuclear bomb. And you are making threats with this. We know this. And your end is near,” said Erdoğan in a speech to Turkish legislators.
“You can have as many nuclear bombs as you want, but you’re on your way out,” he added.
Turkish lawmakers responded to the message with a thunderous standing ovation.
Erdoğa told Parliament that the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas is like a war between the Christian and Muslim worlds. He said the crisis was “a matter of cross and crescent.”
Erdoğa suggested that Germany’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas was due to guilt over the Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, in which at least six million Jews were killed.
“The Israeli-Palestinian war should not be evaluated with a psychology of indebtedness. I speak freely because we do not owe anything to Israel,” Erdoğan said at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
FEELING INDEBTED
“Those who feel indebted to Israel cannot speak freely. We did not go through the Holocaust process; we don’t have such a situation because our respect for humanity is different,” added the Turkish leader.
Ahead of Erdoğan’s visit to Berlin, Scholz had described Ankara’s accusations of fascism against Israel as “absurd.”
In comments monitored by Worthy News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemns Erdoğan for supporting Hamas and bombing Turkish villages, in a likely reference to Ankara’s violent oppression of Kurds.
“So, we’re not going to take any lectures from them,” Netanyahu stressed.
Erdoğan had claimed that Israel was attempting to “eradicate” the Gaza Strip. He threatened to take steps to ensure that Jerusalem’s political and military leaders are brought to trial in international courts.
The Turkish president also declined to call Hamas, which has a public presence in Turkey, terrorists. Instead, he called them “resistance fighters” defending Palestinian lands despite killing some 1,200 people, including women, babies, and toddlers, and kidnapping about 240 others.
The rhetoric comes after Israel said it was recalling its diplomats from Turkey over “increasingly harsh statements” coming from the government in Ankara.
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