Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's claims that Israel is using the Holocaust for political and military gain and that Israel has killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are “false, outrageous and scandalous,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.
Netanyahu's refutation, in an interview with The Jerusalem Post, was the first high-level government reaction to the statements Erdogan made in an interview with CNN on Sunday.
In the interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, Erdogan said, “Israelis say that Palestinians attack the people of Israel and many Israelis have been killed. I would like to see the actual statistics with the number of Israelis who have been killed by bombs thrown by Palestinians or rockets that they launched at them. Was it 10, 20, 100, 200? How many? Please record the numbers and inform us. However, we know that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed. In the attack on Gaza, thousands of people were killed.”
Erdogan then went on to accuse Israel of using the Holocaust for political and military gain. “Israelis like to remind us of the genocide that took place in history. They take advantage of that genocide, and always act as if they are the victims all the time,” Erdogan said. “We say Germany must compensate Israel, and it has. So Germany is still paying dues to Israel. But Turkey and Muslims in this region don't have that problem. We never inflicted such pain on Israel. Israel, on the other hand, is cruel. It doesn't display any mercy.”
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“Both allegations are false,” Netanyahu told The Jerusalem Post in an interview given after his return from the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
“These are outrageous charges against Israel that have nothing to do with the facts,” he said. “We don't use the Holocaust; the Holocaust was the worst crime in history, perpetuated against our people. To hear this allegation at the beginning of the 21st century, just 60 years after Holocaust, is outrageous. In Israel we are used to telling the truth, and the truth is that these allegations are completely false.”
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman also denounced Erdogan on Monday, saying, “The current Turkish leadership consists of radical Islamists who cultivate and support terror. It's not surprising that Erdogan supports Hamas, a terrorist organization recognized as such in Europe. The IHH [the Turkish organization which organized the 2010 Gaza flotilla] and Hezbollah are also recognized as terrorist organizations throughout the world. One can see a clear pattern here.”
Lieberman said that Erdogan's words would backfire. “Erdogan performed well on TV. Every moment he appears on TV will increase support for Israel,” he said. “If it was up to me, I would let him speak on TV all day long. When he speaks, people understand us.”
Meanwhile, Turkey's Deputy Public Prosecutor Ates Hasan Sozen denied on Monday that Turkish intelligence units were involved in gathering information on Israeli commandos who raided the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara at sea in 2010, resulting in the deaths of nine Turkish citizens.
According to the prosecutor, “No government institution requested such information or has such information.” He did confirm, however, that an attorney for the IHH submitted names of Israeli soldiers who were, according to the attorney, involved in the 2010 raid.
Sozen's denial was a response to a report by the Turkish daily Sabah, which stated that Turkish intelligence officers with knowledge of Hebrew used the Internet to locate soldiers who participated in the raid. The report alleged that the officers used Facebook and Twitter to collect 174 names of soldiers, officers and senior Israeli officials.
The report in Sabah went on to say that the intelligence officers followed a trail of written exchanges between soldiers who took part in the raid, and were able to identify them based on photos found in social networks and the media. The list has Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the top, followed by other senior government ministers, including former Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. (res.) Gabi Ashkenazi, Navy Commander Admiral Eliezer Marom, former head of the Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, former Military Intelligence head Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, and other senior officers.
IDF officers pointed out that many of the soldiers named in the list had nothing to do with the 2010 Gaza flotilla, and were serving in other positions in the IDF at the time. IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, for example, who is named in the list, was in the civil administration at the time. “They collected all kinds of unrelated people from all kinds of Internet sources, such as the official IDF website and the website for ‘Bemahaneh’ [the IDF magazine], and placed those people on the Marmara during the raid. This is part of a psychological campaign to get us to apologize, which we refuse to do,” an officer said.
The IDF Spokesperson's Unit released a statement saying, “The list of names that appears in the article that was published, names of people who allegedly participated in the flotilla incident, is false, and the lists were recycled from anti-Israeli Internet pages that were published during and after Operation Cast Lead in 2008.”
Despite the breakdown in diplomatic relations, commercial trade between Israel and Turkey is on the rise. According to statistics published by the Israel Exports Institute, between January and August, trade between the countries increased by 26 percent to $2.8 billion.
Both countries would suffer if relations were severed, but Turkey perhaps more so. While Israel mainly imports hi-tech products from Turkey, such as cars and electrical appliances, Turkey imports basic goods such as chemicals, metals and other products, including paper, from Israel.
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