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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday once again laid into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the genocide in Gaza and put the Israeli in league with WWII-era fascist dictators.
Erdogan, who has called Israel a “terror state” and said the end is near for Netanyahu, gave a speech and said the Israeli prime minister “earned his place alongside Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.”
Erdogan has said there is not another army in the world that bombs cities day and night “with its warplanes to kill only children; that sets hospitals, places of worship, schools, marketplaces, buildings, streets on fire. A state that continues this inhuman act with its tanks, artillery, and weapons.”
Erdogan has called for an immediate ceasefire and an international peace conference to end the hostilities in Israel.
He also refused to call Hamas a terror organization, and said it continues to benefit from Turkey’s full support.
“We cannot be coerced into designating Hamas as a terrorist organization. We communicate with them openly and stand behind them,” he said.
He has said Hamas is not a terrorist group, but rather a group fighting for liberation.
Netanyahu responded to the comments with his usual fury and said Erdogan should be the last person to cast stones.
“Israel observes the laws of war and will not be subject to moral preaching from Erdogan, who supports murderers and rapists of the Hamas terrorist organization, denies the Armenian genocide, massacres Kurds in his own country, and cracks down on regime opponents and journalists,” he said, according to The Jerusalem Post.
TRENDPOST: Erdogan has compared Netanyahu to Hitler in December and has called him the “Butcher of Gaza.” (See “ERDOGAN CALLS ISRAEL A TERRORIST STATE, WARNS NETANYAHU ON NUKES” 21 Nov 2023, “ERDOGAN: ISRAEL COMMITTED ‘WAR CRIMES’ IN GAZA” 31 Oct 2023 and “ERDOGAN: ISRAEL COMMITTED ‘WAR CRIMES’ IN GAZA” 31 Oct 2023.)
Erdogan said, “They used to speak ill of Hitler. What difference do you have from Hitler? They are going to make us miss Hitler. Is what this Netanyahu is doing any less than what Hitler did? It is not,” according to The Jerusalem Post. “He is richer than Hitler, he gets the support from the West. All sorts of support comes from the United States. And what did they do with all this support? They killed more than 20,000 Gazans.” (That number has climbed to above 30,000 and some 80,000 are seriously wounded while several thousand are buried in rubble from buildings, schools, mosques, hospitals, and homes that have been bombed to ruin.)
He warned that Netanyahu is “endangering the security of all Jews in the world by supporting anti-Semitism with the murders he committed in Gaza.”
U.S. President Joe Biden, who has been a full supporter of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, said Saturday that Netanyahu at this point is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel.”
He said Netanyahu “must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken” in Gaza.
TREND FORECAST: Erdogan may be more blunt than Biden in his criticism of Netanyahu, but neither has done anything to prevent the genocide and save Gazan lives.
Turkey, like other Muslim countries in the region, sees some concerns if the Axis of Resistance—headed by Iran—becomes too powerful. Both Turkey and Iran agreed that it is important to deescalate the violence in the region.