Redeeming the Jewish Wimp

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
16 April '10

In his press conference last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu lamented that his Turkish counterpart has been attacking Israel since Operation Cast Lead. Actually, Erdogan’s anti-Israel salvos have a longer history.

In 2004, Erdogan called Israel a “terrorist state” after we eliminated Sheikh Yassin. In February 2006, he hosted Hamas leader Haled Mashal in Ankara. In January 2009 he staged a temper tantrum at the Davos Conference calling Shimon Peres an expert killer. In October 2009, the Turkish state television started airing fiction series showing Israeli soldiers intentionally murdering Palestinian children. In November 2009, Erdogan declared that he’d rather meet with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (accused of war crimes and genocide by the International Criminal Court) than with Benjamin Netanyahu. In March 2010, Erdogan claimed that the Temple Mount, Hebron and Rachel’s tomb were never Jewish sites. Last week, Erdogan used his official visit to Paris to call Israel the greatest danger to the world and to peace.

Israel has been quietly putting up with Erdogan’s antics for no justifiable reason. True, Avigdor Lieberman decided to finally say something by comparing Erdogan to Chavez and Gaddafi. That was ineffective and silly: nothing could make Erdogan happier than being categorized as anti-American Don Quixote. All Lieberman had to do to embarrass Erdogan and expose his hypocrisy was to mention the Armenian genocide, Turkey’s refusal to grant a “right of return” to the post WWI Greek refugees, Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus, Turkey’s “apartheid wall” and “settlers” in Cyprus, Turkey’s adamant refusal to accept the establishment of a Kurdish state, and Turkey’s stubborn insistence on holding to a territory it grabbed from Syria (the Alexandretta Province).

Alas, Israel is a wimp –and not only with Turkey. Israel would never dare to “upset” Egypt by complaining about the fact that Mubarak’s state-controlled media are full of anti-Semitism, blood libels and Holocaust denial. When Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said he would burn any Israeli book he found in his country, Israel didn’t have anything to say.

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