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December 10, 2017 12:23 pm
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Israeli PM Netanyahu Slams Turkish President Erdogan: A Man Who Bombs Kurds Will Not Lecture Us

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Photo: File.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday after Erdogan called Israel a “terrorist state” that “kills children.”

Speaking at a joint press conference in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron, Netanyahu said, “I am not used to receiving lectures about morality from the leader who bombs Kurdish villagers in his native Turkey, who jails journalists, who helps Iran go around international sanctions and who helps terrorists, including in Gaza, kill innocent people. That is not the man who is going to lecture us.”

Earlier on Sunday, Yair Lapid — the head of the centrist Yesh Atid Party — tweeted a similar sentiment.

“One who denies the murder of children in the Armenian Holocaust should not preach morality to us,” Lapid wrote.

Erdogan has made a number of anti-Israel statements this week, amidst regional tensions surrounding US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the Jewish state’s capital. On Tuesday, Erdogan threatened to cut diplomatic ties with Israel over the issue — which prompted angry responses from a number of prominent Israeli officials.

Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) said, “We are not accepting instructions or threats from the Turkish president. The days of the sultan and the Ottoman Empire have passed.” And Education Minister Naftali Bennett (HaBayit HaYehudi) tweeted, “Better a united Jerusalem than Erdogan’s sympathy.”

Lapid tweeted on Tuesday, “The Israeli government must send a clear message to Erdogan: Don’t threaten us. Jerusalem is our capital, and the time has come for the world to recognize this. The US embassy and the embassies of the rest of the world should be housed in Jerusalem.”

Israel and Turkey signed a reconciliation deal in June 2016 to restore relations that were frozen following the IDF’s May 2010 interception in the Mediterranean Sea of a Gaza-bound “humanitarian aid” flotilla. Ten Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed in a violent clash with Israeli naval commandos who boarded the MV Mavi Marmara, the flotilla’s lead ship, as it made its way toward the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

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