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Turkey’s Erdogan Sends ‘Best Wishes’ to Iran After Israel Strike, Continues Fierce Criticism of Jewish State
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave his “best wishes” to Iran and accused Israel of trying to provoke a regional war in the Middle East in response to the Jewish state’s airstrikes against Iranian military targets over the weekend.
Erdogan’s comments continued his hostile posture toward Israel over the past year, during which Turkish-Israeli relations have nosedived amid Israel’s ongoing military operations against two Iran-backed Islamist terrorist groups: Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
On Saturday, over 100 Israeli aircraft targeted missile production sites and air defenses inside Iran, significantly crippling Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and production capacity. The sophisticated operation was in response to Iran firing more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel earlier in the month, as well as ongoing attacks from its terror proxies in the region, according to Israeli officials.
Responding to the strikes, Erdogan expressed solidarity with Iran and portrayed Israel as the aggressor.
“I extend my best wishes to our neighbor Iran and the Iranian government, which were the target of Israeli aggression last night,” Erdogan said at an event in the southern city of Hatay, according to Turkish media.
The Turkish president also claimed without evidence that Israel was seeking to set a “trap” to start a regional war.
“The Zionist Israeli government is attempting to ignite a regional conflict. It is crucial not to fall into the trap set by Israel and its supporters,” he said. “With this mindset, Israel will achieve nothing. We expect their wrath from Allah.”
Meanwhile, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry released a statement condemning Israel’s military strikes and similarly accusing the Jewish state of bringing the region toward a broader conflict. The ministry went on to falsely accuse Israel of “committing genocide in Gaza,” preparing to annex the West Bank, and attacking civilians in Lebanon.
“Ending the terrorism created by Israel in the region has become a historic duty in terms of establishing international security and peace,” the statement read, calling on the international community to take steps to avoid further escalation.
The ministry and Erdogan’s comments came two months after Turkey’s Ambassador to Iran Hicabi Kırlangıç lambasted Israel in an interview as “one of the most ruthless enemies” and condemned Western countries for supporting Jerusalem. He also said that Iran’s plan to attack Israel in retaliation for the killing over the summer of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran should be harsh enough to force the Jewish state to “fall to its knees.”
Haniyeh was killed in an explosion in Iran’s capital city on July 31. Iran, the chief international sponsor of Hamas, accused Israel of carrying out the assassination and vowed revenge. The Israeli government has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for Haniyeh’s death.
Iran, which initially launched an unprecedented direct attack against Israel in April, also said it would retaliate following Israeli airstrikes in recent weeks that killed the top leaders of its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon, including longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
On Oct. 1, Iran acted on its threats, firing nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel. The only fatality from the barrage was Sameh Asli, 37, a Palestinian from Jabalia in Gaza. He was killed by missile shrapnel in the West Bank village of Nu’eima, near Jericho, during the attack.
Following Israel’s retaliatory strikes this past weekend, Iranian officials attempted to downplay the severity of the strikes. However, an Israeli weapons systems and intelligence expert told The Algemeiner on Sunday that the Islamist regime’s ballistic missile program will need at least a year to recover from the strikes.
Amid escalating tensions between Israel and Iran and its proxies, Turkey has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel — and defenders of Hamas — since the outbreak of the Gaza war last October.
Last month Erdogan said that the United Nations General Assembly should recommend the use of force, in line with a resolution it passed in 1950, if the UN Security Council fails to stop Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon.
In August, Erdogan declared Aug. 2 a day of national mourning over the killing of Haniyeh.
The announcement came days after Erdogan made an explicit threat to invade Israel, leading Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz to call on NATO to expel Turkey, which has the alliance’s second largest military.
Turkey has reportedly blocked cooperation between NATO and Israel since last October because of the war in Hamas-ruled Gaza and said the alliance should not engage with Israel as a partner until the conflict ends.
Erdogan’s comments were the latest in a recent wave of hostile moves targeting the Jewish state.
Earlier this year, for example, Turkey’s foreign ministry compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
In May, the Turkish trade ministry said it had ceased all exports and imports to and from Israel. The announcement came after Turkey imposed trade restrictions on Israeli exports over Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 invasion of and massacre across the southern region of the Jewish state.
That followed Erdogan in March threatening to “send Netanyahu to Allah to take care of him, make him miserable, and curse him.” He previously accused Israel of operating “Nazi” concentration camps and compared Netanyahu with Hitler.
Weeks earlier, Erdogan said that Netanyahu was a “butcher” who would be tried as a “war criminal” over Israel’s defensive military operations in Gaza. He has also called Israel a “terror state.”
Turkey hosts senior Hamas officials and, together with Iran and Qatar, has provided a large portion of the Palestinian terrorist group’s budget.
Several Western and Arab states designate Hamas, an offshoot of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, as a terrorist group.
However, Erdogan has defended Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters” against what he described as an Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
Israel withdrew all its troops and civilian settlers from Gaza in 2005.
Turkish-Israeli diplomatic relations have nosedived since the Hamas atrocities of last Oct. 7, when the terrorist group that rules Gaza murdered 1,200 people in southern Israel and kidnapped over 250 hostages, launching the ongoing war in the Palestinian enclave.
The post Turkey’s Erdogan Sends ‘Best Wishes’ to Iran After Israel Strike, Continues Fierce Criticism of Jewish State first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove salutes the Jewish-Canadian woman who made the first Remembrance Day poppies
The poppies that we wear at this time of year are our visual pledge to remember the brave Canadian soldiers who served and sacrificed to preserve and defend our democracy. […]
The post Treasure Trove salutes the Jewish-Canadian woman who made the first Remembrance Day poppies appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Hasidic Man Attacked in Third Antisemitic Assault in Brooklyn in Eight Days
An antisemitic hate crime spree in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York struck its latest victim on Wednesday, wreaking an “excruciating” beating on a middle-aged Hasidic man.
According to Yaacov Behrman, a liaison for Chabad Headquarters — the main New York base of the Hasidic movement — the victim was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery.
“The victim is in excruciating pain and is currently in the emergency room,” Behrman tweeted. “The police are investigating the incident.”
A Chasidic man was beaten in Crown Heights tonight near Utica and President at approximately 7:30pm. The assailants, one was wearing a mask, demanded the victim’s phone, but when he refused, they chased him and beat him. The victim is in excruciating pain and is currently in the… pic.twitter.com/s4mn1K6HtV
— Yaacov Behrman (@ChabadLubavitch) November 7, 2024
The perpetrators were two Black teenagers, according to COLlive.com, an Orthodox Jewish news outlet.
Tuesday’s attack was the third time in eight days that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. In each case, the assailant was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
On Monday morning, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish Crown Heights neighborhood
Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.
Numerous antisemitic hate crimes have occurred in Crown Heights in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face. Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.
According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Meanwhile, according to a recent Algemeiner review of New York City Police Department (NYPD) hate crimes data, 385 antisemitic hate crimes have struck the New York City Jewish community since last October, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas perpetrated its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, unleashing a wave of anti-Jewish hatred unlike any seen in the post-World War II era.
Beyond New York, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US spiked to a record high last year, and American Jews were the most targeted of any religious group in the country, according to a report published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hasidic Man Attacked in Third Antisemitic Assault in Brooklyn in Eight Days first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Huge Victory’: Netanyahu Calls Trump to Congratulate Him on Election Win
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called US President-elect Donald Trump to congratulate him on his victory in the US presidential election earlier this week.
“Netanyahu spoke to President-elect Donald Trump and was among the first to call to congratulate him for his victory,” the Prime Minister’s office said on Wednesday. “The conversation was warm and cordial, and the two agreed to work together for Israel’s security and discussed the Iranian threat.”
During Trump’s first term, his administration had a “maximum pressure” policy with regard to Iran, aimed at making it more difficult for the country to make a nuclear weapon and fund its terror proxies — such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis — across the Middle East.
However, some observers are concerned the incoming US administration will not be as strong on the Iranian threat as it was in its first term. Late last month, US Vice President-elect JD Vance said on a podcast that the US and Israel can at times have conflicting interests and warned that Washington should seek to avoid a war with Iran, the Jewish state’s chief adversary in the Middle East.
“Israel has the right to defend itself, but America’s interest is sometimes going to be distinct — like sometimes we’re going to have overlapping interests and sometimes we’re going to have distinct interests. And our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran,” Vance said.
He then argued that a war with Iran “would be [a] huge distraction of resources; it would be massively expensive to our country.”
In addition to the phone call, Netanyahu’s office will also reportedly announce “the appointment of a new ambassador to Washington who will work with the new Trump administration” within the next 24 hours, according to Axios reporter Barack Ravid.
Netanyahu was the first world leader to congratulate Trump on his victory.
“Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback!” he wrote on X/Twitter. “Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.”
He added, “This is a huge victory!”
During Trump’s first term, he and Netanyahu were close allies, working together to sign the Abraham Accords and move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. However, their relationship reportedly strained when Netanyahu congratulated then-US President-elect Joe Biden on his victory against Trump while Trump was still actively disputing the results of the election.
“The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with,” Trump reportedly said at the time. “Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.”
“I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty,” he added. “The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape.”
Heading into Trump’s second term, there have not been indications that this tension still lingers.
The post ‘Huge Victory’: Netanyahu Calls Trump to Congratulate Him on Election Win first appeared on Algemeiner.com.