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Turkish President Erdogan Calls Netanyahu ‘Worse Than Hitler’ in Angry Speech Attacking Israel

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressing a pro-Hamas rally in Istanbul, Oct. 23, 2023. Photo: Reuters/Umit Turhan Coskun

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday delivered one of the most viscerally hostile speeches against Israel during a long career of demonizing the Jewish state and insulting its leaders.

Speaking at a science awards ceremony in Ankara, Erdogan accused Israel of operating “Nazi” concentration camps and compared his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler.

“We’ve seen the Nazi camps of Israel. How does this happen? They used to talk about Hitler, but how are you any different than Hitler?” Erdogan ranted, encountering a round of loud applause as he added, “This is even worse than Hitler. What Netanyahu is doing is worse than what Hitler did.”

Erdogan went on to observe that “Netanyahu is richer than Hitler. He takes support from the West, he receives all kinds of support from the US, and with all that support, 20,000 Gazans have been killed.”

Erdogan also addressed the impact of the war in Gaza internationally, leaping to the defense of US university presidents under fire for allegedly ignoring or downplaying a wave of antisemitism since the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel, and criticizing Germany for its support of Israel.

“Can you imagine that university presidents are being questioned and held accountable in [the US] Congress just because they advocate for the rights of children, women, and civilians?” he asked, referring to the controversial appearances of the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before a congressional committee earlier this month.

Turning his attention to Germany, Erdogan asserted that guilt over the Nazi Holocaust was effectively censoring German criticism of Israel’s military response.

“That’s why Germany remains silent,” he said, “but we don’t owe anyone. We have no debts, it is the West that owes. Because of its debt, it cannot speak up.”

Reacting to Erdogan’s speech, Netanyahu told the Turkish leader to hold his lectures in no uncertain terms.

“Erdogan, who commits genocide against the Kurds, who holds a world record for imprisoning journalists who oppose his rule, is the last one who can preach morality to us,” Netanyahu posted on X/Twitter.

Erdogan has made the comparison between Israel and the Nazis before. During the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, he drew an exact equivalence between Israel and the Nazi regime. “I don’t approve of what Hitler did, and neither do I approve of what Israel has done,” he said. “When it’s a question of so many people dying, it’s inappropriate to ask who was the more barbarous.”

As well as attacking Israel in the weeks since the Oct. 7 atrocities, effectively destroying a tentative detente between Ankara and Jerusalem over the past two years, Erdogan has lauded the Hamas terror group as “an organization of liberation, of mujahedeen, who fight to protect their land and citizens.”

The post Turkish President Erdogan Calls Netanyahu ‘Worse Than Hitler’ in Angry Speech Attacking Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

i24 NewsFinance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”

Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”

The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.

“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”

The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30

A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

i24 NewsThe Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.

During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.

The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”

Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.

“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”

The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS

i24 NewsOver 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.

Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.

The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.

The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.

The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.

The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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