Fidan said that “the international system must fight against the threat posed by Netanyahu.”
By Joshua Marks, JNS
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Monday accused his Turkish counterpart of spreading “lies and blood libels” against the Jewish state after Hakan Fidan called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “criminal” who must be stopped.
Speaking at a gathering on the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement in Istanbul earlier in the day, Fidan said that “this criminal, Netanyahu, who takes pleasure in shedding Palestinian blood and Muslim blood, must now be stopped.”
He also accused the Israeli premier of pursuing a “genocidal and occupying approach” and said that “the international system must fight against the threat posed by Netanyahu.”
Responding in a post on X, Sa’ar wrote that Fidan “continues … to spread lies and blood libels against Israel,” in the service of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Rejecting Fidan’s genocide accusation, Sa’ar said that “it is the Turkish regime that hosts and supports the Hamas terrorist organization, which committed a genocidal massacre against Israelis on Oct. 7,” referring to the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Erdoğan’s regime invades other countries, suppresses and imprisons opposition leaders, and arrests judges and journalists — with yet another journalist arrested just today,” Sa’ar continued.
“To divert attention from all of this, it resorts to the oldest trick in the antisemitic playbook: making false accusations against Jews and the Jewish state,” he wrote.
The remarks marked the latest escalation in an ongoing war of words between Jerusalem and Ankara. Jerusalem on Saturday condemned Erdoğan for antisemitic incitement after he branded Zionism a “genocidal ideology,” invoked the Holocaust in attacks on the Jewish state and urged Muslim countries to unite against Israel.
On Friday, Erdoğan said that Israel’s government was attempting to destabilize the region and claimed that “the genocidal ideology known as Zionism targets everyone who defends humanitarian values.”
Referring to Nazi Germany and the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, Erdoğan said that civilians had paid the price for international inaction against “Hitler, Pol Pot and other crazed oppressors.”
“Millions of people from various origins and faiths were subjected to genocide in Hitler’s concentration camps and Pol Pot’s killing fields,” he said. “Humanity, unfortunately, just stood idly by and watched what unfolded. The same mistake is being repeated today in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon,” he continued. “The world is failing to adequately react to the genocidal network’s lawless policies that recognize no principles, values and limits.”
The Turkish leader also urged Muslim countries not to rely on outside powers.
“I believe that it must now be understood that we as Muslims cannot achieve anything by pinning our hopes on others,” said Erdoğan. “We have to be strong and deterrent, defending our rights together and building peace and security in our region together.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in response on Saturday that Erdoğan was seeking “new heights of wild incitement against the Jewish state in an attempt to divert attention from his actions against his own people and across the region.”
The ministry accused the Turkish leader of imprisoning political opponents, supporting the Hamas terrorist organization and invading neighboring countries.
“Like the worst antisemites in history, Erdoğan seeks to deflect attention from his own disgraceful actions by spreading false blood libels,” the ministry said.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry rejected Jerusalem’s response, accusing Netanyahu and his government of genocide in Gaza. It also said that Israeli institutions operated “in a manner similar to Goebbels’s propaganda machine,” referring to Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism lists “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” among examples that may constitute antisemitism.
The Israeli government defines Zionism as “the national movement espousing repatriation of Jews to their homeland—the Land of Israel—and the resumption of sovereign Jewish life there.”
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