Israel Matzav

Who knows better how to kill?

Remember when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed past Shimon Peres in Davos in 2009? One of the things Erdogan said to Peres that day was "Jews know well how to kill" and a corollary that Muslims don't kill each other. Hurriyet's Burak Bekdil questioned the truth of that statement in an article here which I blogged here. Now, he's supplemented the previous article with another one about Syria.

All the same, someone else could have simply asked: “I am addressing Turkey’s good Muslim rulers: I do not know if you are worthy of being called good Muslims. Have you said a single thing about what happened in Sudan? About what is happening in Bahrain? Which religion is the perpetrator of never-ending murders in the Middle East and North Africa (including Syria)? Why do Muslims kill other Muslims en masse, then turn around and tell the entire world that ‘Muslims don’t kill?’ What is the world’s real Muslim population if all of these killings have been perpetrated by non-Muslims?”

Why did thousands of Turks who gathered in a demonstration to protest the Khojaly massacre of 1992 praise and semantically impersonate Ogün Samast, the killer of Turkish journalist of Armenian origin Hrant Dink? Why did they shout “You are all Armenians, you are all bastards?” Were those Turks, who were ready to butcher any Armenian in sight, Buddhists?

But according to Mr. Erdoğan, the too-visible hate-speech at that demonstration merely constituted an “isolated/individual incident.” In other words, none of the hate slogans, chants and placards at the gathering are worth investigating legally. Would Mr. Erdogan think the same if the same hate speech had been directed at Muslims or Turks? Are we not all equal before the law?

Mr. Erdogan is siding with the Syrians oppressed by the al-Assad regime. Perhaps he should lend an ear to one of the victims, a one-legged revolutionary singer undergoing medical treatment in safe Turkish territory. Time magazine quotes the man, one of the 300 who have fled to Turkey in the most recent wave of refugees, as saying: “We’d rather accept Israel than Bashar […] The Israelis didn’t do to the Palestinians what Bashar has done to Syria.”

Who, really, knows better how to kill?

No, the Israelis didn't - and don't - do anything of the sort to the 'Palestinians.' In fact, if anyone were inclined to look at it objectively, the Israelis are part of what is by far the most humane society in the Middle East - admittedly a standard by which I would not want to see us measured because everyone else is so poor in the human rights department.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Bashar al-Assad, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Syrian uprising, Turkey

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:55 PM