Erdogan Spreads Wild Fantasies About a Supposed Threat From Israel
The U.S. and other NATO members are courting Erdogan:
Turkey’s Erdogan is waging war on the West and Israel
– NATO must not ignore it – opinion
by David M. Weinberg, Jerusalem Post, July 4, 2026:
Erdogan said, “When we fight Zionism, we are not conducting a personal struggle for ourselves. We are conducting this struggle for our own survival and for the collective survival of our nation. Zionism threatens not only me, not only our party, and not only our alliance, but everyone.”
Zionism, in Erdogan’s view, “threatens everyone” in the world. And what do you do to such a threat? Why, you must destroy it completely. You annihilate the Jewish state, and expel or kill its Jewish inhabitants. Judea delenda est is his murderous motto.
Satanic reversal means Erdogan has completely reversed the truth in that Israel is no threat to anyone that is not a threat to them. Islam is the threat to the world, not Zionism. But, as I have been saying for a couple of years now, Erdogan is looking for an elegant way to enter the Middle East war.
Then he hit back at Israel for formally recognizing the Armenian genocide by escalating his oft-repeated false accusations of Israeli genocide: Israel being “a country that has the blood of 73,000 innocent Gazans, most of them children and women, on its hands.”…
Of the 73,000 people who have died in Gaza since October 8, 2023, all of whom Erdogan describes as “innocent” victims of Israel’s “genocide,” we know the following. About 25,000-30,000 were terrorist members of Hamas, with some — not many — belonging to, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Another 2,000 were the estimated number of Gazans that the IDF did not kill. The Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched missiles from Gaza that misfired and fell short in the Strip itself, killing civilians. Most of those missiles that Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched fell short and killed Gazans.
In one memorable example, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad missile struck a parking lot next to the Al-Ahli Hospital, killing — according to Hamas — 471 people. In addition, there have been deaths in Gaza from natural causes —cancer, heart disease , COVID, diabetes, accidents, and so on. How many? Some calculate that natural deaths in a population of 2 million over a 2.5-year period amount to 39,000-41,500. This estimate is calculated using typical crude mortality rates of ~ 8.5 to 9.5 per 1,000 people.
But that strikes me as much too high. The head of the statistics team at Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry, Zaher al-Wahidi, says that about 5,000 Gazans have died each year from natural causes; over the 2 ½ years since the Gaza war began, that would mean 12,500 Gazans died of such non-combat related causes. Now, let’s do the math for Erdogan, who accuses Israel of “genocide.” 73,000 total deaths minus 30,000 Hamas combatants killed equals 43,000. 43,000 minus 2,000 killed by misfired missiles that landed in Gaza equals 41,000. 41,000 minus 12,500 (natural deaths) equals 28,500, the total number of non-combatants who have died in Gaza as a result of the war. Erdogan insists that the IDF has killed “73,000 innocent civilians.” His math is way off.
But speaking in his playacting parliament, the Turkish tyrant said Israel’s military actions in Syria and Lebanon have escalated to a level that could endanger Turkey, warning that Israeli “aggression” poses a threat to the entire world and must be stopped.
How could Israel’s military action in Lebanon or Syria endanger Turkey? In Israel, the only reason the IDF has taken and is holding onto some Lebanese territory is to push the terror group Hezbollah further away from the border with Israel, so that its missiles will have a harder time reaching northern Israel. Israel and the Lebanese government are on the same side — both want Hezbollah to be disarmed and dismantled. How does that endanger Turkey?
As for Syria, the Israelis now control a small enclave inside Syria is because of fears that terror groups, at encouragement of the jihadist regime of Al-Sharaa, will attack Israeli villages. And another goal of the IDF is to support the Druze in Sweida governorate south of Damascus and the Kurds in northeastern Syria. It is this last — Israeli military support for the Kurds — that most infuriates Erdogan.
Let the NATO members remind Turkey that it is an alliance of democracies, and his authoritarianism, grading into despotism, is fast making Turkey an odd man out. He should be told that his support for Iran, a country at war with the West, that openly declares its hatred of America (“Death, death to America”) is unacceptable. His menacing posture toward Greece, a fellow member of NATO, must stop. And his annihilationist threats toward Israel are deeply distressing. Israel is not a member of NATO, but it is a founding member, one could say, of Western civilization.
Meanwhile, Senators, make sure you prevent Trump’s mad plan to sell Turkey a squadron of F-35 fighter jets from being realized.
