Turkey’s leaders have become the “laughingstock of the international community
with their self-righteous discourse,” an Israeli official said on Monday in
response to yet another anti- Israel tirade by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu.
Turkey’s anti-Israel bashing continued unabated for a
third-straight day on Monday, with Davutoglu thrashing Israel for its
settlements policy and declaring that Israel was now a “pariah
state.”
The Turkish foreign minister, addressing a ministerial meeting of
the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Cairo, said that “Israel has
now been rendered by the international community a ‘pariah’ status for its
expanding illegal settlements.”
Referring to the recent United Nations
Human Rights Council report calling on Israel to evacuate all settlements,
Davutoglu said, “Time and again Israel has proven that it fails to read the
change happening not only around it, but also in the way its actions are
perceived by the international community.”
The Israeli official dismissed
the Turkish foreign minister’s comments as “brazen hypocrisy.”
“It is
rather quaint to be lectured about settlements from the representative of a
country which has ethnically cleansed the northern part of Cyprus and illegally
settled 200,000 Turks in that territory,” he said.
The recent
high-profile spate of Turkish Israel-bashing began Saturday with Davutoglu
publicly chiding Syria for not responding to Israel’s purported operation in
Syria, and Erdogan on Sunday saying Israel has “a mentality of waging state
terrorism.”
“Turkey’s double standard” has reached new heights, the
Israeli official said of the Turkish condemnation, noting that Ankara has
repeatedly carried out military action in Iraqi and Syrian territory, is
involved in the continued occupation of Cyprus and is “brutally muzzling
journalists who dare to displease the powers that be.”
Iran, meanwhile,
ratcheted up its bellicose rhetoric following the alleged action in Syria,
saying Israel would rue its air strikes.
“They will regret this recent
aggression,” Saeed Jalili, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security
Council, told a news conference in Damascus a day after holding talks there with
President Bashar Assad.
One Israeli official in the Prime Minister’s
Office responded to the threats by saying that Israel had no illusions “about
Iranian hostile intentions, and they don’t need an excuse to target
Israel.”
Jalili likened Israel’s attack to previous conflicts, including
the 34-day Second Lebanon War in 2006, all battles that he said Israel had lived
to regret.
“Today, too, both the people and the government of Syria are
serious regarding the issue. And also the Islamic community is supporting
Syria,” he said.
Jalili said Iran, in its current role as head of the
Non- Aligned Movement, would work on Syria’s behalf on the international stage in response to the attack.
The New York Times on Monday, citing American officials sorting through intelligence reports, said SA-17 Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and their launchers on transport trucks were hit in Wednesday’s raid, as well as the country’s main research center for work on chemical and biological weapons.
The center, the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, is – according to the report – a training site for engineers working on chemical and biological weapons and is part of a military complex protected by Russian anti-aircraft defense systems.
Reuters contributed to this report.