Israel has outdone Hitler: Turkish president
Erdogan said Israel is carrying out massacres in Gaza and West Bank that are marks of shame in history
Ankara, Turkey - By killing over 14,000 innocent children in Gaza, Israel has already outdone Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, the Turkish president said on Wednesday.
With unconditional support from the West, Israel is carrying out massacres that are marks of shame in human history, both in Gaza and the West Bank, Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a Justice and Development (AK) Party group meeting in the Turkish parliament. Saying that no one can question Turkey’s sensitivity to the Palestinian issue, Erdogan added that the Palestinian cause gave his life new meaning.
“As long as God grants me life, I will continue to defend the struggle of Palestine, and will be the voice of the oppressed Palestinian people,” Erdogan added.
Comparing the struggle of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas to the Turkish War of Independence over 100 years ago, Erdogan said: “We are well aware that there is a price to pay for saying this.”
56 more Palestinians killed in Gaza
A total of 33,899 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since last October, the Health Ministry in the besieged enclave said on Wednesday.
The Gaza-based Health Ministry made the statement as the Israeli deadly onslaught on Gaza
entered its 194th day.
The ongoing onslaughts have also injured 76,664 Palestinians, it added.
It noted that in the past 24 hours, Israel committed six massacres against families across the Gaza Strip that left 56 fatalities, and 89 wounded who arrived in the hospitals.
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.
The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85 per cent of the territory’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while over 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian official on Wednesday said the number of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails since October 7 has increased by 130 per cent.
Speaking to Anadolu, Qaddoura Fares, head of the Prisoners and Ex-prisoners Affairs Authority, described the situation of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails as ‘catastrophic and extremely dangerous’.
He noted that the detainees are exposed to torture and systematic assaults, and that ‘the journey of torture starts from the moment of storming into the house and assaulting the detainee and the family, and sabotaging the house properties’.
He said the past winter was the most difficult winter season for the detainees as the Israeli prison authorities deprived them of proper clothes and blankets, as well as regularly stripping them of their clothes.
The Palestinian official added that the number of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails before October 7 was nearly 5,000, but now the number is expected to reach 12,000, including the detainees from Gaza.
Saying that no one can question Turkey’s sensitivity to the Palestinian issue, at an AK party meeting, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan added that the Palestinian cause gave his life a new meaning