Erdogan: Israel defies whole world

Published January 16th, 2009 - 12:48 GMT

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Israel had defied the whole world by attacking the United Nations HQ in Gaza at a time when UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was in Israel. "Israel does not care about UN resolutions. Then I ask: How a country that does not care about UN resolutions can enter to its buildings? How can you say "UN Security Council's desicions are indisputable, and then close your eyes to this massacre?" Erdoğan said.

 

He renewed his call to Israel to stop this war "before more innocent individuals and children lose lives and families get devastated," and talked about his visit to Gazans in Turkish hospitals.

 

"I visited some of the injured Palestanians who were brought to Turkey from Gaza on Tuesday. I'm not able to express what my eyes had seen. Some of the injured are completely paralyzed, some of them lost their both legs. Above all, there was a young woman who lost her one-month old baby who said "even if we cannot get anything to eat from anywhere, we would eat leaves on the trees to continue our fight until martyrdom".

 

"Israeli soldiers bomb civillian targets, hospitals, schools. There could be no justification for this atrocity. Who can explain why those young boys, women, elderly and children got shot? Even war has its laws. Every religion considers human life is sacred. In Talmud, sixth of the ten commandments is you shall not kill".

 

Speaking at a meeting in the AK Party headquarters in Ankara, Erdogan said that Israel was actually ridiculing with the whole world with its acts in Gaza. "The world's silence is worse and painful than Israeli attrocity. Israel even bombs UN indifferently. World watches this tragedy. European Union just watches it. Muslim world is fragmanted in bits. I want to make a call to the whole world: Do not close your eyes to this brutality and do not remain silent in the face of this massacre. Those who remain silent and do not react would be partners of this wrongful act of Israel," Erdogan said.