Thousands of pro-Hamas rioters in Istanbul, Turkey, massed outside the Israeli consulate on Monday night and threw firebombs at the building, eventually sparking a fire near the consulate grounds.
The violent demonstration was held in response to Israel’s airstrike against top Hamas commanders in the Gaza Strip city of Rafah on Sunday. Hamas officials claimed up to 40 civilians were killed in the attack, with dozens more injured. The Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank denounced the attack as a “heinous massacre” and accused the Israelis of “deliberately targeting” civilians.
Reports of the protest and fire came through pro-Palestinian media, which strove to present the protest as huge and the fire as devastating, although local reports made the fire seem small and somewhat distant from the Israeli consulate building.
Demonstrations were also reported near the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul, where marchers carried banners reading, “Free Palestine” and “Down with Israel, Collaborator U.S.”
Protesters chant anti-Israel slogans during a protest in solidarity with Gaza outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
Relations between Turkey and Israel have deteriorated sharply since Hamas launched the Gaza war on October 7. Turkey halted all bilateral trade with Israel in May, a move Israel criticized as a violation of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.
On Monday, Turkey’s authoritarian Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, condemned the Israeli airstrike on Rafah in harsh terms, comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, a comparison he has made before.
“Sunday’s attack on Rafah, which came after the International Court of Justice’s [ICJ] order, has exposed the treacherous and bloody nature of the terror state,” Erdogan railed, referring to the ICJ’s order on Friday for Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive” in Rafah.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici, File)
The ICJ has no power to enforce such orders; it also ordered Russia to halt military operations in Ukraine in March 2022, for example.
“The embattled Netanyahu and his murderous network [are] trying to extend [their] grip on power by massacring people as they fail to defeat Palestinian resistance,” Erdogan said on Monday.
“Netanyahu won’t be able to save himself from being lamented like Milosevic, Karadzic, and Hitler, who he is imitating,” the Turkish president sneered.
Anti-Israel demonstrations have been held in Turkey since the early days of the Gaza war. Less than two weeks after the October 7 Hamas massacre, Turkish protesters filled the streets in response to a false Hamas claim that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza, a hoax Erdogan also accepted without question.
