‘Dictator’ v ‘tyrant’: Erdogan & Netanyahu trade insults in public spat over who is worse… again

There is no love lost between leaders of Israel and Turkey. This week, they engaged in their latest public spat, trying to determine which of them is a worse oppressor of people.

The latest exchange of insults stems from comments by Benjamin Netanyahu, who attacked Israeli TV presenter Rotem Sela for calling on viewers to sympathize with Arab Israelis. The prime minister rebuffed the comments, saying that “Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the Nation-State Law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and them alone.”

The apparently discriminatory remark made waves inside Israel and attracted some scalding rebukes, like those from Israeli Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot. A spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided to have a say too, condemning the “blatant racism and discrimination” on Twitter last Tuesday.

Netanyahu fired back at Turkey and its leadership early on Wednesday. “Turkey’s dictator Erdogan attacks Israel’s democracy while Turkish journalists and judges fill his prisons. What a joke!”

Erdogan’s spokesman responded by calling Israel an apartheid state on Wednesday. His boss also got personally involved in the spat, berating Netanyahu during a rally speech. “Hey Netanyahu, behave yourself. You are a tyrant, you are a tyrant who massacred seven-year-old Palestinian children,” Erdogan said.

The two Middle-Eastern leaders have sparred verbally in pretty much the same manner on previous occasions. In December last year, Netanyahu called Erdogan the “occupier of northern Cyprus,” while the latter retaliated by calling his opponent “the head of state terror.”

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