ISRAEL TO PROTEST TO TURKEY OVER TV SHOW PORTRAYING ITS TROOPS MURDERING CHILDREN
Gaea Times (blog)
Bureau News
October 14th, 2009
Israel: Turkish TV paints troops as child-killers
JERUSALEM — Israel’s foreign minister has ordered ministry officials
to summon Turkey’s ambassador in Israel and protest to him over a
Turkish TV series that reportedly portrays Israeli soldiers murdering
children, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
It was the latest twist in worsening relations between the two
Mediterranean countries which have traditionally had close defense
ties.
A statement quoted Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman as saying that
the program, screened by Turkish state TV, constituted incitement
against Israel "at the most grave level."
Israel TV screened a clip Wednesday evening it said was from the
series, showing an actor dressed as an Israeli soldier taking aim at
a smiling young girl and shooting her in the chest from point-blank
range.
Israeli army radio said the show, about the tribulations of a
Palestinian family, was aired Tuesday on Turkey’s TRT One channel and
also depicted troops killing a Palestinian newborn delivered after
its mother went into labor at an Israeli roadblock.
"A series like this, which has not the slightest connection with
reality, which presents Israeli soldiers as the murderers of innocent
children, would not be appropriate for broadcast even in an enemy
country and certainly not in a state which maintains diplomatic
relations with Israel," Lieberman said in the statement.
Muslim Turkey’s ties with Israel have deteriorated since Israel’s
January offensive against Islamic militants in the Gaza Strip, which
killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
Last week Ankara canceled an international military exercise in which
Israeli pilots were to have taken part.
Earlier Wednesday Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak sought to
downplay the rift and said the cancellation did not signal a long-term
deterioration in Israeli-Turkish relations.
He called the Turkish t of "the ups and downs" of a relationship and
stressed that the two countries’ ties are "long-standing, important
and strategic in nature."