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Netanyahu condemns Turkish invasion: We are prepared to assist ‘gallant Kurdish people’

“Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people,” said the prime minister in a statement.

By World Israel News Staff  

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he “strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies.”

In a statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, Netanyahu added that “Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people.”

Amid the close relationship with President Donald Trump, Israeli officials appear apprehensive to criticize his decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and lay the groundwork for a Turkish incursion against the Kurds. However, the relationship between Israel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been stormy.

“I feel like a Kurd today,” Dore Gold, former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations and a past foreign-policy adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told The New York Times in an interview published on Tuesday.

In addition to their fears about the Turkish president’s intentions regarding the Kurds, alarm bells are sounding among Israeli officials over the concern that if the U.S. president could leave the Kurds to their own devices against Erdoğan, who views them as terrorists, what would happen if Trump decides one day that helping Israel in its fight against Iran, or regarding some other crucial issue for the Jewish State, does not serve his own domestic interests.

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MK Gideon Saar, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party who views himself as a challenger to the incumbent prime minister’s leadership, tweeted that “the events in northern Syria are worrisome.”

He urged the Israeli government to speak out as a “moral voice against Erdogan’s aggression and the harm to the Kurds.” He, too, called for providing “humanitarian assistance.”

“The Kurds are the largest nation in the world without a state,” tweeted former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who currently heads a parliamentary faction willing to be a part of a Netanyahu governing majority on the heels of the September 17 Knesset election.

“An ancient people,” Shaked wrote. “They deserve a state.”

She added that the Kurds were “the main force that fought against ISIS… the West must stand at their side.”

Turkey’s Defense Ministry said earlier on Thursday that it had attacked 181 targets in north-eastern Syria and Turkish ground troops continue to advance against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.