Turkey on Friday announced that it had issued arrest warrants for genocide against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior officials in his government over the war in Gaza.
The announcement was met with a firm rebuttal from Israel. Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar said Israel “firmly rejects, with contempt” the charges, calling them “the latest PR stunt by the tyrant [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan.”
The Istanbul prosecutor’s office said in a statement that 37 suspects were targeted by the arrest warrants, without providing a full list.
Photo: EPA
They include Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Chief of the General Staff Eyal Zamir.
Turkey has accused the officials of “genocide and crimes against humanity” that Israel has “perpetrated systematically” in Gaza.
The statement also refers to the “Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital,” built by Turkey in the Gaza Strip and bombed by Israel in March.
Turkey, which has been one of the most vocal critics of the war in Gaza, last year joined South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice.
A fragile ceasefire has been in force in the devastated Palestinian territory since Oct. 10 as part of US President Donald Trump’s regional peace plan.
The Muslim militant group Hamas welcomed Turkey’s announcement, calling it a “commendable measure [confirming] the sincere positions of the Turkish people and their leaders, who are committed to the values of justice, humanity and fraternity that bind them to our oppressed Palestinian people.”
Saar said in his post in English on the social media platform X that “in Erdogan’s Turkey, the judiciary has long since become a tool for silencing political rivals and detaining journalists, judges and mayors.”
The Istanbul prosecutor’s office “recently orchestrated the arrest of the Mayor of Istanbul merely for daring to run against Erdogan,” he said, referring to Ekrem Imamoglu, who was detained in March.
Separately, an Israeli hostage who was released last month has told an Israeli television channel he was subjected to sexual violence during his two-year captivity in Gaza by Palestinian militants — the first male hostage to publicly make such an accusation.
Rom Braslavski, 21, who was abducted from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, made the allegation in an interview with Channel 13’s Hazinor program.
Describing being stripped naked and tied up while in captivity, he also recounted actions by one of his captors, saying: “It was sexual violence, and its main purpose was humiliation. Its goal was to humiliate me, to crush my dignity.”
He said it was hard for him to talk about the experience.
“I was praying to God, like: ‘Please save me, get me out of this already,’” he said in the interview as he held back tears.
Braslavski was held by Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group allied with Hamas which also took hostages in the 2023 attack. While he was in captivity, Islamic Jihad released a video of a skeletal and weeping Braslavski in which he appeared to be in pain.
Asked by Reuters for comment, an Islamic Jihad official said Braslavski’s allegation about sexual abuse was “incorrect” without elaborating.
An Israeli government spokesperson told journalists in a daily online briefing that Braslavski’s account was “living testimony” of what she described as the true nature of Gaza’s militant groups.
At least four women held as hostages have spoken publicly about incidents of sexual abuse against themselves or fellow captives.
In March last year, a team of UN experts reported that it also found what it described as clear and convincing information that some of the hostages taken to Gaza were subjected to sexual violence.
Hamas, which held most of the hostages, has denied the allegations.
Rights groups, including Israeli ones, have documented abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons during the war, including sexual violence.
Israel is investigating dozens of suspected abuse cases, but denies systematic abuse.
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