Apologies and Double Standards

The uproar sparked by the decision of Israeli deputy foreign minister Daniel Ayalon to treat the Turkish ambassador to a public tongue-lashing this week has been painful to behold. The Turkish Jewish community is quaking in fear of a new round of anti-Semitic violence, Shimon Peres has grovelled, and Mr. Ayalon has been forced to issue not one but two separate apologies to the Turks for the dressing-down he delivered about a horrifically anti-Israel Turkish television program and regular anti-Israel diatribes from Turkey’s increasingly Islamofascismophilic prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Israeli deputy foreign minister Daniel Ayalon.

Never mind that Jerusalem has spent years citing the strategic relationship between the two Middle Eastern nations as a proper reason for closing Israeli eyes and ears to the issue of the Armenian Genocide; and never mind Ankara’s continuing violations of the rights of its own Kurdish minority. Turkey for years was as close as the pariah Jewish State was going to get to an ally in a neighborhood of enemies, and it’s hard to fault her for stilling her otherwise less than reticent voice in order to keep it so.

But just for the record, Mr. Ayalon’s admonishments were completely righteous and completely deserved, as no one paying attention to the outbursts of Erdogan and the incidents of anti-Jewish violence that erupted in Turkey in response to the Israeli incursion into Gaza last year can deny.