If the Turkish government is acting irrationally nowadays, then the Israeli government -or at least a key part of it- is sheer crazy.
Right after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Turkish warships will escort any Turkish aid vessels to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the far-rightist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman decided to arm the PKK, a terrorist organization according to the US, EU and Turkey.
Erdoğan's aggressive policy package was dubbed as "Plan C" and Lieberman's response is called "the plan to punish Turkey."
Ynet News is full of hateful comments against Turkey and Turks, but there are sane people, too. Oliver from Australia is one of them, who writes:
"Israel don't be stupid. You are not a simple country. You are only giving more fuel to Turkey. You know very well that giving political support to a political arm of a terrorist organisation is different to physically providing weapons to an internationally recognised terror organisation such as the PKK. You also know very well that this will never be allowed by the EU or NATO as it forms a pretext for other countries supporting the IRA and ETA."
The most terrifying aspect of this crisis is the difference in public opinion: When I check the readers' comments on the websites of Israeli newspapers, I observe more racists and bigots, comparing to the Turkish ones. I don't believe that this is a reflection of the difference between Turks and Israelis. The ratio of the racists and bigots in the society should be roughly the same for any country in the world, including Turkey and Israel.
It just shows that racists and bigots are more insolent in Israel nowadays, because of the obvious decay in Israeli democracy. Such a decay was made possible only by the widening gap between rich and poor in Israel, as well as the unstoppable rise of the far-right politicians, whose main constituencies are illegal settlements.
This is why there are lots of people in Israel who can comfortably praise the boldness of Lieberman, heralding him as the new prime minister of Israel. A potential prime minister who openly plans to arm an internationally-recognized terror organization.
It seems that Arab Spring is bringing democracy to Arabs, but taking it away from Israelis, who may be recycling the likes of Mubarak and Qaddafi in their own government soon.
