Im Tirtzu, a youthful grassroots activist group which claims to represent the “silent Zionist majority” in Israel, held a vigil outside the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv Friday to protest recent Turkish moves against Israel and the screening of a television show that portrays IDF soldiers as cold blooded child-killers. The demonstrators protested against what they said were the Turkish government's “lies and hypocrisy” regarding Israel. "On the one hand, the Turks continue to deny the Holocaust which they perpetrated against the Armenians between the years 1915 and 1918, and in the same breath they dare to spread blood libels and lies about the State of Israel and the IDF, and accuse us of supposedly committing war crimes and murdering Palestinian children,”Im Tirtzu stated. "We came here in order to convey a clear message that would expose the extent of the Turks' hypocrisy,” said Amit Barak, Im Tirtzu's deputy director. “They continue to deny the genocide they committed against the Armenians, they brutally suppress the Kurdish people and the produce and anti-Semitic series that is reminiscent of 1930s Germany. Yet in the same breath they are not ashamed to preach to us regarding a justified war against terror and Hamas crimes,” he added. Several members of the Turkish delegation came out of the embassy building and engaged Im Tirtzu activists in conversation, but they all returned to the embassy a few minutes later and from that point on, contented themselves with gazing at the event from their windows. Among the demonstrators were Israelis of Turkish-Jewish birth who spoke with the Turkish representatives. They said that the Turks had busied themselves with “evasion and denial” and had claimed that the Turkish government was not responsible for producing the series that was aired this week.
