Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls out Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan on ‘dark, libelous’ characterization of Zionism.

The Israeli leader condemned the Turkish PM for his claim that Jewish nationalism is a “crime against humanity,” rejecting comparisons with fascism, the ideology that inspired the Holocaust – of which Europe’s Jews were the primary target.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu labeled Wednesday’s statement by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as “dark and libelous.”

“I strongly condemn the comparison that the Turkish prime minister drew between Zionism and fascism,”Netanyahu was quoted as saying by Haaretz, adding that he “thought that such dark and libelous comments were a thing of the past.”

Netanyahu was responding to a speech by Erdogan at the opening of the fifth United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in Vienna on Wednesday, where in passing the Turkish leader compared modern Zionism to fascism, in the way it treats Muslims.

“Just like Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, it becomes unavoidable that Islamophobia must be regarded as a crime against humanity,” Erdogan said in his address to high-ranking officials including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Following the speech, UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization that monitors the treatment of Israel and Jews in general in the UN, asked Ban Ki-moon to condemn the speech and called on Erdogan to apologize for the statement, which it described as an “Ahmedinejad-style pronouncement.”

“We remind Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon that his predecessor Kofi Annan recognized that the UN’s 1975 Zionism-is-racism resolution was an expression of anti-Semitism, and he welcomed its repeal,” the lobby group stated.

The group argued that such statements by the Turkish leader “will only strengthen the belief that his government is hewing to a confrontational stance, and fundamentally unwilling to end its four-year-old feud with Israel.”

In its request to the UN General Secretary, UN Watch was referring to a November 1975 General Assembly resolution which said that Zionism, a multifaceted ideology that opposes the assimilation of Jews into other societies, was “a form of racism and racial discrimination.” In 1991 the resolution was repealed.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor called the Wednesday comments “hollow words that only reflect ignorance.”

“Zionism is the national movement of the Jewish people, and to deny any people their right to self-determination and to their national movement is absurd,” Palmor was quoted as saying by the Jerusalem Post. “We will not dignify such nonsense with any future comment.”

Turkey and Israel have been at diplomatic loggerheads since the Mavi Marmara flotilla raid in 2010, when Israeli commandoes stormed a humanitarian ship trying to bring aid to victims of the siege on Gaza. Israeli forces killed nine Turkish civilians in the ordeal.