Lieberman, Hero of Kurds and Armenians

I've lost count already of all the reasons why Israel's foreign minister should be fired. Now reason number trillion and something has been born out of the crisis with Turkey. Lieberman isn't responsible for the crisis, and I even agree with him that we should not apologize or pay restitution to those who were looking for a fight. However, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's crazy talk about sending Turkish battleships to escort future flotillas to Gaza has made Lieberman talk just as crazy. He proposed a plan to aide Kurdish rebels in Turkish Kurdistan.

So many things are wrong with this. First of all, Prime Minister Netanyahu told cabinet members not to say a word about Turkey. He wants to lower the flames as much as possible without apologizing. Good idea. But what is to be done when the foreign minister goes rogue (again)? He'd be fired from a normal government. With the government we have, he'll stay in his position, and Ehud Barak will be sent to explain to the world that Lieberman's policies are not the official policies of Israel.

I can't claim to know much about the Kurdish situation. I don't know how similar it is to the Palestinian situation, but one thing is clear to me. What's the difference between one kind of terrorism and another? If Kurdish terror is fine, so is Palestinian terror.

Besides all that, we need Turkey as an ally. Though it doesn't seem that way, we just might salvage these relations some day. We shouldn't further alienate the Turks.

Lieberman's proposal has one part I do endorse. He wants to recognize the Armenian genocide during World War I. I just don't think this move should be presented as punishment of the Turks. The Ottoman Empire did indeed conduct a genocide against the Armenians, and it is only just that we not deny that fact.