Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reportedly called for the destruction of Israel during Eid al-Fitr prayers at the Çamlıca Mosque in Istanbul on Sunday.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Erdoğan said ‘May Allah, for the sake of his name ‘Al-Qahhar,’ destroy and devastate Zionist Israel.’ His call for the annihilation of the Jewish state has drawn fierce condemnation, particularly from Israeli officials.

In response to his remarks, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar stated on X, ‘The dictator Erdogan revealed his antisemitic face,’ adding that ‘Erdogan is dangerous to the region, as well as to his own people, as has been proven in recent days,’ Sa’ar referred to the widespread protests in Turkey and added, ‘Let’s hope NATO members understand how dangerous he is, and not before it’s too late.’ 

Following his comments, Turkey’s foreign ministry issued a statement that read, in part, ‘We categorically reject the outrageous statement made by the Foreign Minister of the Netanyahu government.

‘These disrespectful and baseless allegations are part of an effort to cover up the crimes committed by Netanyahu and his associates,’ adding, ‘We will continue to stand by the innocent civilians targeted by Israel and to defend their rights.’

In a social media post, Israel’s foreign ministry demanded clarity on whether Erdoğan denies his antisemitic views, emphasizing the president’s problematic actions both domestically and internationally. 

‘What bothered the Turkish Foreign Ministry? Here’s a way to clarify the dictator’s words: Clearly state that Erdogan is not an antisemite, that he is not an obsessive hater of the Jewish state.’ 

The post underscores the growing concern over Erdoğan’s intentions toward Israel.

The tensions between Turkey and Israel go beyond Erdoğan’s support for Hamas, although that remains a central issue. Hamas, which carried out the brutal massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, has long had Turkish backing. Erdoğan’s refusal to denounce Hamas, describing them as a legitimate political party, has angered Israel and much of the international community.

The diplomatic relationship between Turkey and the U.S. has also been under scrutiny. While Turkey’s domestic actions, like cracking down on political opponents, including the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoglu, have sparked unprecedented protests, U.S. officials are attempting to stabilize relations. On March 26, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, discussing Turkey’s potential support for a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire and other geopolitical issues, despite recent internal turmoil.

‘Turkey’s strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan is facing the worst domestic political crisis of his career. The streets are flooded now with protesters who are outraged over the arrest of opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu, restrictions on the internet, and other authoritarian maneuvers,’ Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital.

‘To deflect, Erdogan has engaged in blistering rhetoric against Israel. This comes amidst Erdoğan’s unflinching financial and political support for Hamas since the October 7 war erupted, not to mention Erdoğan’s support for the al-Qaeda government in Syria, which also poses a threat to Israel,’ Schanzer said.

The tensions between Turkey and Israel are not limited to Hamas support. Erdoğan’s actions in Syria, where Turkey has backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who overthrew the Assad regime and gained control over parts of the country, have further strained relations with Israel, leading to growing concerns over Ankara’s role in fostering instability on Israel’s borders.

Before Erdoğan’s most recent threats against Israel, Trump administration officials had indicated that they may lift restrictions on defense contracts with Turkey, including the potential reinstatement of Turkey’s F-35 program participation. This comes after a phone call between Presidents Trump and Erdoğan on March 21, which may pave the way for a change in policy that could potentially allow the sale of the F-35s to Ankara.

As a NATO member, Turkey plays a pivotal role in the alliance’s security framework. 

The Taliban’s supreme leader said Sunday there is ‘no need’ for Western laws in Afghanistan, noting that democracy is dead as long as sharia laws are in place.

Hibatullah Akhundzada was speaking during a sermon marking Eid al-Fitr, an Islamic holiday, at the Eidgah Mosque in the southern city of Kandahar.

‘There is no need for laws that originate from the West. We will create our own laws,’ Akhundzada said as he emphasized the importance for Islamic laws, according to audio of his message that was published on X by the Taliban government’s chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

The Taliban’s interpretation of sharia has resulted in restrictions for Afghan women and girls, who have been denied an education, working roles in many job fields and from appearing in most public spaces.

These laws have isolated the Taliban in the international community, but they have still been able to establish diplomatic ties with some countries, including China and the United Arab Emirates.

Akhundzada has taken a stronger approach on policy since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in 2021 during the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from the region, despite some officials initially promising a more moderate government.

The terror group’s supreme leader criticized the West in his remarks on Sunday by saying non-believers were unified against Muslims and that the U.S. and other countries were united in their hostility toward Islam, pointing to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Akhundzada said democracy had come to an end in Afghanistan and sharia was in effect. He also argued that supporters of democracy were attempting to separate the people from the Taliban government.

The Taliban have no credible opposition inside or outside the country, although some senior figures within the government have criticized the leadership’s decision-making process and concentration of power in Akhundzada’s circle.

Some Taliban members want greater engagement on the world stage and to eliminate harsher policies to attract more support from outsiders.

In recent months, there has been increased engagement between the Taliban and the U.S. under President Donald Trump, mostly due to prisoner exchanges and releases.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Greenland’s prime minister said Sunday that the U.S. ‘will not get’ the resource-rich island in the Atlantic.

President Donald Trump wants to annex the self-governing territory of Denmark, a NATO ally of the United States, claiming it is needed for national security purposes.

‘President Trump says that the United States ‘will get Greenland.’ Let me be clear: The United States will not get it. We do not belong to anyone else. We decide our own future,’ Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a Facebook post.

Vice President JD Vance, second lady Usha Vance, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee visited Pituffik Space Base, the Department of Defense’s northernmost military installation, in Greenland on Friday. 

In a Saturday interview with NBC, Trump said that military force wasn’t off the table in regards to acquiring Greenland, according to the Associated Press.

‘I think there’s a good possibility that we could do it without military force,’ Trump said. ‘This is world peace, this is international security,’ he said, but added: ‘I don’t take anything off the table.’

Although the Danish territory has said it is seeking independence from Copenhagen but isn’t interested in becoming part of the U.S., Trump has repeatedly floated, dating back to his first administration, a desire to secure Greenland for the U.S. as Russian and Chinese presence grows in the Arctic. 

Polls have shown that nearly all Greenlanders oppose becoming part of the United States. Anti-American protesters, some wearing ‘Make America Go Away’ caps and holding ‘Yankees Go Home’ banners, have staged some of the largest demonstrations ever seen in Greenland.

Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan, Diana Stancy and The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. 

French politician Marine Le Pen and eight other members of her right-wing party were found guilty of embezzling public funds on Monday, and she herself was barred from running for public office.

The French court did not immediately announce how long Le Penn will be ineligible for office, and she stormed out of the courtroom before he finished reading her sentence. She is a top candidate to run for president in 2027, and Le Pen has said that prohibiting her from running in that election would be ‘political death.’

Le Pen has argued that such a sentence would also effectively disenfranchise her voters. She came in second place to French President Emmanuel Macron in both the 2017 and 2022 elections, and her National Rally party has grown massively in support in recent years.

‘There are 11 million people who voted for the movement I represent. So tomorrow, potentially, millions and millions of French people would see themselves deprived of their candidate in the election,’ Le Pen told the court prior to her sentencing.

The facts of her case relate to the spending of funds from the European Parliament to support aspects of the National Rally party. Prosecutors established in court that EU parliament funds were used to pay Le Pen’s bodyguard as well as her personal assistant. The other defendants were convicted of similar uses of the funding.

Prosecutors requested a 2-year prison sentence as well as a 5-year period of political ineligibility for Le Pen.

Le Pen said she felt they were ‘only interested’ in preventing her from running for president.

Le Pen and other right-wing figures have risen in Europe thanks in large part to a surge in anti-mass immigration sentiment.

Her court ruling comes as Macron has struggled to come to grips with President Donald Trump’s return in the U.S., leading to conflict between Europe and the U.S. over economic policies and the defense of Ukraine.

Last week, the Trump administration touted its negotiations with Ukraine and Russia and said both nations had agreed to ‘eliminate the use of force’ in the Black Sea – but the Kremlin later confirmed this was only contingent on the removal of international economic restrictions.

‘Russia shall have no right of say regarding the support we are providing and will provide Ukraine, nor shall they set the conditions,’ Macron reportedly said in response.

Macron also shot down Trump’s call for Europe to consider ending sanctions on Moscow.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

As we learn the full melodrama of the so-called Signal ‘scandal’ of inviting left-wing, Trump-despising, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg onto a supposedly secure conference list involving top Trump security officials, lots of questions need asking and answering.

Most importantly, who had Goldberg’s private number and inserted it, ostensibly by mistake, into the cleared list of participants in the discussions? Why would any top Trump officials or their staffers ever even have Goldberg’s contact information, given his quite public record of: a) fabricating stories with unnamed sources, and b) suffering from a decade of chronic Trump derangement syndrome?

Questions for Goldberg: Did he know the mechanisms that had prompted and continued his stealthy presence in the secure discussions? Why did citizen Goldberg not simply come clean as soon as he realized he was mistakenly included in key national security conference communications, to which he did not belong, and thus should be obviously excluded immediately? Why did he instead stealthily listen in for nearly two weeks? Was the idea of informing his hosts of his own improper presence too morally old-fashioned?

Questions for posterity: Did Goldberg’s publicizing these discreet discussions really affect the otherwise completely successful mission to neutralize years of appeased Houthis’ aggression and begin to end their veritable destruction of Red Sea international maritime commerce? How did this blunder rank with prior diplomatic and military screw-ups, like Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s January 1950 Press Club speech de facto excluding South Korea from the American defense umbrella—an omission that may have contributed to the June 1950 North Korean invasion of the South? Was it comparable to Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie’s assurance to Saddam Hussein that, ‘We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait’— which may have prompted his 1990 invasion of Kuwait?

Was it comparable to President Obama’s March 2012 ‘hot mic’ assurance to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have ‘flexibility’ on American-Eastern European missile defense after his last election? Both kept their promises: Obama foolishly dismantled American-sponsored Eastern European plans for missile defense, and Russia postponed its pre-planned invasion of Ukraine until 2014. 

Did it rank with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley secretly contacting his Chinese communist counterpart, Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng, to tell him he would give the People’s Liberation Army leader a heads-up if he determined President Donald Trump was likely to trigger an existential war?

And just look who is weighing in. There was Hillary Clinton, despite her illegal use of a private server to transmit classified State Department information and her subsequent destruction of subpoenaed communication devices.

There was serial fabulist Susan Rice, who in 2012 flat-out lied to the nation on five Sunday news shows, claiming preposterously that the terrorist attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi were ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations incited by anger over an anti-Muslim video. Ditto Rice’s fallacious Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl ‘honor’ narrative and her lie about the removal of Syrian weapons of mass destruction.

And why would Leon Panetta weigh in, when he was one of the supposed 51 intelligence authorities in 2020 who ridiculously claimed Hunter Biden’s FBI-authenticated laptop had all the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence disinformation effort? That lie was designed to arm Joe Biden before the last 2020 debate, and it may well have affected the election.

In the end, this was a blunder, but also what the Left likes to call a ‘teachable moment. All future similar conferences should be either held in person or participants must be triple-checked on a secure line. And perhaps most importantly, all Trump high appointees and their staffers should know enough to have nothing to do with those who wake up each morning wishing to destroy them—and go to bed each night lamenting that they have not done enough to advance that destruction.

This column was adapted from Victor Davis Hanson’s post on X.