"Mr. Peres, you are a senior citizen and you speak in a loud voice. I feel that your raised voice is due to the guilt you feel.

"But be sure that my voice will not be raised as yours,"

"When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill,"

"I know very well how you hit and killed children on beaches."

"In your country there are two former prime ministers whose comments on Gaza are important for me."

"You had prime ministers who said: We relish the opportunity to enter the Palestinian lands on tanks."

"You talk to me with numbers. I am willing to name these people and among you there may be people who are longing to know who they are."

"I condemn those who clap for these atrocities, because I think that cheering the murderers of children and humans is in its kind a crime against humanity."

"Pay attention please, we can't disregard this fact."

"I have made notes of Mr. Peres's speech but I have not the time to answer all of them now."

(The moderator tries to stop the Prime Minster.)

"Let me finish"

"I will only touch on two points"

"First, the sixth of the Ten Commandments in the Torah says "You shall not kill" but in Palestine people are killed."

"And second, which is a very interesting issue; Gilad Atzmon [a Jew himself], says Israeli barbarity is far beyond any usual cruelty."

Aside from this, Avi Shlaim, Professor of Oxford who performed his military duty in the Israeli army says in the Guardian that Israel has become "a rogue state."

(The Moderator tries to interrupt the Prime Minister, with hand gestures and physical contact. Erdogan has a sudden flush of anger and turns to the moderator)

"I thank you so much I thank you, too. From now on, Davos is done for me. I will not attend Davos again. You don't let me speak."

"(Pointing to Peres) He spoke for 25 minutes, but you only let me speak for 12 minutes. This is not acceptable."

Erdogan picks up his notes and without looking at Peres and Ban Ki-moon leaves the session.

On his way out, the Arab League Secretary-General, Amr Mousa, stands up and appreciative of Erdogan's move shakes hands with him.

(Neither the photos nor the text of Mr. Erdogan's speech are to be found on the website of the World Economic Forum.)

In a recent interview [PDF] with the Middle East Monitor, Colonel (ret.) Desmond Travers of the Irish Army — best known as one of the members of the U.N. commission that produced the Goldstone report — attracted attention for his statement that “the number of rockets that had been fired into Israel in the month preceding their operations was something like two.” Critics of the Goldstone report like Commentary’s David Hazony and Evelyn Gordon have seized on the comment as proof that Travers and the rest of the Goldstone commission are irredeemably biased against Israel; Gordon cites figures [PDF] from the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center showing that over 300 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza during the month of December 2008. (Operation Cast Lead began on Dec. 27.)

As Jerry Haber notes, however, these criticisms are based on a simple misunderstanding. In fact, the “operations” that Travers refers do not commence with the start of Operation Cast Lead on Dec. 27, but rather with Operation Double Challenge on Nov. 4. Double Challenge was an IDF incursion into Gaza that left six Palestinians dead, ending months of calm; because the operation came the day of the U.S. presidential elections, it vanished without a trace in the U.S. media. Paul Woodward explains that the ceasefire was, in fact, functioning quite well until the Israelis broke it on Nov. 4; only after the IDF raid did the number of rocket attacks increase.

Therefore, when Travers speaks of “the month preceding their operations,” he is referring not to December but to October 2008. And how many rockets were fired into Israel in October? According to the very figures [PDF, p. 6] that Gordon cites against Travers, only one. (According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there were two rockets fired in October, and twelve in the four-month stretch from July through October.) ...