Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has refused to hand over $3bn of funds held at Turkish banks to the sons of Ismael Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas assassinated in what is thought to have been an Israeli strike in Iran last month, Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) has claimed in a tweet.

“A conflict erupted” between Erdogan and Haniyeh’s sons after they demanded their father’s money, according to the post from Katz, dated August 16.

Katz posed some questions in his tweet:

• How did Haniyeh, born in the Al-Shati refugee camp, amass such a fortune?
• How many Palestinians in Gaza could have lived better lives if the money had reached them?
• And, most importantly, what is Erdogan's connection to the money?

“Follow the money” is a well-known phrase, reminded Katz, who also stated: “In this case, the address is clear.”

On January 1, Katz became Israel’s foreign minister. In July, he shared his first artificial intelligence (AI)-supported tweet attacking Erdogan.

Since then, Katz has developed a habit of targeting Erdogan on Twitter. He tweets in three languages, namely Hebrew, English and Turkish. And he always adds some AI-generated images.

Tweet: Israel should really take the AI business more seriously. Its AI Erdogan does not look like Erdogan and its AI Ataturk does not look like Ataturk.

Tweet: Katz talks on behalf of Turks in his free time after fulfilling his duties as Israel’s foreign minister.

In August, Katz's habit evolved to include the tagging of the X accounts of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in his Erdogan tweets.

Tweets: Istanbul's opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu (@ekrem_imamoglu), CHP’s deputy chair Deniz Yucel (@avdenizyucel) and CHP’s youth branch (@chpgenclikgm) had to state that they had no business with Israel.

Ignorance is a prerequisite to becoming a politician. However, it is hard to believe that no one at Israel’s foreign ministry is aware that being seen in the same frame as Israel is a negative and being attacked by Israel is a positive for every single politician in every corner of the globe.

“These manoeuvres are interesting,” remarked Imamoglu. They are hard to interpret too.

Perhaps Israel can spare some more funds for its foreign ministry while cutting a bit from the budget of its defence ministry.