As anger mounted in Israel last week over President Donald Trump’s ― and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ― response to the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, the country’s communications minister urged Israelis to prioritize their support for Trump over their denunciation of neo-Nazis.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, Ayoub Kara, who was handpicked for his ministerial role by Netanyahu in May, said that Israel must defend Trump, who he described as the “best U.S. leader Israel has ever had.”

“Due to the terrific relations with the U.S., we need to put the declarations about the Nazis in the proper proportion,” said Kara, who is a member of the Druze community, a non-Jewish minority in Israel. “We need to condemn anti-Semitism and any trace of Nazism, and I will do what I can as a minister to stop its spread. But Trump is the best U.S. leader Israel has ever had. His relations with the prime minister of Israel are wonderful, and after enduring the terrible years of Obama, Trump is the unquestioned leader of the free world, and we must not accept anyone harming him.”

Kara’s comments were made on the same day as the publication of several front-page stories in Israeli newspapers deploring Trump’s Charlottesville comments and Netanyahu’s lack of response to them. Yedioth Ahronoth, a popular Hebrew newspaper, had a photo of Trump on its front page with a single word: “SHAME.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/israel-trump-charlottesville-nazis-ayoub-kara_us_599995cfe4b01f6e801f166d?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009