US Ambassador Dan Shapiro agreed “the timing was not the best” for criticizing Israel’s management of the wave of terror and its “double” standards in Judea and Samaria, as well as his accusations of settler vigilantism in his speech just as two different Jewish women had been stabbed, one of them mortally, by Arabs.
Shapiro picked the very hour of the funeral for the murdered woman, Dafna Meir, a mother of six, to describe his views about the “two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu described Shapiro’s comments as “unacceptable.”
Speaking to Israeli Army Radio on Monday, Shapiro said: “I understand the timing was not ideal, I began with condemnations of the terror attacks in Otniel and Tekoa. There were only one or two controversial sentences, and if it hurt the Meir family or those mourning her, of course I regret that,” Shapiro said.
