Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands was recalled to Israel on Wednesday after criticizing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir in a Dutch media interview.
In an interview with Algemeen Dagblad, Ambassador Zvi Aviner Vapni criticized the ministers’ rhetoric as “terrible” and “unacceptable,” adding, “I have no desire to defend them.”
He also called Jewish settler extremists in the West Bank “thugs and terrorists,” and emphasized he believes that they all belong in prison.
“[In Israel] we … have people we’d rather not have around.”
Days after the November 7 interview, the Foreign Ministry announced that Aviner had been summoned for an immediate inquiry into his statements.
Ambassador pressed on Gaza, extremism in Israeli society
In the interview, Vapni was pressed on his stance on the Gaza war and defended Israel’s conduct.
“It is not genocide, not ethnic cleansing; it is a brutal war against a brutal terrorist organization. Wars are terrible. If we could have avoided this one, we would have done so.”
He said that he felt extremists in Amsterdam would not listen to reason and nuance around the war, which prompted the interviewer to ask him about “your own extremists.”
The ambassador responded: “The violence must stop. I do not want to defend it; what they are doing is reprehensible.”
