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Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog was forced to distance himself from his spokesman Sunday after the latter posted on Facebook that Jewish settlers in the West Bank had built "swimming pools on the blood of murdered children."
Ofer Newman caused a firestorm Saturday night after watching a documentary called The Settlers that focuses on the lives of far-right sections of Israeli society. He posted an extensive condemnation of Jewish settlers and their community leaders at outposts across the occupied territory.
"The settlers built swimming pools on the blood of children they murdered," he wrote. "What kind of a twisted moral basis enables these people to stride along on a path toward the deaths of thousands of Israelis without anyone saying to them: 'You have gone too far! You are lowly murderers. You belong in prison!'"
He said that the leaders of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank were "like children to whom somebody forgot to say 'No!'" He said that settlers had "trampled Jewish ethics under their coarse feet."
Newman continued: "They [the settlers] are not as frightening as they like us to think. They are people who have lost their sanity and are prepared to sacrifice us on the altar of their insanity. This has to be stopped!"
Herzog, leader of the centrist Zionist Union party, called Newman's comments "harsh" and said that the imagery he had used was unacceptable.
"The post by Ofer Newman, my spokesperson, was very critical, very blunt, and very wrong, because it creates a generalization that I am unwilling to accept and uses imagery that we mustn't use under any circumstances," he said.
"I meet with settlers nearly every day; the Labor Party encouraged and built part of the settlement enterprise, and even if we have criticism about the settler leadership, they are and always will be, our brothers and part of our extended family."
Newman deleted some of his comments and apologized Sunday, but the post had already been picked up and criticized widely on social media and by Israeli lawmakers, The Times of Israel reported.
"The things that I wrote are causing a storm, and I want to clarify," Newman wrote on Facebook about his controversial post. "Last night, I saw the film The Settlers. I came home upset and wrote things that it is forbidden to write [when you are] upset."
"I have a lot of criticism of the settler leadership, but the language, the tone, and the descriptions were excessive and completely unnecessary," he wrote. "They hurt them [the settlers] and they hurt also the dear man who I work alongside and I am sorry for that. We all make mistakes, that was my mistake."
The issue of Jewish settlements in the West Bank is one that polarizes Israeli society and the wider international community as international bodies such as the United Nations question their legality under international law.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the allotment of an additional $18 million in funds for the Jewish settlements, sparking criticism from the country's key ally in Washington as well as Palestinian officials.