Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev, told CNN Monday that Netanyahu spoke with the father of murdered Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir and told him his son's murderers do not represent Israel.
"It was very important for my prime minister to reach out to the family and tell them, that, first of all, to of course express condolences for their tragedy," Regev said, "but also to say that the murderers do not represent Israel, they do not represent the Israeli people, they don't represent the Jewish people, that these murderers are vile killers, they are the very opposite of our most cherished beliefs. And it was important for us to say that."
Mohammed Abu Khdeir was kidnapped and burned alive, following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens, which Israel blames on Hamas. Six Jewish suspects have been arrested for Abu Khdeir's murder.
"In every country you have extremists, you have people with crazy ideas," Regev noted, "the important thing is what does the majority do? what does leadership do? what does government do? And here we unequivocally condemn it and will use the police very aggressively to stamp out this phenomena and bring culprits of hate crimes and so forth to justice. We won't tolerate this sort of behavior."
Regev urged Palestine to join Israel in standing against the violence, and called for them to distance themselves from Hamas: "We are for peace, we are for reconciliation. We're against this sort of violence. It's time Palestinian leadership stood up to the plate and also said 'we're against violence, we're against extremism,' and that they cut their connection with the Hamas movement. The Hamas movement is a terrorist movement, not only under Israeli law, but under American law."