The Mayor of Umm Al-Fahm stepped down on Thursday after a message was posted on the municipality Facebook page sending condolences to the families of the two men who carried out the deadly terror attack in Hadera on Sunday.
"We send our heartfelt condolences for the deaths of Ayman Agrabia and Ibrahim Agrabia," the statement read. "May God take pity on them and forgive them."
Mayor Samir Mahamid announced he was stepping down in an announcement on Kan Public Broadcasting's evening news saying the responsibility for the disturbing and unacceptable post was ultimately his as head of the municipality.
The mayor told Ynet earlier in the week that the municipality as well as he personally, condemn the attack.
After the post was published by the press, and less than an hour after it was posted on Facebook, it was deleted.
The city said it was a mistake made by the "public relations office and the spokesperson of the municipality. We thought it was right to issue a condolence message as we do to all the deceased in Umm al-Fahm, but the mayor immediately ordered it to be deleted."
Before the post was removed, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked asked the Director General of the ministry Yair Hirsh to call the Mayor of Umm al-Fahm and ask him to remove it. "It is not conceivable that a city in Israel would comfort families of terrorists. It is a shameful post and it is a good thing it was deleted," officials said on behalf of Shaked.
According to her announcement, she "will continue to show zero tolerance for support of terrorism on social media, and in general."
On Monday, 24 hours after the attack in which Border Police officers Yezen Falah and Shirel Abukarat were killed, the mayor condemned the attack and called it a heinour mureder. "This will sound absurd, but last week, I announced a tolerance week across the city in cooperation with the Education Ministry. Following the attack, I have asked the school principals to talk about tolerance and the horrible attack itself," Mahamid said.
"The families of the terrorists are normative families, and for a lot of people it would sound unrealistic," he said on Monday.
"All this talk of the Islamic State is dangerous to us as Arab Muslims. We must think about how to behave with this vile incident. We will continue to live together, and whoever will stray from the right path, we will exclude him from the community, that is what I did. My condemnation is pure and simple, and in all languages, I use the same words," Mahamid said.
First published: 19:28, 03.31.22