Israel's minister is deemed unwelcome by a French rights organisation.

The Human Rights League (LDH) has condemned Israel's controversial finance minister Bezalel Smotrich as "arabophobic, homophobic, ultra-colonialist and ultra-religious". Smotrich is in charge of Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank, where he himself is one of 475,000 Jewish settlers established in defiance of international law. He called for a Palestinian town to be "wiped out" after two Israeli settlers were killed there in February, drawing international condemnation. UN human rights chief Volker Turk denounced them as "an unfathomable statement of incitement to violence and hostility". The United States, an ally of Israel, also condemned the comments, with a State Department spokesman saying they were "irresponsible, they were repugnant, they were disgusting". The French foreign ministry told AFP no official contact with the Israeli minister was planned.