US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides hurled epithets at Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Friday in an official statement, calling him “stupid” and saying he would “throw him out of the plane” should he fly to Washington.

In response, Smotrich issued this statement:

“I am not angry at the US Ambassador to Israel, and I am convinced he did not intend to incite to kill me when he said that I should be thrown out of the plane, exactly as I did not intend harm against innocents when I said Huwara should be wiped out. People sometimes use strong expressions which they don’t mean literally, in order to convey a harsh message. It happens to everyone.”

Not to mention that Smotrich didn’t really say what he is accused of saying. All he did was retweet a tweet in which Davidi Ben Zion, deputy head of the Samaria regional council, said the Huwara is “a village that should be wiped out.”

Smotrich explained the retweet: he does think this hotbed of Arab terrorists should be wiped out, but not through settler violence but by the state