Judy Shalom Nir-Mozes, the wife of Interior Minister Silvan Shalom, was berated on social media for racism Sunday after tweeting a joke about US President Barack Obama.
Hundreds of the former UNICEF Israel chief and popular radio show host’s 75,000 followers expressed outrage when Nir-Mozes posted: “Do u know what Obama coffee is? Black and weak.”
Nir-Mozes swiftly removed the tweet and issued a number of apologies. “I apologize, that was a stupid joke somebody told me,” she wrote.
Later, she apologized to the US president directly and tried to offer reassurances that she was not racist.
Adopting a more lighthearted tone as she continued her online damage control, in another tweet Nir-Mozes wrote that she hoped her husband wouldn’t divorce her over the social media uproar.
Last month, Silvan Shalom was appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead negotiations with the Palestinians and to oversee strategic dialogue with the United States.
In a separate incident last month, Nir-Mozes was accused of trolling Obama soon after the president launched his personal Twitter account.
In that tweet, the MK’s wife wrote “@POTUS well come, I hope u ‘ll write from The hurt of barack, and not from the head of Rrsedent Obama. Kisses from israel.”
That tweet was also deleted shortly after, and Nir-Mozes later denied having written it. However, journalist Tal Schneider took a screenshot of the tweet and noted that it came from her account.
Schneider also pointed out one of the typos — that Nir-Mozes likely meant to write “heart” and not “hurt.”
By Tamer Pileggi
