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By Dave Goldiner August 14, 2017

President Trump’s top supporter in Israel blamed “leftist thugs” for the violence in Charlottesville and defended the president for failing to directly condemn white supremacists.

Marc Zell, head of Republicans Abroad in Israel, also called Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee a “great man” — and said he suspects liberal counter demonstrators were somehow behind the car-ramming attack that killed one person and injured many others.

“I will not be surprised if they find that the incident was deliberately provoked by the left,” Zell told Haaretz.

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Zell strongly took issue wiht the widespread criticism of Trump for fanning the flames of hatred with divisive rhetoric and for his failure to unequivocally condemn white nationalist violence, Trump’s supporters present a diametrically different point of view.

“Trying to blame the President for these events is ridiculous,” said Marc Zell, head of Republicans Abroad in Israel. “Even before the events escalated, he called for calm and restraint on all sides.”

Noting that the demonstration was a response to the city’s plan to remove a statue of Lee, Zell said it was wrong to whitewash history.

“Both the North and the South had terrible sides to them, but you can’t remove a statue because it offends some people,” he said. “That’s left-wing violence.”

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