I am unaware that the State Department has condemned the lynching of the Eritrean, other than to say that “people shouldn’t take the law into their own hands”. From yesterday’s briefing (in which Mr. Toner later “condemned” a specific act of ISIL):
QUESTION: I just want to follow on Brad’s point.
MR TONER: Please.
QUESTION: I mean, he’s talking about a lynch mob kind of atmosphere, and there is obviously heightened rhetoric that contributes to that kind of —
MR TONER: And we’ve spoken to that as well, Said. We’ve said that everybody needs to – sorry – everybody needs to tone down the rhetoric, reduce the violence, take affirmative action, affirmative steps —
QUESTION: I think Brad’s point – he is saying that, look, the people stomping; it’s hatred and all these things. That’s a lynch mob kind of atmosphere. I mean, you certainly warn against such a thing, right?
MR TONER: I – again, I go back to – I don’t know how I could say much more clearly is people should not take the law into their own hands.
QUESTION: But there were incidents where actually the law enforcement, whether it’s the Israeli army or the police and so on, were actually looking at similar incidents – maybe not so graphic as the one we’ve seen, but in past incidents. So you would call on Israeli authorities and the police and so on not to use excessive force, which you backtracked from the other day.
MR TONER: We – no, that’s – look, we always call on frankly not just Israeli security forces but security forces all over the world to exercise proper restraint. That being said, we certainly recognize Israel’s right to defend itself separate and apart from what we’re talking about here, which is, as you said, this incident involving the death of an Eritrean man. I – again, I think I said it pretty clearly that there’s heightened fear, anger; there’s a lot of emotion. People – as the mayor of Beersheba said, people shouldn’t take the law into their own hands. There’s an investigation underway. Let’s let that play itself out.