MEXICO’S Jewish community joined the country’s government at the weekend to slam Israel for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tweet applauding Donald Trump’s border wall plan.

On Sunday the Israeli leader tweeted: “President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel’s southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea.”

The central committee of the Jewish community in Mexico issued a statement saying that it “forcefully rejected” Mr Netanyahu’s comment, while several prominent Mexicans of Jewish origin sharply criticised him on Twitter.

“So you like walls @netanyahu? Here you have a couple of nice designs,” said Mony de Swaan, a former head of the Mexican telecommunications regulator, posting images of walls commemorating BergenBelsen, the nazi concentration camp where diarist Anne Frank died, and the Warsaw Ghetto.

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry expressed its “profound astonishment, rejection and disappointment over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s message on Twitter about the construction of a border wall.

“Mexico is a friend of Israel and should be treated as such by its prime minister.”

The ministry noted that Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray had expressed his deep affection for Israel on Friday in an event marking Holocaust memorial day.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto cancelled a visit to meet the new US president this week after being advised by Mr Trump not to visit unless he was willing to pay for the wall.

The two leaders pledged later to work out their differences, with the Mexican government announcing that they had agreed not to discuss the issue of payment for now