‘Mein Kampf in reverse’? How the New York Times weaponizes Holocaust metaphors against Israel

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has joined those who seek to demonize Israel, suggesting the values of the hilltop youth who are committing West Bank violence harken back to Nazi ideology and actions. Friedman reported Moshe Ya’alon, defense minister a decade ago, “likening the ideology of extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank to that of Nazi Germany in local news reports.” “What is Jewish supremacy?” Ya’alon asked, “Eighty years after the Holocaust, ‘Mein Kampf’ in reverse. The master race is us.”While I have previously condemned the extremists and their leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, their motivation is not Nazi-like as Ya’alon claims. Jews have witnessed what was done in 1949 when territories were turned over to the Jordanians. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported:“Jews were barred from the Old City and denied access to the Western Wall and other Holy Places. The Jewish Quarter in the Old City was destroyed; fifty-eight synagogues were also destroyed or desecrated. Thousands of tombstones in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives were destroyed to pave a road and build fences and latrines in Jordanian army camps.” The same occurred to West Bank Jewish communities, including Hebron, home of the Cave of the Patriarchs, the resting place for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their family members. During the 700 years of Arab rule and during the British Mandate, Jews were not allowed to enter, only able to go to the seventh step of the entrance. Despite this impediment for centuries, religious Jews settled in Hebron to be near the sacred site. This ended in 1929 when the Grand Mufti led a pogrom that eliminated the Jewish community there. Only after the 1967 war were Jews able to reenter Hebron and finally visit the burial site. Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared that “in the cause of peace, Israel should take nothing in the conquered territories, except for Hebron, which is more Jewish even than Jerusalem.”As religious Jews began rebuilding their houses of study in Hebron, they were attacked by Islamists, including Tayseer Abu Sneineh. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1980 killing of six Jews at the Hadassah House, home to a Hebron yeshiva. He was released in a prison exchange in 1983 and returned from exile a decade later to a hero’s welcome; and for the last decade, he has been Hebron’s mayor.When interviewed by Yardena Schwartz, Abu Sneineh claimed, “There is no holy place in Palestine which is linked with the Jewish religion through history.” When asked about the Tomb of the Patriarchs, he replied, “The Ibrahimi Mosque is a Muslim holy place.” He then referred to the 2017 UNESCO designation of Hebron’s Old City, which includes the tomb, as a Palestinian World Heritage Site.This history makes clear that Palestinian goodwill cannot be relied upon to safeguard Jewish holy sites. Moreover, to lump together these extremists with the broader Israeli right-wing is grossly inaccurate. In 2023, building on a series of previously enacted initiatives, the current government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, adopted a five-year plan for eastern Jerusalem. Its confirmation resolution stated, “The development and prosperity of Jerusalem … for the benefit of all its citizens … is based on the integration of East Jerusalem residents into the fabric of urban life and Israeli society.” The funds were to accelerate the improvement of infrastructure, employment opportunities, and educational attainment. When the extreme right-wing attempted to cut the funds that aided East Jerusalem Palestinian seeking entry into Israeli universities, it was rebuffed.Though they lack Israeli citizenship, East Jerusalem Palestinians are free to travel throughout the country and face few employment or educational barriers. By contrast, 1 million stateless Palestinians living in Jordan and Lebanon face severe restrictions. When the head of the Jordanian human rights commission sought improvements, she met fierce opposition within the government: “When we talk about civil rights, political rights and so on, they would say ‘Well, we don’t want to help Israelis achieve their goals by giving those people access to all types of activities and normal living so that they could forget about their right of return.’”The pepper-spraying of an Arab woman in Jaffa and the spitting on a priest in the Old City made international news, fueling claims of widespread harassment of Arab citizens by Jewish nationalist youth. However, it ignores the overall peacefulness in Jaffa and other mixed cities. At the war’s beginning, these same youths roamed Jaffa, chanting nationalist slogans. The local imam received numerous calls from Muslim youths wanting to respond physically, creating the specter of a repeat of the 2021 violence.But something had changed. “Don’t do anything,” the imam told callers. “Let us handle this quietly,” sending this message to some 1,200 youths connected with the mosque. The imam then did something that would have been unthinkable in 2021: he called the police.LONDON WANTS TO LECTURE ISRAEL ON ‘OCCUPATION’? WAIT UNTIL JERUSALEM MENTIONS THE FALKLANDSAfter the 2021 riots, local police launched youth programs — coordinated among mosques — that kept many young men off the streets. After Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish and Arab Jaffans formed joint groups to prevent a fresh round of violence. A WhatsApp group collected funds and distributed food, clothes, and blankets to Jewish and Bedouin evacuees from border communities, along with support for local Jaffans. During Ramadan 2023, local mosques organized a communal iftar and invited an Orthodox rabbi to speak. Similar dynamics occurred in other mixed cities.None of this denies that right-wing extremists have been given a free hand in the West Bank and cause serious damage to Palestinian communities there. However, I have tried to give a context to understand their motivations better. Most importantly, one should not demonize the majority of Netanyahu’s coalition; a coalition that has passed comprehensive legislation to aid Arab citizens and Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and pushed back against extreme right-wing attempts to overturn those policies and foment conflicts in the mixed cities.Robert Cherry is an American Enterprise Institute affiliate and author of Arab Citizens of Israel: How Far Have They Come? (Wicked Son Press, 2026).