Amos Oz: Hilltop youth are Hebrew neo-Nazis

The Israeli author says "price tag" attacks and their perpetrators are "a monster that should be called by its name."

Hilltop Youth setters West Bank 311 (R) (photo credit: REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen)
Hilltop Youth setters West Bank 311 (R)
(photo credit: REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen)
Author and Israel Prize laureate Amos Oz came out strongly against perpetrators of “price tag” attacks this week, saying “‘Price tag’ and ‘Hilltop youth’ are cute nicknames for a monster that needs to be called what it is: Hebrew neo-Nazi groups.”
Oz went on to say that the only difference between neo-Nazis around the world and those who commit hate crimes in Israel is that “our neo-Nazi groups enjoy the support of numerous nationalist or even racist legislators, as well as rabbis who give them what is in my view pseudo- religious justification.”
He spoke at an event in Tel Aviv on Friday, also attended by presidential candidate MK Reuven Rivlin.
Rivlin criticized Oz’s remarks, saying “We must not make such a comparison” between Jews and neo-Nazis.
In the most recent “price tag” attacks on Friday, anti-Arab graffiti was discovered on the door of a home in the Muslim Quarter of the capital’s Old City, and a wall near Jerusalem’s Romanian Church was vandalized with anti-Jesus slogans.