Former Israeli Defense Minister: Israel’s ‘Jewish supremacy’ resembles Nazi race theory
Yeshayahu Leibowitz
Jonathan Ofir writes in Mondoweiss on 4 February 2026 :
In the late 1980s, Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz made the controversial warning that the 1967 occupation risked turning Israelis into “Judeo-Nazis.” Leibowitz recently found a surprising supporter for this opinion – Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
On Friday, Ya’alon tweeted that “Yeshayahu Leibowitz was right, and I was wrong”. This was no benign reference – it referred directly to the late professor Leibowitz’s “warnings… concerning the process of bestialization towards us becoming ‘Judeo-Nazis’…”. Ya’alon says that the “ideology of ‘Jewish supremacy’” has become “dominant in the government of Israel”, and that it “is reminiscent of the Nazi race theory”.
This was said in relation to Ya’alon’s participation in a ceremony to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. In his tweet, he repeatedly mocks the commonly held reluctance to compare anything that Israeli Jews do today to what the Nazis did during World War II.
Leibowitz was an ultra-orthodox professor and intellectual, whom the late Israeli President Ezer Weizman eulogized as “one of the greatest figures in the life of the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” and “a spiritual conscience for many in Israel.” Leibowitz was vehemently opposed to Israel’s 1967 occupation and referred to Supreme Court Judge, Moshe Landau, as a ‘Judeo-Nazi’ in 1987 after after a commission led by him had legalized the torture of Palestinians. In the same interview, Leibowitz also referred to the discussion of Israeli democracy as “sterile” and labeled Israel as “the only dictatorship in the enlightened world.”
Thus, this is the moral power Ya’alon is seeking to apply by referencing Leibowitz and the term ‘Judeo-Nazis’, although his warning also included a hedge because he believes the next Israeli government could still prove Leibowitz wrong.
Here then is the full text of what Ya’alon shared on social media (my translation from Hebrew) – I have added numerous links to the many condensed references in his tweet:
“Last Tuesday evening I participated in a ceremony marking the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. When I got home, I got a message about Jewish pogromists who are attacking Palestinians in the southern Hebron mountains, stealing their flock and burning their possessions. ‘You can’t compare!’… after ambulances, who tried to get to the place, were delayed by the Jewish terrorists, three Palestinians were evacuated to the hospital, where one of them suffered a fracture to the skull. ‘No event can be compared to the Holocaust, which our people were subject to!’…
Of course, I immediately contacted those responsible for security in the area, and I was assured that the event was being handled by IDF. Until now, no Jewish terrorist was arrested (as in many other cases) because… the Israeli police is controlled by a convicted criminal, a racist Kahanist fascist [National Security minister Itamar Ben Gvir], the Shabak [general security agency] is controlled by [David Zini], the representative of the Jewish-supremacy from the schools of rabbi [Zvi] Thau, [Dov] Lior, [Yitzhak] Ginzburgh and [Eliyahu] Zini (his uncle), the Defense Minister [Israel Katz] is preventing administrative detention of Jewish terrorists, and the additional minister in the Defense Ministry [Bezalel Smotrich] is encouraging illegal outposts and equips them with all-terrain vehicles, in order to make the life of Palestinians miserable, towards their dispossession from their lands and settlement of the lands with Jews (once again you will ask why I have accused the government of ‘ethnic cleansing’!?).
The ideology of ‘Jewish supremacy’, which has become dominant in the government of Israel, is reminiscent of the Nazi race theory. ‘But one may not compare!’… I have commanded the Judea and Samaria Division, the Central Command and the IDF. I was familiar with the warnings of Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, concerning the process of bestialization towards us becoming ‘Judeo Nazis’ (in his words), [concerning] our control of another people. I have done my best, both as Defense Minister, that we would ‘know how to win over terror, yet stay human’.
I have never deluded myself that only through concessions would we receive ‘peace now’, and I also understood the danger of ‘Jewish supremacy’ upon our future and existence. It is therefore that I support separation – according to the last programmatic speech of Yitzhak Rabin Z”L [of blessed memory] on October 5, 1995, and the title of my book is ‘The Longer, Shorter Path’.
As things are today, Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz was right and I was wrong.
The duty of the next government of Israel is to prove that Prof. Leibowitz was wrong, lest we bring destruction upon our state.
The state of ‘Jewish supremacy’ – the government of lies and betrayal – the government of the messianics, the [military draft-]dodgers and the corrupt, must be substituted, before destruction.