Amos Oz
Amos OzFlash 90

MK Shuli Moallem (Jewish Home) reacted Sunday to an incendiary statement by famed writer Amos Oz, who said that the “hilltop youth” of Judea and Samaria, and the perpetrators of Price Tag vandalism, are “Jewish neo-Nazis.”

"The lawbreaking youths who need to be punished had a grandfather and grandmother in the concentraion camps and the death camps, too,” said Moallem. “A grandfather and grandmother who longed for a Jewish state and certainly would not have been proud of their grandchildren's actions. Your choice of words, Amos, is not proper, and the comparison is demeaning in itself.”

"Maybe it really is time to give you the Israel prize next year,” she added. “We simply have to make up a new category for you. 'Modern anti-Semitism.'”

Oz is one of Israel's best-known writers and has received many prizes, but never won the Israel Prize.

"The comparison between Price Tag actions to neo-Nazi groups is disgusting and cheapens the Holocaust,” said Construction and Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Jewish Home) Saturday evening, in reaction to Oz.

"There is no way of comparing Nazism, the essence of which was annihilation of other nations in the name of the superiority of the Aryan race, to spraying graffiti and puncturing of tires,” Ariel explained. “Price Tag is a serious crime that the Shin Bet and police must put an end to, and its perpetrators must be put on trial, but until now, they have failed in their mission.”

MK Yoni Chetboun, also from the Jewish Home party, accused Oz of “prostituting the memory of the Holocaust and making light of the severity of the Nazis' actions.”

“I cannot stand to hear that term ‘price tag’, and even more so I can’t stand to hear the term ‘hilltop youth’,” Oz said at his 75th birthday celebration, according to Channel 2 News.

“It's time we look at this monster straight in the eye. ‘Price tag’ and ‘hilltop youth’ are just are sweet nicknames for a monster that is time to call by its name,” he continued, adding that those who carried out these vandalism attacks were “Jewish neo-Nazi groups.”

"There is nothing that the neo-Nazis in Europe do and these groups do not do,” charged Oz. “Time to call them by name. Perhaps the only difference is that our neo-Nazi groups enjoy the backing of quite a few nationalist, even racist legislators, as well as rabbis who have give them a pseudo-religious basis.”