The New York Times came under fire Sunday for publishing a crossword puzzle resembling a Nazi swastika, with readers pointing out its appearance coincided with the first day of the festival of Hanukkah, which commemorates the liberation of the Jewish people.
Donald Trump Jr. blasted the image as “disgusting.”
“Only the New York Times would get Chanukah going with this is the crossword puzzle,” Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter.
“Imagine what they would do to someone who did this and was not ideologically aligned with them? I’ll give them the same benefit of the doubt they would give those people… exactly zero,” he continued.
Pro-Israel group S.A.F.E. CUNY wrote, “Today’s Crossword Puzzle from the New York Times for Chanukah. Pretty much sums up the @nytimes for the past few years in regard to Jews and Israel.”
NYC Council member Kalman Yeger wrote, “A hidden Happy Chanukah message in today’s @nytimes crossword?”
Others noted that while the swastika silhouette may have been unintentional, it came a day after the Times published a blistering editorial warning that Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming government poses a “significant threat.”
On the day of the crossword puzzle’s release, Netanyahu responded to the editorial, charging the Times with “demonizing Israel for decades” and attacking its sordid history hiding the Holocaust.
In a Twitter thread on Sunday, Netanyahu accused the newspaper of “burying the Holocaust for years on its back pages and demonizing Israel for decades,” and charged that it now “shamefully calls for undermining Israel’s elected incoming government.”
“While the NYT continues to delegitimize the one true democracy in the Middle East and America’s best ally in the region, I will continue to ignore its ill-founded advice and instead focus on building a stronger and more prosperous country, strengthening ties with America, expanding peace with our neighbors, and securing the future of the one and only Jewish state,” Netanyahu wrote.
The editorial, titled “The Ideal of Democracy in a Jewish State Is in Jeopardy,” argued that while Netanyahu “clearly has the support of the Israeli electorate,” the concessions he is offering his “ultrareligious and ultranationalist” partners jeopardize the country’s democratic values.
File/World War II pinback showing a frowning Hitler, complete with swastikas with the text, “Wanted For Murder”. His father was Alois Schickelgruber, who changed his name to “Hitler” before Adolph’s birth. The name of his father was used to ridicule Hitler, who recognized the negative implications of having a comical name. (David J. & Janice L. Frent/Corbis via Getty Images)
The editorial goes on to note the Times “has been a strong supporter of Israel,” despite its long record of anti-Israel bias, from sugarcoating Palestinian terrorism, to accusing Israel of war crimes, to spreading outright lies, such as a recent article about the plight of Gazan fishermen which the publication later admitted was almost entirely fabricated.
Saturday’s editorial said Netanyahu’s government poses “a significant threat to the future of Israel — its direction, its security and even the idea of a Jewish homeland.”
Continuing with a non-sequitur to prove its point, continued: “For one, the government’s posture could make it militarily and politically impossible for a two-state solution to ever emerge.”
The editorial does not explain how a two-state solution will secure the security of the Jewish state, and many experts now agree that the notion should be scrapped.
It was not the first time New York Times has published a crossword with an uncanny resemblance to a swastika.
A Twitter account belonging to New York Times Games in 2017 posted a response to similar outrage after another swastika crossword was published. “Yes, hi. It’s NOT a swastika. Honest to God. No one sits down to make a crossword puzzle and says, ‘Hey! You know what would look cool?'”