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Deleted Post

Did a post mentioning Lebensraum for Israel appear on the Times of Israel blog platform? Yes, that's true: The screenshot that resurfaced on social media in 2026 showed a blog entry that was indeed published there almost two years earlier, but then was deleted. The Times of Israel told Lead Stories that the image is from a blog post in "an open forum for third-party contributors" that was "mistakenly approved for publication nearly two years ago" but was quickly removed because it "violated our standards."

The statement appeared in a post (archived here) published on X by the @AlanRMacLeod account on Sept. 25, 2026. It opened:

They said it. They literally came out and said it.

The image attached to the post showed the Times of Israel logo and what looked like an article's title that read:

Lebensraum Needed for Israel's Exploding Population

DEC 4, 2024, 4:27 PM

This is what the picture looked like on X at the time of writing:

(Image source: post by @AlanRMacLeod on X.)

A piece with this title did appear on the Times of Israel website on the said date, but the next day it was already taken down. However, it was not an editorial article or a report authored by the newspaper's staff.

The piece in question was published in the blog section whose sidebar showed the following disclaimer:

Please note that the posts on The Blogs are contributed by third parties. The opinions, facts and any media content in them are presented solely by the authors, and neither The Times of Israel nor its partners assume any responsibility for them...

Although coined decades before World War II, the term "Lebensraum" became historically associated with the Nazi state (archived here) that used it to justify invasion of other countries purporting that such expansion was necessary for the German state to survive.

The entry was authored by Dan Ehrlich who described himself (archived here) as a "London based American journalist with a long wide ranging career spanning print, radio TV and online news".

When the post was first published, the controversy was covered by Newsweek (archived here).

The Times of Israel blog section did not show any other posts published by the same person after the removal of the article mentioning "Lebensraum".

A spokesperson for the Times of Israel responded to a Lead Stories request for comment with this statement:

The screenshot is from a blog post that was mistakenly approved for publication nearly two years ago. The post violated our standards and was removed within hours. The blogger who wrote it no longer blogs on our platform.

The Times of Israel blogging platform is an open forum for third-party contributors, designed to host a wide range of perspectives while adhering to our community guidelines. We publish thousands of blog posts each year, which are reviewed by a small, dedicated moderation team.

On rare occasions, an unacceptable post gets through that review process. In this case, the use of "Lebensraum," a term inextricably associated with Nazi expansionism, was unacceptable, and the post was removed within hours.

Every blog post carries a prominent disclaimer, both on the page and in a pop-up, making clear that blog content represents the views of the individual author and not those of The Times of Israel.

The resurfaced screenshot does not include that context and should not be understood as representing or reflecting the views of The Times of Israel.