JERUSALEM — Israel’s ultranationalist defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, managed to offend both Palestinians and free-speech advocates on Thursday, comparing the Palestinians’ national poet to Adolf Hitler and threatening the independence of Israel’s Army Radio station.

The controversy erupted after Army Radio, which has been under pressure from right-wing politicians to broadcast more patriotic programming, aired a show about the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, a revered figure among Palestinians whose work is a staple of school curriculums and is showcased at a signature museum in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The Defense Ministry issued a statement on Thursday saying that Mr. Lieberman had excoriated the commander of the radio station over the show. The statement said that “according to this same logic,” it would be possible to “glorify during a broadcast the literary marvels of ‘Mein Kampf,’” Hitler’s autobiography.

Months after Israel’s conservative culture minister raised hackles by trying to adjust Army Radio’s playlist, Mr. Lieberman recently assigned a Defense Ministry official to make recommendations on whether the station should continue to operate. The left-leaning Israeli news organization Haaretz reported that Israel’s attorney general had phoned Mr. Lieberman on Wednesday night “to remind him he has no authority to intervene in Army Radio’s programming.”

Mr. Lieberman apparently took issue with the inclusion of Mr. Darwish’s work in a series on formative Israeli texts, and he told the commander, according to the ministry’s statement, that “the military station’s mission is to strengthen social solidarity and not to widen rifts, and certainly not to hurt public sensitivities.”