Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany

This poster shown within a 2009 demonstration inside the Scottish city of Edinburgh points at Israel as a nation of "fascist murderers".

Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, also referred to as Holocaust inversion, have been made since the 1940s, taking place first within the larger context of the aftermath of World War II. Such comparisons are a rhetorical staple of anti-Zionism in relation to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Whether comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany are intrinsically antisemitic is disputed.

Scholarly analysis has taken place in the broader context of the frequent comparisons made in international popular culture comparing widely various entities to the historical Nazis. British academic David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, commented that comparisons frequently do not become antisemitic because they take place in the context of a commonly deployed rhetorical device "used in many arguments about many subjects, often light-mindedly, lacking any specifically antisemitic content", as vastly different entities get compared to the Nazis. The Anti-Defamation League argued in a statement that antisemitism takes place through what it sees as measures "purposefully directed at Jews in an effort to associate the victims of Nazi crimes with the Nazi perpetrators ... [which] serves to diminish the significance and uniqueness of the Holocaust."

According to political scientist Ian S. Lustick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, such comparisons are "a natural if unintended consequence of the immersion of Israeli Jews in Holocaust imagery". A wide variety of political figures and governments have made the comparison historically, an example being the administration of the Soviet Union in the context of the Six-Day War within 1960s era Cold War divisions. Politicians in the 21st century who have done so include the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and British parliamentarian David Ward.

Historical examples

This 2002 cartoon by Brazilian artist Carlos Latuff compares Holocaust denial by neo-Nazis with the denial of the Palestinian people's identity by Israeli settlements activists.

An early example of comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany was a 1948 open letter to the U.S. publication New York Times describing the Herut party as "closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties." The letter was signed by researchers Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt.

Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz introduced the term "Judeo-Nazis." He argued that continued military occupation of the Palestinian territories would lead to the moral degradation of Israeli Defense Force (IDF), with individuals committing atrocities for state security interests. In 1988, Holocaust survivor Yehuda Elkana warned that the tendency in Israel to see all potential threats as existential and all opponents as Nazis would lead to Nazi-like behavior by Jews. During the First Intifada, historian Omer Bartov was enraged by Yitzhak Rabin's call to "break the bones" of Palestinians and wrote him a letter arguing that, based on Bartov's research, the IDF could be similarly brutalized as the German Army was during World War II. One Israeli nationalist told Amos Oz that he did not care if Israel was called a Judeo-Nazi state, it was "better [to be] a living Judeo-Nazi than a dead saint." In 2018, Noam Chomsky cited Leibowitz, arguing that he was right in his prediction that the occupation was producing Judeo-Nazis.

According to political scientist Ian S. Lustick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, such comparisons are "a natural if unintended consequence of the immersion of Israeli Jews in Holocaust imagery", and the term "Holocaust inversion" for Nazi comparisons is used by those who see the Holocaust as a template for Jewish life.

In the context of the Six-Day War, the Soviet Union compared Israeli tactics to those of Nazi Germany during the Second World War in official commentary. After the victory of Likud in the 1977 Israeli legislative election, Holocaust metaphors began to be used by the Israeli right-wing to describe their left-wing opponents. During the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, some settlers donned yellow stars to compare themselves to Holocaust victims, protesting the government's measures. In 2016, Yair Golan, the Israeli general and deputy chief of staff of the IDF, sparked a controversy during a speech at Yom HaShoah. Golan stated: "If there is something that frightens me about the memory of the Holocaust, it is seeing the abhorrent processes that took place in Europe, and Germany in particular, some 70, 80 or 90 years ago, and finding manifestations of these processes here among us in 2016." These remarks were condemned by the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Debate on whether comparisons are antisemitic

The subject of comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany and whether or not such comparisons are antisemitic has received much commentary by academics worldwide who have studied history and politics, including those who have deemed it to be a form of Holocaust trivialization called "Holocaust inversion" due to the potential implication it minimizes the scope of Nazi crimes.

According to Kenneth L. Marcus, the aim of those who employ Holocaust inversion is to "shock, silence, threaten, insulate, and legitimize. ... No one tells Holocaust survivors – or a nation of Holocaust survivors and their children – that they are Nazis without expecting to shock." Even when it is frequently used, the use of Holocaust inversion is still shocking, which facilitates its repeated use. He asserts that the tying together of Nazi motifs with Jewish conspiracy stereotypes has a chilling effect on Jewish supporters of Israel. He also says that by implying guilt, this discourse is threatening because it implies a required punishment. As this discourse is performed in the context of political criticism of Israel, it insulates those who use it from the resistance that most forms of racism face in post-World War II society. Finally, he states that inversion not only legitimizes anti-Israel activities but also legitimizes anti-Jewish activities that would otherwise be hard to conduct.

According to Bernard-Henri Lévy, this erodes societal safeguards allowing "people to feel once again the desire and, above all, the right to burn all the synagogues they want, to attack boys wearing yarmulkes, to harass large number of rabbis... in order for anti-Semitism to be reborn on a large scale."

According to historian Bernard Lewis, the belief that the Nazis were no worse than Israel is has "brought welcome relief to many who had long borne a burden of guilt for the role which they, their families, their nations, or their churches had played in Hitler's crimes against the Jews, whether by participation or complicity, acquiescence or indifference." In Austria, while overt antisemitism has been limited following the Holocaust, the Freedom Party of Austria is associated with using comparisons between Nazi Germany and Israel to delegitimize political opponents.

According to Lustick, many Israelis are "already repelled by actions against Palestinians they cannot help but associate with Nazi persecution of Jews." British scholar David Feldman argued that comparisons in relation to the 2014 Gaza War have not been motivated by a broader anti-Jewish subjectivity but by targeted criticism of Israeli policy in military actions.

The Working Definition of Antisemitism, which was adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the U.S. Department of State, and other organizations, has offered several examples in which criticism of Israel may be antisemitic, including "drawing comparison of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis." This definition is controversial because of concerns that it could be seen as defining legitimate criticisms of Israel as antisemitic and has been used to censor pro-Palestinian activism. Alternative definitions such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism have been proposed.

In an official statement, the Anti-Defamation League, an American social activist organization involved with the U.S. Jewish community, has declared that "[a]bsolutely no comparison can be made between the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews" given that "[w]hile one can criticize Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, in contrast to the Holocaust, there is not now, nor has there been, a significant Israeli ideology, movement, policy or plan to exterminate the Palestinian population." The statement also labeled comparisons inherently antisemitic.

21st-century discussions and commentary

Pictured here during a 2012 meeting with the President of Chile, the-then Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan remarked that the "spirit of Hitler" lives on in Israel, triggering controversy.

In the United Kingdom, the-then Member of Parliament for Bradford East, Liberal Democrats politician David Ward, created controversy after signing the ceremonial Book of Remembrance in the Houses of Parliament on Holocaust Memorial Day, with him writing: "I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new state of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza." He later responded to criticism of his statement by alleging that "a huge operation out there" had distorted what he meant. As a result of the scrutiny over the January 2013 controversy, the Liberal Democrats' leadership threatened Ward with formal disciplinary action over his arguments.

In July 2018, the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, asserted publicly in Ankara that the "spirit of Hitler" lives on in Israel, commenting specifically that he believes "no difference [exists] between Hitler's obsession with a pure race and the understanding that these ancient lands are just for the Jews." He additionally called the nation-state both "fascist" and "racist". In response, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, condemned the statements and remarked that he viewed Turkey's government as a "dark dictatorship".

See also

• Criticism of the Israeli government
• Double genocide
• Fascist (insult)

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Bartov, Omer (2018). "National Narratives of Suffering and Victimhood: Methods and Ethics of Telling the Past as Personal Political History". The Holocaust and the Nakba. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-54448-1.
• Lustick, Ian S. (2019). Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-5195-1.
• Rosenfeld, Alvin H. (9 January 2019). Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: The Dynamics of Delegitimization. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-03872-2.
• Marcus, Kenneth L. (30 August 2010). Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-49119-8.
• Steir-Livny, Liat (2019). "'Kristallnacht in Tel Aviv': Nazi Associations in the Contemporary Israeli Socio-Political Debate". New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison. Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-61249-616-0.

External links

• "Former Pink Floyd frontman sparks fury by comparing Israelis to Nazis" by Vanessa Thorpe and Edward Helmore at The Guardian
• "Israel's 'nation-state law' parallels the Nazi Nuremberg Laws" by Susan Abulhawa at Al Jazeera
• "The Rights and Wrongs of Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany" by Daniel Blatman at Haaretz