Holocaust Inversion

Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany occur frequently in the political discourse of anti-Zionism. Given the legacy of the Holocaust, the nature of these comparisons, and particularly whether they constitute antisemitism, is a matter of ongoing debate.

Comparisons between Zionism and Nazism have been made by academics, politicians and public figures, both Jewish and not, since before the establishment of Israel. Some scholars suggest these comparisons can be rhetorical tools without any specific antisemitic intent, or that they can be an informed and necessary response to Israeli policies or actions.Omer Bartov,
As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel
The Guardian 23 August 2024 Others state such comparisons lack historical and moral equivalence, risk inciting Jew-hatred, and may serve as a form of Holocaust inversion, denial or minimization.

During the 20th century, a wide variety of political figures and governments, especially those on the left, have invoked comparisons between Israel or Zionism and Nazism. In the 21st century, politicians who have made such comparisons include Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and others.

In the 20th century

In the 1940s

Comparisons between Zionism and Nazism predate the foundation of Israel in 1948. In 1945, British Army officer and politician Edward Spears compared political Zionism to the Nazi idea of ''Lebensraum.''Rory Miller
''Divided Against Zion: Anti-Zionist Opposition to the Creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, 1945-1948,''
Routledge 2013 p.147. See also pp.16-18,23ff.Martin Kramer
''The War on Error: Israel, Islam and the Middle East,''
Routledge 2017

German-Jewish linguist and anti-fascist Victor Klemperer, who survived the Holocaust and chose not to move to Israel but stay in Germany after 1945, wrote in his ''LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii'' (''The Language of the Third Reich'') that both Zionism and Nazism are essentially neo-Romantic nationalist ideologies.

In 1948, Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein and a number of other Jewish public figures signed an open letter which compared Tnuat Haherut, an early Jewish nationalist political party founded by Menachem Begin, to Nazism. Arendt's views on Zionism and Israel varied widely over time, while Einstein supported the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, but not that of a Jewish state.

English historian Arnold J. Toynbee reconsidered his view that Zionism was like Nazism following his earlier critiques.Hedva Ben-Israel,
Debates with Toynbee: Herzog, Talmon, Friedman
Israel Studies, Spring, 2006, Vol. 11, No. 1 pp. 79-90 pp.81-82.Yair Rosenberg
When an Israeli Ambassador Debated a British Historian on Israel’s Legitimacy—and Won. The Montreal face-off between Yaacov Herzog and Arnold Toynbee offers ways of discussing the Jewish state that still feel fresh
Tablet 31 January 2014 Critical responses by Jacob Talmon and Eliezer Berkovits contributed to Toynbee's reflection that his condemnation of Zionism's guilt in this regard was disproportionate.

In the 1960s

In the context of the Six-Day War, the administration of 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.

In the 1980s

The 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, Israeli-American 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 in a moshav told Amos Oz that he did not care if Israel was called a Judeo-Nazi state, it was "better o bea 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 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 1983, University of Bridgeport international law professor Richard Arens, the brother of Israeli Minister of Defence Moshe Arens, compared Israeli settlement to the Nazi lebensraum.

In the 21st century

Statements by Israelis

During the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, settlers donned yellow stars to compare themselves to Holocaust victims as part of their protests against the disengagement.

In a 2012 article entitled "The Blot of a Light Cloud: Israeli Soldiers, Army, and Society in the Intifada", Israeli academics (and former IDF soldiers) Nuphar Ishay-Krien and Yoel Elizur quoted an anonymous soldier who served during the First Intifada as saying, "I felt like, like, like a Nazi ... it looked exactly like we were actually the Nazis and they were the Jews."

In a testimony published by Breaking the Silence, an IDF soldier who served in Operation Protective Edge recounted Israel's attacks on Beit Hanoun by saying:

There's that famous photo that they always show on trips to Poland (organized trips in which Israeli youths visit Holocaust memorial sites) that shows Warsaw before the war and Warsaw after the Second World War. The photo shows the heart of Warsaw and it's this classy European city, and then they show it at the end of the war. They show the exact same neighborhood, only it has just one house left standing, and the rest is just ruins. That's what it looked like.

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 alluded to manifestations of processes that occurred in Holocaust-era Europe. After criticism by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Golan said that he did not intend to compare Israel to Nazi Germany: "It is an absurd and baseless comparison and I had no intention whatsoever to draw any sort of parallel or to criticize the national leadership. The IDF is a moral army that respects the rules of engagement and protects human dignity." In 2019, he later again compared right wing Israeli politicians to Nazis and warned that Israel's democracy could be exploited similar to the Nazi's rise to power in Germany, amid the rise of Israeli right-wing parties. This drew criticism from the right in Israel.

In an interview with Israeli Army Radio in November 2020, Yair Netanyahu, son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he compared the Kibbutz Movement to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the DPRK.

"Kibbutzim are something that doesn't exist outside of North Korea. We always know how ideas for utopian societies end. In the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, there was a desire to create exemplary societies and utopian societies. It never ends well, the desire to engineer human society."

In 2023, during the Gaza war, the mayor of Metula David Azoulai said in an interview: "The whole Gaza Strip needs to be empty. Flattened. Just like in Auschwitz. Let it be a museum for all the world to see what Israel can do. Let no one reside in the Gaza Strip for all the world to see, because October 7 was in a way a second Holocaust." The remarks were condemned by a spokesperson for the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum who said that they "may sound as a call for murder of the scale akin to Auschwitz".

On 18 February 2025, Ofer Cassif, a far-left politician of the Knesset and member of the Hadash–Ta'al party, posted a tweet comparing Israel's plans to encourage voluntary migration of Palestinians from Gaza to the flight of the German Jews to other countries during World War ll. His tweet was criticised by other Knesset members. For instance, Otzma Yehudit MK Almog Cohen filed a complaint to the Knesset Ethics Committee about “his vile and disgraceful comparison of the voluntary emigration program for Gaza residents to the voluntary emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany” and called Cassif a "terrorist supporter." In response, right-wing Knesset lawmakers called for Cassif's impeachment.

Moshe Feiglin compared both Israel and Palestinians to the Nazis, saying "As Hitler, may his name be erased, once said: 'I cannot live in this world if there is one Jew left in it,' we could not live in this land if even one such Islamo-Nazi remains in Gaza, and not before we return to Gaza and turn it into Hebrew Gaza."

Statements by Palestinians

In August 2022, the President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, accused Israel of having committed "50 Holocausts" during a visit to Berlin, Germany. Abbas had responded to a reporter's question about the upcoming 50th anniversary of the 1972 Munich massacre committed by the internationally active Palestinian militant group Black September, who were at that time affiliated with Abbas' Fatah Party. When asked if he intended to apologize for the attack, Abbas responded by listing allegations of atrocities committed by Israel. Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor of Germany, grimaced at the use of the word "Holocausts" but said nothing. Scholz condemned the remarks later. He asserted, "Especially for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable". The German publication ''Bild'' labeled the incident as antisemitic. In response, Abbas said that his answer was not intended to deny the singularity of the Holocaust, which he stated that he condemned in the strongest terms, but that he had intended to discuss the "crimes and massacres committed against the Palestinian people since the Nakba at the hands of the Israeli forces" in his view.

Statements by international politicians

In April 2016, Turkish-born Swedish politician Mehmet Kaplan who served as the Minister of Housing was forced to resign after a video surfaced from 2009, where he compared Israel's treatment to the Palestinians to the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany, stated “Israelis today treat Palestinians in a very similar way to how Jews were treated in Germany in the 1930s."

In July 2018, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, while addressing Grand National Assembly MPs in Ankara, said that the "spirit of Hitler" lives on in Israel, commenting specifically that he believes "no difference xistsbetween Hitler's obsession with a pure race and the understanding that these ancient lands are just for the Jews." He also called Israel "the world's most Zionist, fascist, racist state." The statements were condemned by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who described Erdoğan's rule as "a dark dictatorship" and stated that Erdoğan "is massacring Syrians and Kurds and has jailed tens of thousands of his own citizens." The spat between the two leaders took place following the Israeli government's adoption of Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.

In May 2023, Tunisian President Kais Saed said, "While Tunisians protected Jews during the Holocaust, today elderly women and children are being bombed in Gaza." Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said such remarks incited hate against Tunisian Jews.

On 18 February 2024, the President of Brazil Lula da Silva stirred up controversy due to his statement comparing the actions of Israel in the Gaza war to the Holocaust.

In the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, erstwhile Member of Parliament for Bradford East, the Liberal Democrat 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 said 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.

Roger Waters of the British rock band Pink Floyd has repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany. In a 2013 interview with ''Counter Punch'', he accused " the Jewish lobby" of being very powerful in the United States and said, "There were many people that pretended that the oppression of the Jews was not going on. From 1933 until 1946. So this is not a new scenario. Except that this time it's the Palestinian People being murdered." American rabbi and writer Shmuley Boteach regarded this comparison as antisemitic, writing in ''The Observer'', "Mr. Waters, the Nazis were a genocidal regime that murdered 6 million Jews. That you would have the audacity to compare Jews to monsters who murdered them shows you have no decency, you have no heart, you have no soul." In a 2017 hour-long video live chat on Facebook, Waters again compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

In the United States

In a Netflix special, comedian Dave Chappelle made a joke about William Ellison, a former slave in South Carolina who then went on to own slaves. The punchline of the joke was "And shockingly, they're making a movie about him. Ironically, it's called 'Space Jews.'" The UK-based Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) said the joke implied that "Jews subject others to the atrocities that they suffered in the Holocaust." The joke was denounced by CAA, with a spokesperson saying: "Antisemitism and minimizing the Holocaust are no joke. Whilst there is always a place for light-hearted humor, Dave Chapelle’s so-called comedy is barely coherent and plays on the ignorant prejudices of his audience. It is bad enough to do so in the confines of a comedy club, but to be streamed into living rooms around the world courtesy of Netflix is an undeserved privilege for someone willing to mock the trauma of Jewish history and the memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide."

Actor Wallace Shawn said in a 2025 interview with Katie Halper that Israel is "doing evil that is just as great as what the Nazis did." Shawn added: "In some ways it's worse, because they kind of boast about it. Hitler had the decency to try to keep it secret. For some reason, Hitler didn't want people to know he was doing these things to the Jews. The Israelis are almost proud of it, and it's demonically evil. And anybody who doesn't recognize that it's evil, I can't, probably, communicate with that person. That might be temporary insanity."

Jake Romm in a piece for ''Parapraxis'' on the role of the Shoah in Zionism wrote, "The Shoah was present for the early Zionist perpetrators of the Nakba both as the crime to be avenged and the model for the barbarity—and efficacy—required to carry that vengeance out."

Responses

Academics worldwide have debated whether comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany are antisemitic or not. Lesley Klaff and Bernard-Henri Lévy argue that these comparisons lack historical and moral equivalence, and risk inciting anti-Jewish sentiment. Author Yossi Klein Halevi deemed the comparison a form of an archaic dehumanizing trope: "the Jew as embodiment of evil" and the " satanic Jew", now turned into "the satanic Jewish state".

Comparisons between Israel and Nazism have been described as a form of Holocaust trivialization called " Holocaust inversion". Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism, describes this type of Holocaust inversion as "soft-core" Holocaust denial, as contrasted with the "hard-core" denial practiced by David Irving. She says that it "dilutes what the Holocaust was" by using a false comparison.

Kenneth L. Marcus says that Holocaust inversion aims to "shock, silence, threaten, insulate, and legitimize", which has "a chilling effect on Jewish supporters of Israel". He says that it implies the subject deserves some form of punishment, which then justifies any antisemitism that may occur, while disguising it as political criticism of Israel. This also serves to insulate those who use such comparisons from accusations of racism. Bernard-Henri Lévy says this erodes societal safeguards by providing "an entirely new way of justifying" antisemitism that is subtler than yelling " Money Jews" or " They Killed Christ". David Hirsh described "The Livingstone Formulation" as the defense used by those accused of antisemitism that their accusers are trying to prevent Israel from being criticized.

The Working Definition of Antisemitism – adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the U.S. Department of State, and other organizations – offers several examples to help determine when criticism of Israel may be antisemitic, including "drawing comparison of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis". Critics of the definition say that it could define legitimate criticisms of Israel as antisemitic and that it has been used to censor pro-Palestinian activism, in particular. Alternative definitions such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism have been proposed instead on this basis.

Eyal Levin suggests that Holocaust inversion is becoming part of the iconography of a new antisemitism which has spread globally – particularly in the Arab and Muslim world and in Western Europe and America – often appearing in demonstrations and media portrayals. Historian Bernard Lewis suggests that the belief that the Nazis were no worse than Israel also provides "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 has used comparisons between Nazi Germany and Israel to delegitimize its political opponents. In Israel, Lustick reports that many Israelis are "already repelled by actions against Palestinians they cannot help but associate with Nazi persecution of Jews". Israeli-American historian Omer Bartov has drawn an analogy between the German army's dehumanization of its enemies under Nazism and the attitudes displayed by young Israeli troops in the 2024 Gaza war.Omer Bartov,
As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel
The Guardian 23 August 2024

British scholar David Feldman suggests 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.

See also

* Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world
* Nazi analogies
* Criticism of the Israeli government
* Double genocide
* Fascist (insult)
* Genocide recognition politics
* Hajo Meyer
* United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 (revoked by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 46/86)
* Zionist antisemitism
* Carlos Latuff
* '' The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism''
* Putler, a comparison of Russia's actions in the Russo-Ukrainian War to Nazi Germany's during the Second World War
* 3D test of antisemitism
* Weaponization of antisemitism
* Zionist as a pejorative

Footnotes

References

Citations

Bibliography

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Further reading

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"Israel's 'nation-state law' parallels the Nazi Nuremberg Laws"
by Susan Abulhawa at Al Jazeera

"Herzog calls on Israel's politicians to leave Nazi references out of campaigns"
by Greer Fay Cashman at ''The Jerusalem Post''

"The Rights and Wrongs of Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany"
by Daniel Blatman at ''Haaretz''

{{Portalbar, Israel, Germany, History, Politics

Israel and Nazi Germany
Anti-Arabism in Israel
Anti-Palestinian sentiment in Israel
Anti-Israeli sentiment
Anti-Zionism
Germany–Israel relations
Historiography of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Holocaust historiography
Linguistic controversies
Media bias controversies involving Israel
Media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict
Metaphors referring to war and violence
Nazi analogies
Political psychology
Politics of Israel
Racism in Israel
Racism in Palestine
Victimology