# Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany

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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 Israel and Nazism have been made by academics, politicians and public figures, both Jewish and not, since before the formation of Israel. Some scholars suggest these comparisons can be rhetorical tools without specific antisemitic intent, or that they can be an informed and necessary response to Israeli policy or actions. Others state such comparisons lack historical and moral equivalence, risk inciting Jew hatred, and may serve as a form of Holocaust inversion, Holocaust 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 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.
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. 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 [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 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 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." He later again compared right wing Israeli politicians to Nazis, drawing criticism from the right in Israel.

### 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 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 [exists] between 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 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 Israel–Hamas 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.

## 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 Israel-Hamas war.
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.