Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany
Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany have been made since the 1940s. 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. 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". Historical examples. An early example of comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany was a 1948 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 occupation of the Palestinian territories would lead to the moral degradation of the Israeli army because people will commit atrocities for the state. 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 Lustick, “Many [Israelis] are already repelled by actions against Palestinians they cannot help but associate with Nazi persecution of Jews.” In 2016, Israeli general and deputy chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Force Yair Golan 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. After the Likud victory in the 1977 election, Holocaust metaphors began to be used by the Israeli right to describe their left-wing opponents. During the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, settlers donned yellow stars to compare themselves to Holocaust victims. View as antisemitic. Whether comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany are intrinsically antisemitic is disputed. David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, argues that Holocaust inversion is often not antisemitic because it is a commonly used rhetorical device "used in many arguments about many subjects, often light-mindedly, lacking  any specifically antisemitic content", such as Israeli politicians who refer to each other as Nazis, and because comparisons in relation to the 2014 Gaza war are not motivated by an anti-Jewish subjectivity but by criticism of Israeli policy. The term "Holocaust inversion" for Nazi comparisons is used by those who see the Holocaust as a template for Jewish life. According to Kenneth L. Marcus, the aim of those who employ Holocaust inversion is to "shock, silence, threaten, insulate, and legitimize". 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. Furthermore, he says, 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 which most forms of racism face in post-World War II society. Finally, he states, inversion not only legitimizes anti-Israel activities, it 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". The Working Definition of Antisemitism (adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the U.S. Department of State, and others) offers 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. Holocaust inversion may also be seen as a form of Holocaust revisionism because it minimizes Nazi crimes. According to 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, functionally equivalent discourse was able to rise under a new guise. In particular, the Freedom Party of Austria has used Holocaust inversion to delegitimize political opponents. References. Notes Bibliography