by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (representing the world Masorti/Conservative movement)
Scholars Avinoam Patt of the University of Connecticut and Liat Steir-Livny of Sapir Academic College and the Open University of Israel offered the following observation: “The words used to describe events are often loaded with emotional associations; the power and meaning of words that attempt to convey the depths of traumatic experiences cannot be discounted.”
In our day, perhaps the most offensive epithet one can aim at another is the accusation of being a “Nazi.” The World Jewish Congress reports on the use of vitriol-laden words equating the Jewish state with this epitome of evil in the following ways:
Ariella Esterson, a researcher at NGO Monitor, has elaborated on the intensification of these outrageous practices following the Hamas atrocities of October 7: “Since October, many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have distorted the memory of the Holocaust to wage political and economic war on Israel … They have labeled Israelis as Nazis, transformed the Star of David into a swastika, and held posters at protests in New York and other cities across the globe that read, ‘Well done, Israel. Hitler would be proud.’
“Portraying Israel as a perpetrator of a holocaust … lays the foundation for Israel’s moral delegitimization.
“Palestinian NGOs have participated in the campaign to hijack the memory of the Holocaust … trying to present Israelis as worse than Nazis. On Oct. 13, an official from the Union of Agricultural Work Committees … posted on Facebook that we are living through an action of ‘ethnic cleansing and genocide accompanied by starvation and severing all capabilities of life from water to electricity and fuel … more powerful and stronger than the holocaust which the Zionists talk about.’”
The exploitation of Holocaust memory has not just been perpetrated by NGOs, but by the United Nations itself.
In January, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, claimed in an interview: “What I am seeing today … is similar to what happened in the Holocaust.”
Esterson concluded that “these comparisons are not only historically and morally invalid, they also incite anti-Jewish sentiment ….”
These are classic examples of “historical inversion” — a claim that the victims of past persecution are now inflicting that same type of oppression upon others.
During Israel’s War of Independence, the Haganah was fending off five invading armies intent upon jihad, a “holy war” whose aim was to eliminate all Jewish presence from Palestine. In every part of Mandatory Palestine conquered by the Arab forces, “ethnic cleansing” was practiced. All Jews residing in the West Bank and in the eastern portion of Jerusalem were expelled. In contrast, nearly 200,000 Arabs remained in pre-1967 Israel as full citizens. Historical inversion had it that the State of Israel, rather than the Islamic forces, is the “culprit” accused of ethnic cleansing.
So, too, when Hamas invaded Israel’s border communities, “genocide” was the battle plan. Everyone was slated for death by mass shootings, by burning people alive, by gang rape. The exceptions were people taken as hostages as bait to force the release of Arab terrorists serving lengthy sentences in Israeli prisons. Nevertheless, through “inversion,” it is the Jewish state that is accused of “genocide” against the Palestinians.
British scholar Lesley Klaff documents such “inversion” to the period of the British Mandate: “Holocaust inversion has found a welcome home in the anti-Zionist narrative in Britain for two reasons … First, it is but a variant of the ‘persecuted Jews become the persecutors’ trope [accused of deicide, blood libels, poisoning of wells, etc.], which was popularized [by Christendom] and continues to inform contemporary discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict …
“Second, Holocaust inversion has … its historical roots in the British Foreign Office during the Mandate in Palestine. It started with the claim that Zionism is the avatar of Nazism, and this can be seen most strikingly in the attitude of Sir John Bagot Glubb, the British commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion during the War of Independence and a long-established player in the region. Believing that the creation of Israel was a dreadful injustice to the Palestinian Arabs, and an antisemite who considered Jews to be ‘unlikeable,’ ‘aggressive,’ ‘stiff-necked,’ ‘vengeful,’ and ‘imbued with the idea of [being] a superior race,’ he promulgated the idea that the Jews had anticipated Hitler’s master race theory.”
“Israelis as Nazis” is a common theme in current anti-Zionist protests. For example, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach was present during a recent “Al-Quds Day” anti-Israel protest in Toronto, replete with swastikas and the labeling of Israel as a Nazi state. Boteach said: “I was not prepared for just how deep the hate for Israel was across the street … There I saw thousands of people holding signs with Israel and swastikas. Going well beyond the average hate of falsely accusing Israel of being an apartheid state, the protesters held enormous signs that claimed Israel was guilty of a holocaust against the Palestinians. It was so vile that I wanted to throw up … Imagine the degree of Jew-hatred it takes to trivialize the wholesale slaughter of six million Jews and 1.5 million children by equating it with Israel’s defensive wars against genocidal Hamas.”
Rabbi Boteach said he wanted to ask the following questions of the protestors:
“If Israel is a Nazi state, where are the gas chambers it built? Where are the Palestinians who are being transported in cattle cars to extermination camps? Why aren’t Israel’s 1.5 million Arab citizens hiding in monasteries and cupboards to escape the Israeli SS who are hunting them down to shoot them and throw their bodies in ditches? If Israel is a Nazi state, why are its Muslim citizens controlling Judaism’s most revered holy site atop the Temple Mount? If Israel is a Nazi state, who is its Hitler? Netanyahu, who has to go to elections just to stay in power every two or three years? And if Israel is a Nazi state, why are Arabs serving on its Supreme Court and representing 20 percent of its elected parliament?”
Yet, Boteach pondered, why should he bother to respond? “Because if there is one thing we’ve learned about the Jews, it’s the fact that the world will believe absolutely anything about our people. And we better start taking this lie seriously as well, before it becomes ingrained into the public conscience … Jews as Nazis? We might want to dismiss it as loathsome and ridiculous, but it’s appearing more and more, and we better be damned vigilant in our response.”
As the lead professional of the Jewish Agency for Israel, 20-plus years ago, Natan Sharansky described the “3 Ds” of anti-Semitism” as double standards, demonization, and delegitimization. These “Ds” are well served by labeling Israelis as “Nazis.”
Sharansky’s definition was augmented by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of what characterizes being antisemitic. The IHRA lists as examples such behaviors as “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards by requiring [of Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is also listed, along with “accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.”
Holocaust scholars feel compelled to respond. The issue of rebutting “Zionism as Nazism” has surfaced among Holocaust scholars. In “What Matters Now,” a Times of Israel podcast, Polish-Canadian Holocaust historian Jan Grabowski amplified this theme: “Images associated with the Holocaust have become a powerful weapon.” The term “Nazi” is employed “to denigrate somehow or prove wrong or simply to destroy the reputation of your opponents.”
“It goes much further than shaming; It is a clear attempt to delegitimize the very existence of the State of Israel.” Plus “it is not really the State of Israel [alone that] they protest against. They protest against the Jews.”
“Israel as a Nazi state” is weaponized by opponents of nationhood. Yoram Hazony, a prominent scholar focusing on nationalism, added an anti-nation-state context. In the aftermath of the bloodbath of World War II, people who oppose sustaining individual nations rather than regional bodies such as the European Union, point to the Nazi state as a paradigm of nationalistic evil. The ultimate canard is to compare the governance of any country to the Third Reich. Said Hazony, “To them, Israel is like Nazi Germany in that it represents the unspeakable horror of Jewish soldiers using force against others, backed by nothing but their own government’s views as to their national rights and interests. Israel is Auschwitz.”
Hazony concretizes the manner in which this description has become popularized in Europe: “Try to see this through European eyes. Imagine being a proud Dutchman today, whose nation held high the torch of freedom in that hopeless uprising against Catholic Spain, a war of independence that lasted 80 years. ‘Yet I am willing to give this up,’ he says to himself, ‘to sacrifice this heritage with its dreams of past glory and to say good-bye to the state founded by my forefathers for the sake of something higher. I will make this painful sacrifice for the sake of an international political union that will ultimately embrace all humanity. Yes, I will do it for humanity.’”
Hazony continues: “Yet who is it that stands against [this Dutchman]? Who, among the civilized peoples, would dare turn their backs on this effort, blessed by morality and reason, to attain at last the salvation of mankind?… Imagine his shock: ‘The Jews! Those Jews, who should have been the first to welcome the coming of the new order, the first to welcome the coming of mankind’s salvation, instead establish themselves as its opponents, building up their own selfish little state, at war with the world. How dare they? Must they not make the same sacrifices as I in the name of enlightenment and reason? Are they so debased they cannot remember their own parents in Auschwitz? No, they cannot remember — for they’ve been seduced and perverted by the same evil that had previously seized our neighbors in Germany. They have gone over to the side of Auschwitz.’”
This analysis leads Hazony to posit: “This comparison leads to the conclusion that Israel has no right to exist and should be dismantled.”
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld defines additional factors to the assessment of these phenomena: “This antisemitic concept claims that Israel behaves against the Palestinians as Germany did to the Jews in World War II. ‘The victims have become perpetrators,’ is one major slogan of the inverters…. Holocaust inverters come from many circles. A large number are Arabs or other Muslims. Others come from the extreme Left in the West. A variety of Western mainstream public figures have made Holocaust-inversion statements, including politicians, academics, authors, as well as the occasional Jew or Israeli.
“The portrayal of Israelis and Jews as Nazis occurs in speech, writing, and the visual media, including cartoons, graffiti, and placards. It employs sinister characterizations, Nazi symbols, and sometimes takes the form of genocidal terminology to describe Israel’s actions.
“The motivations of the Holocaust inverters are manifold. Some aim at the destruction of Israel and seek to lay the infrastructure for its moral delegitimization through demonization … For Europeans it is also an effective way to cover up for Holocaust crimes of their countries and expunge guilt by claiming that what was done by the Nazi perpetrators and their many collaborators is a common phenomenon and by now is practiced by Israelis and Jews.”
Conclusion
In sum, this practice of “historical inversion” must be vigorously opposed. As Sharansky noted, this is classic antisemitism. Its aim is to delegitimize the existence of Israel. It seeks to demonize Israelis and Jews. It applies invidious double standards. It hopes to place Israel, Israelis, and Jewry as untouchables for civilized societies. It leads inevitably to false accusations of Israelis practicing genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, and apartheid.
Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD, was religious leader of Congregation Agudath Israel in Caldwell, NJ, for more than four decades, retiring in 2021. He served as president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis (1993-95); as president of the World Council of Conservative/Masorti Synagogues (2000-05); and as chair of the Foundation for Masorti Judaism in Israel (2010-14). He currently serves as president of Mercaz Olami, representing the world Masorti/Conservative movement. He is the author of “It All Begins with a Date: Jewish Concerns about Interdating,” “Preserving Jewishness in Your Family: After Intermarriage Has Occurred,” and “Alternatives to Assimilation: The Response of Reform Judaism to American Culture, 1840-1930.”