[Salon] Beyond the Nazi Comparison: Calling out Zionism - Arab Digest.org Guest Post

Beyond the Nazi Comparison: Calling out Zionism Summary: while the Nazi genocide was larger in scale, the Israeli state’s actions are distinct because its leaders openly boast about war crimes and ethnic cleansing in a way no Nazi official ever did. On 14 June, Israel’s former Defence Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, compared Israeli settlers to Nazis and accused authorities of failing to investigate Israelis responsible for killing Palestinian civilians in the Occupied West Bank. In an interview with Ynet, Ya’alon stated that factions within the religious Zionist movement hold a “Jewish supremacy ideology.” “What is Jewish supremacy? Eighty years after the Holocaust, it’s Mein Kampf in reverse. The superior race is us,” said Ya’alon, who served as Defence Minister under Benjamin Netanyahu from 2013 to 2016. Such comments raise eyebrows in the West, where comparing Israel to the Nazis is still taboo. However, among Israelis, this comparison is not new. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father, regularly likened Menachem Begin and Ze’ev Jabotinsky to Hitler. In the 1980s, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a respected Orthodox intellectual, warned that nationalist shifts in Israeli society were fostering a “Judeo-Nazi” mentality. More recently, in early 2026, former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo stated that settler violence reminded him of historical persecution against Jews: “My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and what I saw reminded me of the events that happened against Jews in the last century.” It is an irony worth noting that these comparisons contravene the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s exceptionally broad definition of anti-Semitism adopted by over 1,200 entities worldwide. Indeed one could argue that the current actions of the Israeli state exceed even Nazi atrocities, albeit not in scale. With support from the US, UK and Europe, Israel continues to exterminate Palestinians. People in Gaza are denied elementary healthcare, education, water, and sanitation. Settlers rampage unchecked in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Although official figures place the death toll in Gaza at over 69,000 - 75% of them women and children - some scholars estimate the actual death toll at 680,000, including 380,000 infants under five. Average life expectancy has dropped from 75 to 35 years. Since the October ceasefire announcement, UNICEF reports one child killed daily. There are hundreds of videos showing Israeli forces destroying schools. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Dr Nick Maynard of Oxford University described how many Palestinian boys suffered gunshot wounds to their testicles, and at least 114 children were killed with single gunshot wounds to the head or chest. A recently published United Nations report states that Israel is not only indiscriminately killing children but is "deliberately" targeting them. The targeting of journalists is unprecedented. More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav wars and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined. An average of 13 are killed every month. Last month, the United Nations added Israel to its blacklist for sexual violence in conflict zones, citing systematic, large-scale rape of Palestinian women, men, and children. While Klaus Barbie raped prisoners with dogs, the Nazis did not operate with the same systematic, state-enabled organisation as the IDF. Soldiers caught raping a Palestinian prisoner on camera were acquitted and became celebrities in Israeli media. Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defence Minister are wanted by the ICC for war crimes including starvation, murder, and persecution. Never before has a state boasted so openly about committing war crimes. Settlers call for ethnic cleansing; IDF members celebrate burning Palestinians alive. Rabbi Eyal Karim, now the chief rabbi of the IDF, stated in 2014 that soldiers are allowed to rape non-Jewish women in wartime. Other military rabbis have called for the return of slavery and the killing of gentile babies. Government rhetoric is equally explicit. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared Gaza would be “totally destroyed.” Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu suggested nuking Gaza. Minister May Golan said, “I am personally proud of the holocaust of Gaza” and “I am proud to be racist.” MK Moshe Sa’ada’s catchphrase is “vanquishment, annihilation, emigration.” Defence Minister Israel Katz outlined plans for permanent occupation and ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, stating residents would never see their homes again. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, convicted of eight offences including incitement to racism, oversees the prison service described by B’Tselem as a “network of torture camps.” He stated, “For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep,” echoing Nazi General Wilhelm Keitel’s “Hostage Order,” for which Keitel was executed in 1946. Even Naftali Bennett, former PM and head of the ‘Liberal Zionist’ camp, proposed a “full siege” on Gaza, suggesting upcoming elections will focus on methods of genocide rather than its cessation. As US Senator Richard Black noted, not even the Nazis felt emboldened enough to openly announce their genocide. In Gaza, occupation forces hunt hungry Palestinians with bullets. Snipers shoot unarmed people at aid centres and brag about it. The IDF left premature babies to die in incubators at Nasser Medical Complex. When Netanyahu characterised the mass slaughter of 22 civilians at Nasser Hospital as a mishap, Channel 14 reported that the Golani Brigade demanded an apology. Channel 14 has a history of praising civilian killings; one journalist giggled on air, “I am for the war crimes... I want to see more houses destroyed.” For months, Israeli forces murdered dozens of Palestinians daily at GHF “aid” sites. Haaretz interviewed IDF soldiers who admitted they were ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinians collecting food. The moral difference between gassing people after promising a shower and shooting them after promising food is only technological: Zyklon B as opposed to corporate entities such as Palantir, Google, and Amazon. Unlike the Nazi regime which did not use the ploy of assassinating enemy negotiators, Israel and the US have targeted Hamas negotiators multiple times with Israel reportedly pressing the US to kill Iran’s current negotiators. While the German public’s relationship to the Holocaust was mixed, Israelis overwhelmingly support the genocide. Polls show 76% of the Jewish public believe there are no innocent people in Gaza. But Israel does not represent the Jewish people, and Zionism is not Judaism. Authentic Jewish tradition stands for justice (Tzedek) and the belief that every human is created in the image of God (Tzelem Elohim). As former PM Ehud Olmert wrote in Haaretz, Israel is committing ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. And as Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi stated the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv threatens us all. The taboo of calling what Israel is doing Nazism is broken but the scorched earth tactic that starves and slaughters women and children, blows up hospitals, rapes and tortures prisoners in custody, murders journalists - that tactic is driven by the ideology of Zionism.