Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany
Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany occur frequently in the political discourse of anti-Zionism and part of the broader criticism of Israel. Given the legacy of the Holocaust, the nature of these comparisons, and particularly whether they constitute antisemitism, is a matter of fervent controversy.
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. 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.
20th century
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 to stay in Germany after 1945, wrote in his LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii that both Zionism and Nazism are essentially neo-Romantic nationalist ideologies. After the assassination of Lord Moyne by the Zionist militant group Lehi, Winston Churchill gave a speech in the House of Commons, declaring: "If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins' pistols, and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past." Following the Sergeants affair, the American consul in Jerusalem concluded: "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 originally compared Zionism to Nazism, but later reconsidered this view. Following critical responses by Jacob Talmon and Eliezer Berkovits, Toynbee decided his prior condemnation of Zionism was disproportionate in this regard.
1960s
In the context of the Six-Day War, official statements by the Soviet Union administration compared Israeli tactics to those of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. 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.1980s
Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz introduced the term "Judeo-Nazis", suggesting that continued military occupation of the Palestinian territories would lead to the moral degradation of the Israeli Defense Force, with individuals committing atrocities for state security interests. In 2018, Noam Chomsky said of Leibowitz's prediction, "I think that's what you are seeing in Israel."During the 1982 Lebanon War, Holocaust survivor Primo Levi wrote that he disliked comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany but that he understood why they were being made.
In 1983, anti-Zionist scholar Boaz Evron said that Zionists should not lose sight of morality in pursuit of a political framework, explaining: "A society that loses its human image has no right to exist, in the long run, as we have seen in the case of Nazi Germany". He said that if such a regime were established in Israel, it would mean "the end of the State of Israel". Later that year, 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 1983, the American freelance journalist Lenni Brenner published Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, in which he argued that Zionist leaders collaborated with fascism, particularly in Nazi Germany, in order to build up a Jewish presence in Palestine.
During the First Intifada, Israeli-American historian Omer Bartov criticized 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 brutalized in the same way as the German Army was during World War II. 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.
Holocaust historian John K. Roth was involved in a controversy when he wrote in a 1988 op-ed comparing the Israeli right's proposal to expel Palestinians to Nazi policies, suggesting that just as "Kristallnacht happened because a political state decided to be rid of people unwanted within its borders", the same impulse could lead to atrocities committed by Israel.
21st century
Israel
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 2024 article for Haaretz, Israeli academics 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 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 Benjamin 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, amid the rise of Israeli right-wing parties, Israel's democracy could be exploited similar to the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. This drew criticism from the right in Israel.
In an interview with Israeli Army Radio in November 2020, the prime minister's son, Yair Netanyahu, compared the Kibbutz Movement to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the DPRK:
In an interview with Kan radio in August 2023, former Israeli general Amiram Levin accused the IDF of being a "partner in war crimes" and argued that Israel's control of the West Bank is similar to Nazi Germany's discriminatory policies.
In December 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 they may sound like "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, tweeted a comparison between Israel's plans to encourage voluntary migration of Palestinians from Gaza and the flight of the German Jews to other countries during World War II. 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" and called Cassif a "terrorist supporter". In response, right-wing Knesset lawmakers called for Cassif's impeachment.
Moshe Feiglin compared both Israelis and Palestinians to 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."
Palestine
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, and whether he intended to apologize for the attack.Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor of Germany, later condemned Abbas' remarks. 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 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.