Today, the State of Israel and Jews worldwide will pause to honor the six million Jewish men, women, and children murdered by the Germans and their collaborators during the Holocaust.
In the wake of the destruction of European Jewry, the Jewish world vowed “never again.” Holocaust Remembrance Day requires us not just to remember the Jewish life that was destroyed, but to remain vigilant against modern expressions of murderous antisemitism.
Perversely, the Shoah, its memory, and imagery have become one of the most dangerous and painful tools wielded against the Jewish people and the State of Israel today.
Indeed, while outright Holocaust denial is confined mainly to the political fringes, the insidious phenomenon of Holocaust inversion has no such taboo. Such inversion accuses contemporary Jews of being the new Nazis, with the State of Israel serving as a new Third Reich committing genocide against the Palestinians.
So common is this phenomenon that it has been included in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.
The comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany is not made innocently.
Rather, as the Nazis are the emblem of evil post-World War II, the comparison is the equivalent of medieval Catholic teachings equating Jews with the satanic and demonic. In this twisted revisionism, Palestinians and Islamist terrorist groups become “Jewish partisans,” effectively whitewashing and justifying their attacks on Israeli Jews. This sets the stage for legitimizing the murder of Israelis, who are recast as evil génocidaires. It also justifies the exclusion of Jews (rebranded as “Nazis”) from political and social groups based on supposed social justice or anti-racist principles.
Such inverse accusations of genocide were a staple of Nazi rhetoric against the Jews. Third Reich propaganda minister Josef Goebbels, in a 1941 pamphlet, claimed that Germany was acting in self-defense: “Who should die, the Germans or the Jews? ... You know what your eternal enemy and opponent intends for you. There is only one instrument against his plans for annihilation.”
During the Rwandan genocide, Hutu leaders repeatedly warned their followers that the Tutsis intended to murder them.
As scholars of antisemitism, such as Izabella Tabarovsky and Lesley Klaff, have demonstrated in their research, the canard of Jewish genocide has long been a feature of contemporary antisemitism.
Already in the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet Union promoted the charge of Jewish genocide against the Palestinians. Following the Six Day War, the Soviet Union and its “Zionologists” churned out hundreds of books and articles accusing the Zionists of collaborating with the Nazis and even surpassing them in cruelty.
In 1977 for example, the Soviet Weekly, an English-language Soviet newspaper published in the United Kingdom, proclaimed the Israelis “worthy heirs to Hitler’s National-Socialism.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas famously wrote his doctoral thesis under Soviet tutelage on “The secret relationship between Nazism and Zionism”.
HOLOCAUST INVERSION has gained the most significant public legitimacy, ironically, in the aftermath of Hamas’ genocidal October 7 massacre. Despite Hamas’ eliminationist antisemitism and its clear orders to “Kill as many people as possible” on October 7, the charge of genocide was quickly reversed and leveled against Israel.
Within weeks of the massacre, South Africa had filed an application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging Israeli genocide in Gaza. This was not merely coincidental timing.
As the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) revealed in a recent report, in December 2023, a Hamas delegation visited Cape Town and held discussions with officials from South Africa’s ruling party. The report also tracks allegations that Iran and Qatar, Hamas’ main backers, are financing the ICJ case.
World leaders' comments
Holocaust and genocide inversion serve as a rhetorical shield for genocidal antisemites and a weapon against Jewish communities and the Jewish state. In July 2024, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, “Netanyahu has reached a level that would make Hitler jealous with his genocidal methods.”
Tunisian President Kais Saied rejected claims of antisemitism in his country and accused Jews of repaying Tunisian help in protecting them from the Nazis with genocide against Palestinians.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, “What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history’ except one, when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
The “genocide” slur endangers Jewish lives around the world.
In Toronto, Jewish community institutions and synagogues have repeatedly been defaced with “genocide” graffiti. In Pittsburgh – within walking distance of the site of the Tree of Life synagogue attacked by a neo-Nazi in 2018 – vandals scrawled accusations against Chabad of “funding genocide.” Similar desecrations are routine in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Barcelona, and Amsterdam. Jews who raise the alarm are brushed aside as genocide supporters.
Eight decades after the Holocaust, there is a global campaign to identify Jews with the Nazi perpetrators, rather than victims.
The writer, an advocate, is an international law researcher at Kohelet Policy Forum.