Zionism and Nazism: Accepting Israel's invitation to make the comparison

August 7 2025

There is now a consensus that Israel is perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinians. It’s also increasingly obvious that Zionism is comparable to Nazism.

As a Jew whose fifteen-year-old dad escaped Nazi Germany on the kindertransport, and as someone who spent “the best days of my youth” growing up in a Zionist youth movement, which involved me spending a gap year on a study/indoctrination programme in Jerusalem followed by kibbutz, after which I returned to the UK to run summer camps for Jewish kids that always included a Holocaust education day, it feels quite 180-degrees to write this.

No matter, never again always meant never again for anyone, not just the Jews, and however much Zionists are in denial, the truth of genocide is undeniable.

Experts who agree that Israel is perpetrating a genocide include Dirk Moses (editor of Journal of Genocide Research), Melanie O’Brien (president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars), William Schabas (who defended Myanmar against charges of genocide), Martin Shaw (author of What Is Genocide?) and Iva Vukušić (prosecutor of the Srebrenica genocide). Israeli genocide experts/historians of the holocaust also agree, including professor Omer Bartov, Daniel Blatman, Amos Goldberg, Dr. Shmuel Lederman, Lee Mordechai and Raz Segal. Human rights groups and legal groups that back the case include Amnesty International, Boston University School of Law, Cornell Law School, Human Rights Watch and Yale Law School. In the last few days two human rights groups based in Israel, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, reached the same conclusion.

UN organisations and experts overwhelmingly support the argument: the UN Independent International Commission for Inquiry, UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices, and multiple UN experts, including Francesca Albanese (Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967), George Katrougalos (Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order), Gehad Madi (Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants), Gina Romero (Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association), Tlaleng Mofokeng (Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health), Astrid Puentes Riaño (Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment), Paula Gaviria Betancur (Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons), Tomoya Obokata (Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery), Nicolas Levrat (Special Rapporteur on minority issues), Farida Shaheed (Special Rapporteur on the right to education), Ashwini K.P. (Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance), Heba Hagrass (Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities), Pedro Arrojo-Agudo (Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation), Graeme Reid (Independent expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity), Balakrishnan Rajagopal (Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing), Michael Fakhri (Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food), Mary Lawlor (Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders), Olivier De Schutter (Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights), Morris Tidball-Binz (Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions), Siobhán Mullally (Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children), Jovana Jezdimirovic Ranito (Chair-Rapporteur), Ravindran Daniel, Michelle Small, Joana de Deus Pereira and Andrés Macías Tolosa (Working Group on the use of mercenaries), Geneviève Savigny, Carlos Duarte, Uche Ewelukwa, Shalmali Guttal and Davit Hakobyan (Working Group on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas), Bina D’Costa, Barbara G. Reynolds and Isabelle Mamadou (Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent), and Laura Nyirinkindi, Claudia Flores, Dorothy Estrada Tanck, Ivana Krstić and Haina Lu (Working group on discrimination against women and girls).

Of course the ICJ recognised that a plausible genocide was taking place a long 19 months ago despite facing massive pressure to rule otherwise from western founding members that believed the court should only rule against non-western countries.

This list merely skims the surface and doesn’t include for the tens of thousands of academics, creative workers, doctors, human rights workers, lawyers and politicians not to mention the hundreds if not thousands of NGOs who have also concluded that Israel is perpetrating the gravest crime known to humanity.

To be clear, many Jews are at the forefront of making this case, so this critique has nothing to do with antisemitism. On the contrary, Jewish people who are consulting their consciences, their hearts and their sense of ethics instead of reverting to tribal loyalty have been at the forefront of the solidarity campaign from its inception.

In addition to the argument regarding Israel’s rampant genocide of the Palestinians, it's become stunningly straightforward to compare Zionism (which is of course supported by non-Jews as well as Jews, many of them Christian evangelists) to Nazism:

1. Zionism is engaged in a full-on genocide. This alone is enough to compare Zionism to Nazism, but there’s more.

2. Zionism is founded on racist ethno-supremacist ideology that is selectively mythological yet gives Jews rights above non-Jews, just as Hitler’s figuring of German/Aryan supremacy was selectively mythological and racist.

3. Zionism is swapping Nazi gas chambers with the arguably more effective strategy of systematic starvation achieved through the dismantling of UNRWA and the blocking of all food and medical supplies (save for tokenistic PR stunts).

4. Just as the Nazis figured Jews as an animals, so Israeli Jews paint Palestinians as an animals. The strategy is to dehumanise Palestinians in every way imaginable so they become disposable. In ethno-supremacist Israel the only lives that count are Zionist-Jewish lives followed by Zionist lives (but not anti-Zionist Jewish lives).

5. Zionism operates through a fascistic rhetoric of us-and-them with Israel a highly militaristic society rooted in fear and hate, defensiveness and aggression, delusion and hysteria. If you don’t support Israel then you are an enemy. There are no innocents, everyone is guilty, they have to be exterminated in their entirety, there is no in-between. There is also massive pressure to conform/demonstrate tribal loyalty. Zionism needs an enemy to persuade it to get out of bed in the morning. Genocide along with pointing to enemies who are everywhere, always, gives Zionists a sense of purpose and solidarity.

6. Zionism is reducing the Palestinians to skeletons in a way that directly resembles the physical deterioration of German Jewish bodies under Nazi rule. These are the images that are finally jolting some western media outlets and even politicians into minor, belated, insufficient action.

7. Polls shows that Jewish Israelis overwhelmingly support the ethnic cleansing and genocide that’s being perpetrated in Gaza as well as Israel’s bombing and invasions of neighbouring states. Similarly the Germans had few complaints about the genocide of the Jews.

8. Israeli Jews perpetually play the victim card, just as German Nazis played the victim card. The world is antisemitic and never shows enough support for Israel, just as the Versailles Treaty betrayed the Germans.

9. Zionists are expansionists who repeatedly seek to expand Israel’s land and control of neighbouring territories as well as foreign governments, just as Hitler sought to continually expand Germany’s lebensraum.

10. Zionists resort to fascistic lies and propaganda in a way that bears a strong resemblance to Nazi Germany, with the reverence of the Israeli flag and Star of David reminiscent of the swastika.

Extraordinarily, horrifying, in some ways Zionism is worse, even more warped, than German Nazism:

1. There are exponentially more Israeli-Jewish displays of outward celebration of their genocide than was the case in Germany, if only because social media allows and even encourages this.

2. The rise of social media and the general multiplication of media forms means there's more available information about Israel's genocide of the Palestinians than was the case with Germany's genocide of the Jews.

3. Israel's genocide is being openly celebrated by Israeli Jews in everyday life and on social media, with children taken to viewing points that overlook Gaza so they can watch the genocide unfold in real time, applaud and sing as schools and hospitals are bombed to smithereens. Israelis of all ages cheerlead the genocide and can hardly restrain their joy when posting sadistic videos on social media, showing remarkably little empathy or humanity, in fact no empathy or humanity.

4. Israel’s genocide is primarily being perpetrated against children and women in a way that was never the case with Germany’s genocide of the Jews, in part because the life expectancy of Palestinians is so low (due to Israel’s ongoing massacres of the Palestinians over the decades plus the horrendous living conditions Palestinians have had to endure also over the decades). IDF troops routinely shoot children in the chest or the head, something that the German troops didn’t carry out to anything like the same degree.

5. Israel has stooped to new levels of depravity, depriving the Palestinians of food and then setting up mouse trap distribution centres that enable them to shoot those searching for food, including of course children.

6. Unlike in Germany, which orchestrated its conquest of Europe and genocide from its native land, Israeli Jews are conducting their genocide on colonised Palestinian land where they had virtually zero presence back at the end of the 19th century, or the c. 2,000 years that preceded.

7. Unlike the German Nazis, the Jews have experienced their own genocide (as we are reminded endlessly, and I say this again as someone whose dad came out of Nazi Germany), meaning that unlike the Germans they had the opportunity to learn from history.

8. Zionists have weaponised the German genocide of the Jews to perpetrate a genocide, a strategy unavailable to the German Nazis. The greatest crime known to humanity has been used to perpetrate the greatest crime known to humanity.

9. Whereas the Germans had to carry out their genocide while facing opposition from the allies Israel faces no actual opposition. On the contrary, it’s being actively supported by the US, the UK, Germany and France as well as an almost entirely compliant corporate media apparatus.

10. Whereas Germans held relatively little sway over foreign political and corporate establishments, Zionism has a near-total grip over western corporations as well as politicians.

Although Zionism is replicating and in some respects exceeding the horrors of Nazism in ways that are evidenced on a daily basis, according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism—co-opted by 266 entities worldwide, including the US, Canada, Germany, the UK, France and the EU—it’s antisemitic to compare Zionism to Nazism (as well as to be an anti-Zionist, etc etc). I’ll tell you what’s antisemitic, using the smear of antisemitism to stop people standing up to racism and genocide, and thereby aligning being Jewish with being a racist, is antisemitic.

I understand that it’s semi-taboo to compare Zionism to Nazism. I used to believe that it was antisemitic to draw any comparison given that the German genocide of the Jews amounted to the single greatest tragedy in Jewish history. I was also born in 1967, the year that the Holocaust Industry, as Norman Finkelstein describes it in his convincing, eponymous book, started to position the Holocaust as the singular, unique and decisive event that has and always must shape Jewish identity and its place in the world—this a full twenty-two years after the conclusion of the genocide and coinciding with the moment when Israel asserted its incontestable regional dominance through the Six Day War. Of course I grew up believing that the ultimate antisemitic slur was to associate “Jewish nationalism” with the attempt to eradicate the Jews, although I reached this conclusion not because of anything my dad ever told me but through the input of the Jewish youth movement and the general development of Zionist discourse: that there is antisemitism everywhere and one of the most abominable instances was to align Jews with their own genocide.

However the basic reality that Zionism can all-too-easily be compared to Nazism can’t be blamed on antisemitism but instead should be attributed to Zionism and Israel’s behaviour. Even if the formation of Israel was inextricably rooted in colonialism, even if the creation of a Jewish state that featured the right of return was always going to result in significant numbers of Palestinians losing rights in ways that were immediately catastrophic, what followed, from the Nakba to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza to the imposition of an apartheid system to all of the massacres that unfolded, weren’t historical inevitabilities, they were choices. Imagine how Israel’s international standing would have soared if in response to the Al-Aqsa Flood attack of 7/10 it had acknowledged that after decades of oppression it was time to negotiate a two state solution with secure borders (especially because 7/10 came about precisely because Israel either deliberately or erroneously ignored warnings and let its line of defence drop). Instead it chose genocide and invited comparisons with Nazism.

When I made my way to the first national solidarity protest in London on 14 October 2023 I initially wondered if I’d encounter any antisemitism. Hand on heart I can say that despite becoming a regular attendee ever since I’ve never encountered anything of the sort. Instead I’ve encountered many Jews as well as Holocaust survivors and children of Holocaust survivors playing a prominent role in a definitively diverse coalition. The only moment that gave me slight pause, quite early into protests, was when I saw a placard that read “Zionism = Nazism”. I initially felt uncomfortable yet also understood that my discomfort was completely irrelevant given that Israel was hellbent on destroying Gaza and the deaths of innocent civilians were already spiralling. Then it dawned on me. Nazism didn’t just equate to a fixed endpoint that revolved around a specific number forever etched into history. It was and remains an ideology, a process that evolved over time, a historical lesson as well as epic tragedy, and that no single person or constructed people own that history or its meaning.

Since 7/10 we’ve all become used to being called antisemitic if we don’t rehash the basic arguments that Netanyahu and Zionists roll out interminably. It’s got to the point where if I post something on social media and nobody calls me an antisemite I wonder if I’m doing something wrong, if I’m self-censoring my critique, and am a bit disappointed. It’s possible that this essay will prompt a surge in accusations given that it explores one of the greatest taboos of mainstream Jewish politics. I feel relaxed about that because for me the most important aspect of being raised a Jew was the lesson this taught me about the importance of standing up to persecution and standing in solidarity with outsider groups, whatever their shape or size. I was able to embed this consciousness quite deeply because my dad came out of Germany and went on to become an English teacher who got his first job in the suburbs forty miles west of London, so I grew in the only Jewish family in a residential area located between Reading and Wokingham. Unlike other young Jews who were commonly raised in northwest London and found themselves always surrounded by other Jews, or a minority that experienced itself as majority, I experienced Jewishness as a form of outsiderness plus both of my parents were resolute in their support for social justice.

My mum and dad also raised me to believe in the value of reading and debate. Although neither of them had received a full education that saw them go to university at the age of eighteen—my mum left school to become a shop worker at that age and my dad eventually studied English at night school and studied for an undergraduate degree as a mature student—they were constantly reading, learning and debating. This was the environment I grew up in and at some point I came to also connect it in part with being Jewish given that, as I learnt later, Jews liked to describe themselves as the “people of the book”. The framing was rooted in the historic Jewish requirement to study the Talmud, a central text of Jewish theology, and it was this devotion to study that helped produce the emergence of Jewish intellectuals ranging from Marx to Freud. I now feel uneasy about the “people of the book” claim although a quick internet search reveals that it’s an Islamic term for religious people who are said to have received a divine revelation from Allah, including Christians, Sabians and Zoroastrians as well as Jews. The point here is that one way or another Jewish people were supposed to place a high value on education and debate, and that this was somehow integral to their identity. Yet today the widespread censorship that accompanies Zionism and clearly extends to its clampdown on the possibility of comparing it to Nazism—a debate that could draw on distinctions as well as overlaps—marks just one of many ways in which Zionism is degrading Judaism and its version of Jewishness.

In all of this I’m not venturing into the realm of Zionism’s relations with the Nazis during the 1930s, in particular the Havana Agreement signed by Nazi Germany and the Zionist Federation of Germany in 1933, another taboo subject around which substantial research has been conducted and exploration repressed. Nor am I venturing into Zionism’s sustained weaponisation of the Nazi Holocaust or contemporary Germany’s repeated referencing to its genocide of the Jews as a reason to viciously clampdown on criticism of Israel. Nor am I discussing the astonishing/not astonishing claim made by Netanyahu and other hardcore Zionists that there’s no starvation happening in Gaza, that plenty of food is entering the strip, and that if there’s a shortage it’s because Hamas is stealing all the provisions. The readiness of Zionists to deny that this horrifying crisis is accelerating is yet another mark of the ideology’s new level of mania.

For now it’s enough to raise the question of Israel’s contemporary mirroring of Nazism and to note that despite Zionism’s clampdown on this debate as well as wider journalistic reporting—which ranges from the IDF murdering more than 170 journalists in Gaza to Israel blocking media access to the strip to Zionists applying sustained pressure to western media corporations—there has been a shift in the western media’s basic approach to reporting the genocide these last couple of weeks.

In particular, a slew of outlets have started to publish more upfront reports about the scale of Israel’s devastation of Gaza—reports they should have started to run in October 2023, when the genocidal rhetoric and onslaught began, instead of covering up the onslaught, spreading Zionist hasbara lies about 7/10 and reverting to the rhetoric of Israel having a “right to exist”, a “right to defend itself”, in short a “right to do whatever it likes”. Newspapers have also carried articles by columnists that present the argument that a genocide taking place, eg the New York Times publication of an article by Omer Bartov. These, however, are opinion pieces, they barely amount to a drop in the ocean of Palestinian blood, these media groups continue to ban the use of the word genocide in news reporting and articles, and they also publish rebuttals to these columns, as if genocide or starvation should be a matter of conjecture rather than understood to be a straightforward fact. Mainly these developments suggest that editors are (i) covering their backs before they’re charged with complicity and (ii) wondering if they can win back disgusted readerships and maintain their financial viability as well as guarantee future jobs for their kids.

Meanwhile all of the mainstream western politicians—here in the UK Keir Starmer/David Lammy/Yvette Cooper/Attorney General Richard Hermer, plus of course Trump, Merz, Macron and other leaders who’ve supported Israel every step of the way and must be tried for war crimes--have actively denied that Israel is perpetrating a genocide and haven’t change their basic position, even if they want to be seen to be taking a harder stand. They, too, are worried about future appearances in the Hague and crashing electoral fortunes.

In the UK we hear Starmer/Lammy pathetically claim that they’re taking action to prevent the onslaught: the UK has suspended new trade talks with Israel (which of course means that all existing agreements are in place) and has introduced sanctions against a number of West Bank extremists (although the genocide is happening in Gaza). Meanwhile they are actively supplying weapons and spying information to Israel while maintaining active trade relations and diplomatic relations. On spying, independent journalist Matt Kenard, formerly of Declassified UK, confirmed during a Novara media appearance yesterday that half of Israel’s spying missions over Gaza have been carried out by the UK in secrecy. In order to maintain this covert operation the UK hired a private contracted plane to carry out its work, even though it has numerous of its own. The newly-trained pilot forgot to turn off the tracking device. Even if the UK claims it’s merely searching for hostages, why should it do this when there are no UK hostages and how can it determine that Israel isn’t using the information for other purposes? Yet Lammy has publicly denied any UK spying missions. The MoD has leaked information. The Times is carrying reports. There are many layers to this story including the government’s cover-up. The UK is up to its eyeballs in genocide.

Starmer/Lammy, presumably following the legal advice of Hermer, given that’s the job of the attorney general, say they—might—recognise Palestine if a series of conditions are met, among them that Hamas releases all hostages immediately, disarms, signs up to a ceasefire and accepts it will play no role in the government of Gaza. For real. Can you imagine if the allies had dictated a series of conditions to German Jews, telling them they had to stop opposing Nazism and accept all manner of German rights etc, before they would offer them mere recognition? Starmer/Lammy also say they’ll only recognise Palestine if Israel continues along its current trajectory, meaning Palestinian self-determination is a secondary matter to be determined by the behaviour of its genocidal coloniser—a coloniser that the UK appointed in the first place. And Starmer and Lammy want us to believe that they care about the Palestinians. They aren’t just bad actors, their participating in genocidal theatrics.

For Israel and Zionism there’s no turning back from the abyss. While a tiny number of Israeli Jews are honourably and bravely engaging in protests against the genocide and are refusing to serve in the IDF, Israeli Jews and Zionists all over the world are showing close to zero understanding of the scale of the horror or, worse, they understand the scale of the horror and are entirely comfortable with it all—even want it to go further, deeper, faster. Meanwhile for onlookers across the world Israel is no longer merely the number one pariah state, without a rival. The Zionist state has assumed the position of one of the most grotesquely horrific political projects in global history, the first to carry out a live-streamed genocide with the support of the leaders of the west and its corrosive corporations.

Young people in the US, the UK, Germany and beyond have witnessed what’s going on and are appalled in ways that few can have imagined possible before 7/10. There’s simply no way that Israel can ever wipe away the genocide from its historical record. Perhaps at some point in the future it will find a way to go through a deep-rooted and thorough form of cleansing, will submit its leaders and other complicit individuals—and who isn’t complicit?—to be tried as war criminals, will provide the Palestinians with full reparative justice, in a way that matches earlier genocidal nations. However it’s very hard to see how this can come about because Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinians amounts to a logical conclusion that’s been building up minimally for 77 years (since the formation of Israel), or 108 years (the Balfour Declaration) or 127 years (the formation of the Zionist movement) and shows no sign of reaching its peak.

One reason I have so little hope is because I grew up in a Jewish Zionist youth movement and spent a year in Israel before going to university. I wrote a long piece for the literary journal Spinners about this back in December and really should publish this more widely at some point. During these years I was surrounded by people who identified as socialist or left-of-centre. Some of these people have gone on to play an active role in UK journalism, law and politics while others have gone to live in Israel. To my disappointment although not entirely my surprise, from the very point that it became clear that Israel’s intentions were genocidal all I’ve witnessed from them is a mixture of denial, deflection and above all silence.

Some of these ex-friends have gone online to criticise Netanyahu’s failure to get Israeli hostages/IDF prisoners of war out of Gaza, which has nothing to do with respecting Palestinian life or opposing genocide or advocating for a less fascistic version of Zionism. The most “progressive” intervention came from someone who has been living in Israel for decades and took to social media a few months ago to say he didn’t support Netanyahu/Trump’s plan for Gaza—yet he also didn’t call for the IDF to pull back. More recently he posted to say he regrets “Israel’s failed aid policy” (I kid you not) but opposes the way that opposition to the policy has been turned into an antisemitic blood libel (so as per usual it’s Israel/Jewish Zionists who suffer with the stark reality of genocide unacknowledged and pushed to the side). And that’s it. That’s the level of “opposition” to ethnic cleansing/genocide that I’ve seen from an entire cohort of previously proud left-wing Jews who weren’t even born in Israel.

I just don’t see how Zionism can reverse out of its genocidal treachery. How it will exactly end is hard to predict. The weakening financial and military position of the US could bring about its demise sooner than many expect. Its Euro supporters are weakening fast, too. In addition to the global solidarity movement we’re also seeing a dramatic grassroots breakthrough in the US, the UK and beyond. Who knows what will happen and how quickly change will come about, but change is inevitable. Zionism is over.

The solidarity campaign continues in London with a national demonstration this coming Saturday, 9 August, meeting at Russell Square at 12:00 noon and marching to Downing Street.

Stop starving Gaza, stop the genocide, stop the ethnic cleansing, stop arming Israel, boycott complicit corporations, free, free Palestine!

https://bdsmovement.net/

https://palestinecampaign.org/

https://www.stopwar.org.uk/

https://www.foa.org.uk/

https://events.pfbuk.com/

https://cnduk.org/

https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform

https://www.yourparty.uk/

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