News

Comparisons to Nazi Germany are exaggerated

In the Israeli documentary, The Gatekeepers, former heads of the Shin Bet make some rather serious charges. One says that Israel is “making the lives of millions unbearable, into prolonged human suffering.” Ok, that seems demonstrable—but when another says that Israel has become “a brutal occupation force similar to the Germans in World War II,” I don’t know.

With all due respect to former Shin Bet chiefs, who I concede are better informed than I am, comparisons of Israeli behavior to that of the Nazis seem to go a bit far. It’s time to confront this exaggeration head on, so here is a partial list of ways in which Israel is not like Nazi Germany:

*Throughout its history, Nazi Germany killed millions of innocent people; Israel has killed only, say, fifty thousand innocent Palestinians, Lebanese, and Egyptians– tops.

*For the sake of deterrence, Nazi Germany would kill ten innocent people, randomly selected, for every one of its own people killed by the resistance. By contrast, Israeli retaliation is less random; indeed, it doesn’t kill even the family members of Palestinian militants who attack Israelis, but merely demolishes their homes.

*Nazi Germany had contempt for all Jews and black people, most of the rest of the European peoples and societies, and the United States. By contrast, while Israel has contempt for Muslims, black people and most European states (the goyim), it has contempt only for some Jews (e.g. Jewish critics of Israel), and not (by and large) for the United States, at least if you don’t count its black President.

*Nazi Germany ruthlessly cracked down on all internal dissent and protest; Israel’s recent pressures on dissenters and other attacks on civil liberties are not as extensive.

*Even before the Holocaust, Nazi Germany passed many laws excluding Jews from all normal participation in their country. True, Israel discriminates in many ways against Arabs, but not as extensively.

*In Nazi Germany, there was no democracy. In Israel, despite the increasing anti-democratic trends, if you don’t count the Arabs democracy is still generally intact—especially for Jewish Israelis who support the government’s policies towards the Palestinians.

No doubt additional comparisons could be made, but the point should be clear: Nazi Germany was much worse than Israel. What a relief!

This is a crosspost from Jerome Slater’s site, “On the U.S. and Israel.”

92 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

I agree with Slater for the most part. That being said, Israel is bad enough. So the Nazi comparison is not just hyperbole, but pointless.

Israel crimes and the crimes of other law-breaking, pariah States around the world are bad enough.

The emerging Arab theocracies and Iran do resemble Nazi Germany in the extraordinary violence men who believe in rule by divine fiat are willing to employ to repress all opposition.

In Tunisia, a secular Arab leader was murdered by Islamists. From Western leftists, the reaction has been one of deafening silence. Israel does not kill its opponents or prevent them from expressing their views.

A pro-Zionist site would not be permitted to exist in any Arab country and Iran. Non-Zionist, indeed anti-Zionist individuals and groups can operate openly in Israel.

Much of the vitriol, slander and defamation of Israel has nothing to do with reality let alone the truth of the Middle East, which is exactly the opposite of the way Israel is commonly depicted.

If Nazi Germany had been dependent economically and diplomatically on a lone superpower, and what it did was done after a Nuremberg & Tokyo court set minimum limits on sovereign states’ power, supported by Genevaesque international laws, Nazi Germany would have done what Israel has done, and it would justify its conduct in the same way Israel does.

For a tiny country the size of NJ, post-1945, I’d say Israel has been very successful in creating a state so far immune to the basics of humane conduct as supported by world consensus, especially Western consensus–important since Israel bills itself as a bastion of Western freedom and humanity.

The Nazis did what was in their power to do in their time, and the Zionists have done, and do what it is in their power to do controlling a sovereign state since 1948.

So Israel has no gas chambers. We should applaud it?

Nazi Germany could never have come into being in this media age, where state radio and movies no longer have total control of information sent to the people anywhere.
Israel mimics what it can of Nazi tactics at home and abroad, considering this is the age of cable Tv and the internet and other electronic social media programs.

I have always liked Prof Slater…but he has outdone himself here…this is tooo blinking funny…”comparisons to Nazi Germany are exaggerated”…

actually the comparison is apt. now comparing nazi treatment to jews is a little much but to how the nazis treated some of peoples is basicly the same to how Israel treats the palestinians. look at the nazi occupation of poland and the parallels are striking.