We Mustn’t Compare Israel to Germany. But It’s So Similar…

JVL Introduction

Until recently it was impossible to use the Apartheid label for Israel without attracting  a deluge of complaint, even if you were a former US President. Recently, Israeli groups like B’Tselem and international groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty have argued that Apartheid is the most appropriate description. More and more people across the world have found themselves unable to ignore the daily behaviour of the Israeli Government, its armed forces and rampaging settlers and started to use the A word.

The IHRA suggests that ‘ Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ may be an example of antisemitism. Despite that the entry of the far-right not only into the Israeli Government and their ability to set the Government’s agenda has moved the comparison with the early days of Nazi Germany into mainstream conversation. We reprint here an article from Ha’aretz which argues the comparison is forbidden but compelling. Like ‘Apartheid’, reference to Nazi Germany is moving from the margin to the centre of the conversation. Peter Beinart, a leading American Jewish commentator has just written:

Another example: Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote a book recently called, It Can Happen Here. So, his point was, in the wake of Donald Trump, that something like Nazism could emerge in the United States. Americans are not immune, and I think he’s right. But if Jonathan Greenblatt had written a book called It Can Happen There, meaning that Nazism was possible in Israel-Palestine, not only would he have never written that book, but that book would actually be considered an example of antisemitism under the definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the IHRA definition of antisemitism that the ADL is pushing quite successfully along with other establishment Jewish organizations, which has now been endorsed by the US government, many state governments in the US, many European governments. Because it says that it is an example of antisemitism to accuse the state of Israel of acting in a Nazi-like fashion, right? As if, somehow, Israel is immune. Americans could act in a Nazi-like fashion. Anybody else could. But Jews could not, right, even in a country that holds millions of Palestinians without basic human rights, a country with blatantly, frankly, racist leaders, that any suggestion that Jews have Nazi-like capacities—and remember the Nazis were in power for almost a decade before the Final Solution, right? So, you could make comparisons to how the Nazis were behaving in 1933, 1934. But that’s antisemitic because Jews, unlike other peoples, are not capable of that.
Read Peter’s full article

It is not antisemitic but clear eyed to look at the behaviour of Israel in the light of all relevant history; if the behaviour of the Nazis is the relevant history it cannot be ignored. Many may find the comparison hurtful but many find the actions of Israel more than hurtful.

This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Mon 6 Mar 2023. Read the original here.