I should have known better. So many readers on social media habitually jump to the wrong conclusions. Reactions to my essay “Chosen – But for All the Wrong Reasons” have been fraught with misinterpretations.
“Never compare anything to the Holocaust.” This unwritten rule looms large in public discourse – so much so that invoking Nazis or Hitler often ends up in heated debate. Godwin’s Law famously predicts that as an argument grows longer, one side will invariably make a comparison to Hitler, essentially forfeiting credibility.
In the context of Israel-Gaza, such analogies are even more radioactive: many consider them offensive, hyperbolic, or even antisemitic. Israeli officials in particular bristle at any mention of the Holocaust in relation to Gaza – when Brazil’s President Lula likened Gaza’s suffering to the Holocaust, Israel’s foreign minister blasted it as a “very serious antisemitic attack”, promptly recalling his ambassador.
Given this intense sensitivity, I have long refrained from drawing parallels to Hitler in my own writing about the conflict. The Holocaust’s singular horror – the industrialised extermination of six million Jews, alongside millions of others, including gipsies, Poles, the disabled, and LGBTQ individuals – stands as a unique evil in human history. It’s not a comparison to be made lightly or for shock value. Nevertheless, I am here doubling down on my previous essay.
There, I did compare Netanyahu’s rhetoric and actions to those of Adolf Hitler’s regime. This was not a decision made flippantly, but one arrived at with a heavy heart and clear eyes. Why invoke history’s darkest chapter now? Because certain undeniable echoes are sounding – patterns that responsible observers simply cannot ignore. The comparison, controversial as it is, serves as a warning: it spotlights the perilous trajectory of Netanyahu’s Gaza war and the genocidal logic that appears to be taking hold.
When a leader demonises an entire population as “human animals”, lays siege to them, and then essentially tells them “leave or be killed”, how can students of history not shudder at the resemblance to the early stages of 20th-century fascism? It’s precisely in these early stages – before the full catastrophe unfolds – that calling out the parallels is most crucial to prevent another horror. If we wait until images of mass graves and smokestacks are before us, it’s far too late. The mantra “Never Again” was not meant to justify silence until atrocities are complete; it was meant to alert us to the warning signs before atrocities happen again.
Critics argue that any Holocaust analogy here trivialises the unique suffering of Jews or unfairly paints Israel as genocidal. This concern is understandable – the Holocaust is an extremely painful and singularly significant historical event, especially for Jews worldwide and for Israel as a nation born from its ashes. But acknowledging the lessons and patterns of the Holocaust is not the same as claiming a carbon copy replay.
In my comparison, I’m not saying Israel has built death camps or that the scale of killing is (so far) equivalent to the Shoah. What I am saying is that the underlying logic and rhetoric – the depiction of a people as a cosmic evil, the notion that total war against them is a necessity, and the ultimatum of displacement or death – is frighteningly similar to what we saw in Germany in the 1930s before the Final Solution. It’s about structural parallels, not identical outcomes. And it’s about intention: Hitler signalled his deadly intentions long before 1941. He began by encouraging Jews to leave “voluntarily”, stripping them of rights, and inciting public hatred against them. We see echoes of that pathway now: Netanyahu’s government urging Palestinians to “just leave” Gaza (even though, as the essay detailed, no real exit exists), enacting policies that make life in Gaza unlivable, and stoking an Israeli public mood that views Gazans collectively as monsters or vermin. To point this out is not to diminish the Holocaust’s horror – on the contrary, it is to honour its lessons by recognising early signs of potential genocide in our own time.
It’s worth noting that Holocaust comparisons are already rife in this conflict, wielded by all sides. Israeli leaders themselves frequently invoke the Holocaust’s memory – for instance, branding Hamas as “modern-day Nazis” and framing the October 7th Hamas attack as “the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust”. Western officials and commentators echoed this, with President Biden saying that day was the deadliest for Jews since 1945. These analogies were meant to generate solidarity with Israelis and justify forceful action.
Meanwhile, on the other side, protesters and even some diplomats have likened Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto or other Holocaust-era atrocities to highlight the desperate plight of Palestinians. Social media is awash with such comparisons in memes and rhetoric from both camps. In this charged atmosphere, the Holocaust has become a language through which people try to make sense of the senseless. Each usage carries emotional weight – sometimes illuminating, but often oversimplifying. I’m acutely aware of this minefield. However, I chose to invoke the Nazi analogy in the essay very carefully – not as a bombastic slogan or to score points, but to underscore a specific, alarming point of convergence: the justificatory framework for mass violence.
Far from trivialising the Holocaust, drawing this parallel is meant to prevent trivialisation of its lessons. If we say no modern event can ever be compared to the Holocaust, we risk treating “Never Again” as an empty slogan – a monument to past victims, rather than a call to protect present and future ones. The true horror of the Holocaust compels us to be vigilant whenever any state or group starts down a path of demonisation + expulsion + exterminationist rhetoric.
As painful as it is to contemplate, genocide is not a one-time aberration relegated to history books – it’s a recurring human failing that can erupt given the right conditions of hatred, fear, and unchecked power. Holocaust scholar and survivor Elie Wiesel once said, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.” To that end, even some Israelis who carry the legacy of the Holocaust have themselves raised the alarm.
Amos Goldberg, a historian and chair in Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University, recently accused Israel of “committing genocide in Gaza”, citing the indiscriminate killing and dehumanising language as meeting the UN definition of genocide. He and others understand that invoking the G-word or Holocaust parallels is not done lightly – it’s done out of a duty to prevent another genocide, even if a nascent one. Likewise, groups of Holocaust survivors and their descendants around the world have urged Israel to remember that “Never Again” means never again for anyone, not just for Jews. They argue that the moral responsibility imparted by Jewish history is to oppose oppression and slaughter, whoever the victims may be. In short, many who are closest to the Holocaust’s legacy do not see honest comparisons as an insult but as a moral imperative in the face of mass suffering.
Ultimately, uncomfortable as it may be, the Hitler analogy in my essay entitled “Chosen” is intended as a siren – a blaring alarm to jolt people’s conscience. We live in a world where platitudes about learning from history abound, but when someone points out that history might be repeating in real time, they are often attacked for it. Yes, one must be exceedingly careful: not every atrocity is a Holocaust, and loose comparisons can cheapen memory. But the flip side is that refusing to acknowledge clear patterns can doom us to repeat horrors. The Gaza war, with its talk of “uprooting” a population, its mass civilian toll, and its rhetoric of racial/religious destiny, has crossed lines that demand the harshest historical analogies. If we censor ourselves from mentioning the Holocaust here, out of fear or politeness, we might fail to rouse the world’s attention until it’s too late.
In the end, comparing Netanyahu’s actions to Hitler’s early playbook is not about scoring a debate victory – it’s about saving lives and sanity. It thrusts the ongoing atrocities under the brightest moral spotlight we have, forcing a reckoning: Is this really the path we want humanity to go down again? The comparison shocks, yes, but sometimes society needs to be shocked out of complacency. The measure of the analogy’s validity will be in whether people heed the warning. If enough do – if the world steps back from the precipice of genocidal violence – then invoking the Holocaust will not have been hyperbole or insult; it will have been a lifesaving warning that helped fulfil the promise of “Never Again”. And if, God forbid, the worst comes to pass, then at least history will record that some saw the writing on the wall and tried to shake the world’s conscience before it was too late.
In an era when authoritarianism and ethnic hatred are on the rise globally, we must not muzzle our historical memory. Daring to compare when the comparison is apt is not a disrespect to the past – it’s a respect for the living. It’s a plea that we take our collective cry of “Never Again” seriously by applying it universally. That’s why I chose to “dare” to make this comparison. Not to be provocative for its own sake, but to hold a mirror up to a dangerous reality. Sometimes, the mirror of history shows us ugly, uncomfortable truths. It’s our duty to look, not look away.