AntizionismLibelTrope1967–present⊙ View in graph

Holocaust Inversion: Jews as 'the New Nazis'

The claim

“Israelis and Jews are the new Nazis, doing to the Palestinians what Nazi Germany did to the Jews.”

A defamatory accusation against Jews as a group, historically used to incite violence.

Historical context

Lesley Klaff defines Holocaust inversion as a double inversion: of reality (Israelis cast as Nazis, Palestinians as the new Jews) and of morality (the Holocaust turned into an indictment of 'the Jews' for failing to learn its lesson). Its modern industrial production was Soviet: after 1967, Zionology generated hundreds of publications equating Zionism with Nazism — 96 such equations in 1970 alone, culminating in the KGB-supervised Anti-Zionist Committee's 1985 brochure 'Criminal Alliance of Zionism and Nazism' (Tabarovsky). The French far right ran a parallel, Soviet-derived line: Lebourg traces Bardèche's journal Défense de l'Occident recycling the Soviet Zionism–Nazism theme, and Duprat's July 1967 special issue accusing the Jews of a 'final solution' against the Arabs. Today it appears as swastika-Star of David fusions, 'Zionazi' rhetoric, and political statements like UK MP David Ward's 2013 remarks. The IHRA working definition lists Nazi comparisons of Israeli policy among its examples of contemporary antisemitism.

The debunking

The equation is factually baseless: Israel, whatever the gravity of particular policies or wars, has no ideology or program of exterminating a people, no death camps, and the Palestinian population has continuously grown — the comparison fails at the level of elementary fact. Klaff and Gerstenfeld show it is also a form of soft-core Holocaust denial: equating a contested ethno-national conflict with the industrial murder of six million Jews radically minimizes the Holocaust itself. Its functions are documented: for Soviet propagandists it turned the West's deepest moral symbol against Jews; for European audiences, Gerstenfeld notes, it relieves guilt over collaboration ('the victims behave no better'); and per David Hirsh's analysis of contemporary left antisemitism, it strips Jews of the moral standing of their own catastrophe and pre-discredits Jewish self-defense. The legitimate-debate zone: scholars legitimately draw comparative lessons from the Holocaust and other genocides, and harsh, even hyperbolic criticism of Israeli military conduct is not in itself this trope. The libel lies in the targeted equation — selecting Jews, of all peoples, for identification with their own murderers, a choice whose rhetorical payload depends precisely on the victims' identity.

Descends from

  • descends fromThe Zionism–Nazism Equation and the 'Zionist–Nazi Collaboration' MythAntizionism1950s–present

    Contemporary 'Israelis are Nazis' rhetoric directly continues the Soviet propaganda meme of a Zionist–Nazi alliance and equivalence, mass-produced after 1967 and codified in AKSO's 1985 'Criminal Alliance of Zionism and Nazism.'

  • amplified byThe Western Export of Soviet Anti-ZionismAntizionism1967–1991 (legacy to present)

    Soviet-bloc media and front organizations exported the Nazi-equation to Western left and Arab audiences during the Cold War; Tabarovsky traces the survival of these exact formulas in contemporary discourse.

  • amplified byHolocaust Denial (Negationism)Antisemitism1948–present

    The negationist school fused denial with inversion — deny the Nazi genocide while indicting Jews/Israelis as the true génocidaires — from Duprat (1967) through Faurisson's 1980 formula to Garaudy (1996), the documented bridge from fascist circles into sections of the pro-Palestinian left (Igounet, Lebourg).

Lives on as

  • The Reflexive Genocide AccusationAntizionism1960s–present

    Branding Israel genocidal completes the inversion by which Jews become 'the new Nazis'; Soviet texts of the 1970s already fused the genocide charge with the Zionism–Nazism equation.

  • The Gaza Genocide Charge (post-October 2023)Antizionism2023–present

    Post-2023 rhetoric routinely equates Gaza with Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto (placards, 'Zionism = Nazism' slogans, 'Gaza ghetto' framing); researchers including Izabella Tabarovsky, Lesley Klaff, and the AJC document the inversion's Soviet pedigree and its surge after October 7.

Full lineage

  1. Deicide Charge ("Christ-Killers")
  2. →Blood Libel (Ritual Murder Accusation)
  3. →Well-Poisoning Accusation
  4. →The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy
  5. →The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
  6. →The 'Jews Control the Media' Myth
  7. →Soviet 'Zionology': The Anti-Zionist Propaganda Industry
  8. →UN Resolution 3379: 'Zionism Is Racism'
  9. →The Western Export of Soviet Anti-Zionism
  10. →Holocaust Inversion: Jews as 'the New Nazis'

Sources