Bernard Spiegal

In our daily talk, but also when addressing more specialist areas of endeavour, we deploy the tools of analogy and comparison, comparing one thing or behaviour with another, as aids to understanding and insight. And, sometimes, to remind ourselves of the standards we would like to uphold.

In this noticing of similarities, we do not expect, nor require, one-to-one, precise concurrence between the features under view. Indeed, too rigid a focus on seeking such precision may blind us to the deeper similarities of the phenomena we seek to understand.

In malign, dishonest hands, however, an insistence on a precise correlation between two or more phenomena, can serve as a tool of obfuscation, deliberately drawing attention away from what otherwise would be readily apprehended and understood.

Nazi German actions and Israel’s war on Gaza, and the West Bank

It’s difficult to see how it’s possible not to draw comparisons between Israel’s murderous progress through Gaza and the West Bank, and Nazi Germany’s calculated, planned, hate-driven slaughter of Jews and Roma in the Holocaust.

How is it not apposite to make comparisons between Nazis’ dehumanisation of Jews and Israel’s dehumanisation of Palestinians? Dehumanisations that, in both cases, creates the conditions that allow and encourage the purposeful slaughter and maiming of the new born, the infant, the child; women and men of all ages. In the words of Yoav Gallant, former Israeli Defence Minister:

‘I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.’

How not to notice the delight of IDF soldiers as they gloat over their ‘achievements’ desecrating Palestinian homes, destroying Mosques and holy places?

How not to see the similarities between the millions of Palestinians compelled to move around Gaza – forced marches – under threat of death, and the death marches Nazis imposed on Jews?

How not to notice Israel’s perverse calculus that tens or even hundreds of Palestinian civilians are legitimate ‘collateral damage’ in ‘exchange’ for Israel’s ‘targeted’ killing of one alleged terrorist?

How comes it that, in the face of all this, and more, an ill-conceived, barren, yet dangerous document – the IHRA definition of antisemitism – dares to suggest that a potential indicator of antisemitism comprises ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’?

Guilty are they that, through sins of obfuscation, commission and omission – Stand up Starmer and Lammy, you are so charged! – turn away from, and yet enable, a genocide of the Palestinian people, one that is before their eyes.

So, the question remains: Apposite comparison? Nazi attitudes and behaviour, and Israel?