No, Gaza is not Auschwitz.
Among the accusations made against Israel, the comparison between the fate of the Palestinians today and that of the Jews during the Shoah but also the false accusation of “genocide” are the most infamous.
The formula is well known: “To misname things is to add to the misfortune of this world” wrote Albert Camus in 1944. While Israel’s hearing against South Africa is to be held at the International Criminal Court this week, South, many actors in the public debate resort to these fallacious accusations, from the French Council of Muslim Worship (CFCM) in these latest press releases to Turkish President Erdogan comparing Netanyahu to Hitler, from the elected officials La France Insoumise (LFI ) speaking of genocide up to certain international bodies…
Without taking anything away from legitimate empathy for the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population, victims, and hostages of this war started by Hamas, these accusations must be firmly rejected.
So, what does this accusation of genocide mean? What does this Nazification of Israel mean? Affixing the image of genocide to the war in Gaza aims to attach the label of ultimate infamy to the State of Israel. Materially and legally unfounded, this accusation aims at other, political, goals.
First, this perverse inversion transforms the State of refuge for victims of the Shoah into a State of executioners and aims to disrupt the moral compasses of the public. Then, by symbolically labeling Israel as a Nazi, the accusation relieves European consciences of the guilt of the Shoah. Finally, by maximizing the representation of Israel’s moral culpability, the prosecution minimizes the seriousness of Hamas’s October 7 abuses. Accusing Israel of genocide is the most effective strategy for ignoring the pogroms of October 7 and the exterminating impulse that motivated Hamas terrorists to massacre, rape, and torture Israeli civilian populations.
This accusatory reversal is not new. The Palestinian cause has often used the mirror of Jewish history to formulate its narrative. Thus, the choice of the word Nakba (“catastrophe”, in Arabic) to describe the historic date of the independence of the State of Israel and the displacements of part of the Jewish and Arab populations then present, responds to the meaning of the word “Shoah” in Hebrew.
But above all, this accusatory reversal disinhibits all violence. Accusing Israel of carrying out genocide, of being the new Nazi state, justifies the most radical speeches, going so far as to normalize the demand for the dismantling of Israel. Faced with a supposedly genocidal State, what violence would not be legitimate?
Let’s not be naive: those who use this terminology only do so to accuse Israel. Their selective indignation spares the abuses of the great authoritarian regimes of the world and obscures the Uighur victims in China, Rohingyas in Burma, or Christians in Nigeria… Of course, they have never criticized Western military operations against Daesh in Mosul and Raqqa, or against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, despite unfortunately numerous civilian victims there too.
This accusatory reversal is therefore indeed a voluntary and calculated stigmatization of the Jewish State alone. And, alas, we know that the opprobrium it arouses will mechanically extend to the Jews, wherever they live.
We, French Jews, have the responsibility to denounce these dangerous amalgamations while there is still time.
Because no, Gaza is not Auschwitz.
