Never compare Jews to Nazis

Posts on this subject are obviously fraught, so a few things up front:

• the moral question is simple: Palestinian liberation is right & necessary
• the praxis is complicated: antisemitic entryism into the movement for liberation is subtle, pervasive, and unacceptable
• the history is complicated: I have a survey of it which addresses many common misunderstandings on all sides
• I keep an index of resources — my posts and others’

This should require no explanation. I offer one anyway.

One can call Israel’s current ongoing attack on Gaza genocidal; it is. One can call Kahanists and Likudniks fascists; they are. One should not call Zionism fascist because that is offensively false, but that is not wrong in the same weight class as comparing Jews specifically to Nazis.

Consider the example of The N Word. We all understand that white people must never speak it, not even in an edge case where there is obviously no malice to it — to sing along to a hip hop song, or even to say “the word ‘n███r’ is offensive”. Avoiding even unmistakably anti-racist statements using The Word is oddly arbitrary, but justified by the importance of admitting no exceptions. There is every reason to reflexively assume that white people are just looking for ways to rationalize speaking it, and we must not ask Black people to examine the case that golly, it might be justified in this situation. There are very good reasons why a white person saying The N Word reaches right into Black people and hits a deep wound, context be dammed. Using The N Word is a racist choice to say something which one knows will offend. It is an attack.

It would be irresponsible to claim that comparing Jews to Nazis simply parallels white people using The N Word. The two cases are incomparable in countless ways. But The N Word is a dramatic example of language which is so inherently charged that using it is a problem whatever the context.

The Nazis built murder factories out of pure hatred for us, killing off half of us, and the only thing that stopped them from killing even more of us was reducing their entire society to rubble. Comparing us to them cuts deep. Making the comparison is doing antisemitism even in a context innocent of any antisemitic intent or sentiments. Any point worth making with the comparison is better made another way.

Some may defend comparing Israelis or ‘zionists’ or particular Jewish groups or individuals to Nazis, claiming “I only compare people to Nazis when they act like Nazis” so therefore they are not saying “Jews are like Nazis”. Nope. That is the same kind of dodge as saying, “Golly, I was not calling all Black people n███rs”. We know better than to fall for that.

Some may defend comparing the Nakba or the ongoing genocide in Gaza to the Shoah. Nope. That is just a roundabout way of comparing Jews to the Nazis.

Some may defend comparing Israel to Nazi Germany as a relevant historical irony. Nope. Still out of bounds.

Some may defend comparisons by saying that right now opposing an ongoing genocide trumps every other concern. Nope. Not this concern.

I have real sympathy for people who are not raging bigots making these mistakes. It is unfair that the righteous and currently urgent cause of Palestinian liberation must walk through a minefield where it is genuinely difficult to make sense of what constitutes antisemitism which one must avoid.

Israel hardliners disingenuously reject any criticism of Israel as “antisemitism”.

Cunning antisemitic bigots coyly make their case without explicitly referencing Jews.

People who really are not talking about Jews still stumble into antisemitic narratives.

Weird Jewish cults accuse other Jews of antisemitism while doing it themselves.

Even sophisticated social justice advocates get tripped up by the particularity of antisemitism.

Et cetera. It is weird out there. So take comfort in this one rule being simple.

Never. Compare. Jews. To. Nazis.