Q&A: Comparison to the Holocaust
Comparison to the Holocaust
Question
People compare Hamas to the Nazis, and Gilad Erdan at the UN wore a yellow badge, etc. Some criticized him for that comparison and argued that it cheapens the Holocaust (the chairman of Yad Vashem). What does the Rabbi think about this? Is Hamas in any way less terrible than the Nazis? (I’m not a big Holocaust expert, but from the testimony about what Hamas did, I don’t see how it could get any worse.) Aside from the number of murdered victims, does the Rabbi see a difference between the two? And more generally, why does everyone always avoid comparing things to the Nazis? Is it only a matter of scale, or was there also something more essential in what the Nazis did than in other crimes?
Answer
The criticism of him was not because of the difference between Hamas and the Nazis, but because of the victim-posturing. The difference is in our situation. I have no interest in engaging in comparisons between different levels of evil. Both these and those should be destroyed to the same extent.
Discussion on Answer
Aviv,
In this column Dr. Shuki Friedman points out the differences between the Holocaust and the current situation
https://www.inn.co.il/news/618670
Gilad,
He talks about the numbers and our military capability. That is a relevant difference for a comparison to the Holocaust. I am saying, somewhat fearfully, that there also is no real comparison between the Nazis and Hamas.
A thought experiment:
Hamas rules Israel; there is no IDF.
Would Hamas set up extermination camps that for years would destroy every Jewish baby because he is Jewish? And later, when they take over Europe… would they also systematically exterminate every Jewish girl in Europe?
In my opinion, no. This is a war; every human boundary has been crossed in it, but still a war.
Without cheapening the horrifying pogroms of October 7 or the horrifying pogroms against the Jews of the Arab countries — neither of them was the Holocaust in the essential sense (the Holocaust with a capital H).
Does Hamas want to destroy all the Jews in the world? Would they try to conquer countries to carry out their plan? Would they also murder Jews who converted to Islam? Also women who converted to Islam and married Muslims? Do they see Jews as an inferior race?
If the answer to even one of those questions is no, then they are not Nazis. The Russian army is no less terrible. The Chinese are no less terrible. But none of them are Nazis.
I don’t want to say anything that might sound like a point in favor of those despicable terrorists, and in terms of cruelty, I at least don’t see a difference between the Nazis and the Hamas terrorists.
But between us (don’t tell anyone; our public-relations situation is lousy as it is), Hamas do what they do in the name of war (horrifying war crimes, of course), whereas the Nazis did it in the name of ethnic cleansing. And it’s true that the organization, and the Palestinians in general, stink of antisemitism, but broadly speaking this is a war (don’t be mad at me… we’re the good guys; the other side has no moral boundaries), and also the many quotations from the Hamas charter and interviews with its leaders using the word “Jews” are demagoguery (blessed demagoguery, for lack of a choice) — they mean Israelis and Zionism; for them it’s all the same thing.
And again, let me qualify that — there is also blatant and ugly hatred of Jews, but that’s not the ideology, at least on the surface — and that matters a lot! The manifesto is different, taken out of context, and people ignore nuances in Palestinian street language (out of which Hamas grew).
So not completely Nazis, but definitely deserving of death.
(There are of course other errors in the comparison, but I won’t go on.)