When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared Hamas to the Nazis on August 4, 2025, he wasn’t just invoking history, he was weaponizing it. Citing disturbing footage of two visibly emaciated captives, Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, Netanyahu claimed that Hamas was “starving them the way the Nazis starved the Jews” and called for urgent international condemnation and humanitarian intervention by the Red Cross.
This statement adds to a broader rhetorical pattern where Netanyahu and his allies have repeatedly framed Hamas as a genocidal threat akin to the Nazis or ISIS. But how well does this analogy hold up under scrutiny? And does the Israeli government itself avoid the traits it projects onto its enemies?
Fact-Checking the Analogy: Hamas and the Holocaust
Netanyahu’s Nazi comparison hinges on the alleged starvation and abuse of hostages held in Gaza. While the footage shows two individuals in visibly dire condition, independent verification of systemic starvation or deliberate mistreatment remains sparse. Most of the information is filtered through Israeli intelligence and political communication, and there is no confirmed evidence of an organized, systematic campaign of torture or extermination equivalent to the Holocaust.
Historians and Holocaust scholars warn that equating Hamas with the Nazis obscures the historical specificity of the Holocaust (an industrialized, state-sponsored genocide of six million Jews) and risks trivializing its scale and intent. Hamas is a militant organization with a documented history of violence, but it does not run death camps, nor has it carried out mass exterminations with anything resembling the scope or infrastructure of Nazi Germany.
Turning the Mirror: Accusations Against the Israeli Government
The irony is that Netanyahu’s use of Holocaust comparisons has also been turned against him. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has claimed that Netanyahu “surpassed Hitler”.
Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have labeled the Israeli government as enforcing an apartheid system against Palestinians. In Gaza specifically, Israel is weaponizing food scarcity, limiting humanitarian access, displacing over a million civilians, and conducting airstrikes in dense urban areas with high civilian tolls. Accordingly, such actions reflect a form of structural violence that echoes 20th-century colonial and militarized oppression, and even eligible to meet the criteria for genocide under international law.
Netanyahu has also presided over a hard-right coalition that has attempted to erode judicial independence, institutionalize inequality through the 2018 Nation-State Law, and enable far-right ministers who openly endorse racist policies. Former Israeli officials such as General Yair Golan and Ehud Barak have warned of “fascist trends” under Netanyahu’s leadership, invoking Germany’s descent in the 1930s.
A Final Note
Netanyahu’s statement draws an emotionally powerful analogy, but one that lacks historical precision and invites dangerous simplifications. While Hamas’s acts, including hostage abuse, must be independently investigated and condemned where proven, equating them with Nazi genocide dilutes the historical meaning of the Holocaust. At the same time, Israeli state actions, especially in Gaza, raise serious ethical and legal concerns that merit global scrutiny, not rhetorical absolution.
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Rather than drawing parallels to the past, both sides would be better served by upholding international law in the present.
