Poll: Over half of Israeli Jews see comparison between Holocaust and October 7
Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to liken Hamas to the Nazis, with Prime Minister Netanyahu arguing that Hamas has the same intention’ as WWII enemy of the Jews
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
More than half of Jewish Israelis believe that there is a legitimate basis for the comparisons between the Holocaust and the events of October 7 that have proliferated in the national discourse over the last seven months, according to a poll published Monday as Israel marked Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The use of rhetoric conflating Hamas with the Nazi party has become increasingly common among Israeli leaders since October 7, including by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has described the terror group as “the new Nazis.”
It has also been used by the families of the hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, who on Saturday evening rallied in Tel Aviv under the banner “Never again is now.”
A poll of 600 Jewish respondents conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute on May 1-5 found that 54 percent believed that there was some basis for the comparison, while 39% said such a comparison was out of place and 8% were unsure.
Fifty-six percent of those polled who were politically on the right, 54% on the left and 46% in the political center agreed that there was a basis for comparison.
“Ahead of this year’s Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), the debate that began more than six months ago has intensified, regarding the relevance of the comparisons between the events of October 7 and the events of the Holocaust,” said Prof. Tamar Hermann, the director of the IDI’s Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research.
“The fact that among the Jewish respondents, a majority (albeit a small one) feel that there is a basis for such a comparison, suggests that despite the obvious difference between the circumstances in both periods, and despite Israel being a sovereign and militarily strong country, the sense of existential threat is a very strong link between then and now, especially against the backdrop of antisemitic and anti-Israeli hatred around the world today,” Hermann said.
Addressing Sunday evening’s official state Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem, both President Isaac Herzog and Netanyahu juxtaposed the European genocide and October 7 — even as they insisted that the Hamas massacre was not a new Holocaust.
“The descriptions of mothers silencing babies so they wouldn’t cry and give away their hiding place; of children torn from their parents; and of abominable murderers — who saw in the Nazis a model to emulate, and who, burnt, and butchered entire families – echoed the horrors among us,” Herzog said.
But while October 7 was “the day when the most Jews were murdered and slaughtered in one day since the Holocaust,” Israelis have “what our brothers and sisters who perished in the Holocaust could only dream of, only imagine — a country and an army of our own,” Herzog said.
Eight decades after the end of the Holocaust, Israel again faces a “ruthless and brutal” enemy who seeks its destruction, Netanyahu declared, arguing that the recent attack was “not a Holocaust — not because of an absence of intention to annihilate us, but because of an absence of ability.”
“The murderers of Hamas are guided by the exact same goal,” although, unlike during the Holocaust, today Israel “has a force that can defend it,” he said.
Netanyahu doubled down on this point on Monday morning, declaring at the Knesset that while Hamas had the “same intention of the Nazi gangs who murdered a third of our people,” their attack was “not a Holocaust” because of the existence of the IDF.
“The scale of the carnage in the Holocaust is unimaginable. It is equal to 5,000 October sevenths,” he said.
