"In what kind of society can one openly advocate policies modeled on Hitler's conduct? In a society that feels complete impunity due to America's protection," one foreign policy expert said.
Former Israeli Knesset member Moshe Feiglin quoted Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a "Hebrew Gaza."
Feiglin, who quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party to found the right-wing Zehut Party and plans to challenge Likud in Israel's next elections, made the comments during a panel discussion on Israel's Channel 12 that was shared on social media on Sunday, as Middle East Eye reported.
"We are not guests in our country, this is our country, all of it..." Feiglin said, adding, "As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left.' We can't live here if one 'Islamo-Nazi' remains in Gaza."
Feiglin's remarks earned widespread condemnation on social media.
"In what kind of society can one openly advocate policies modeled on Hitler's conduct?" asked Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. "In a society that feels complete impunity due to America's protection."
Former Greek Finance Minister and leader of the pan-European leftist political party DiEM25 Yanis Varoufakis wrote that "the evidence of genocidal intentions is mounting" and asked, "When will the ICC [International Criminal Court] act?"
Israel has killed at least 37,337 people and injured 85,299 in its war on Gaza since October 7, when Hamas carried out a lethal attack against southern Israel, killing around 1,100 people and taking more than 240 hostage. Prior to the attack, Israel had maintained a 16-year blockade of the narrow enclave.
South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, citing the vast destruction of its bombing campaign as well as statements made by high-level Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu, that portray all Gazans as complicit in the October 7 attacks. Several human rights experts and scholars have also concluded that Israel is committing genocide.
This is not the first time that Feiglin, who served in the Knesset from 2013 to 2015, has called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
"We need a different prime minister who is willing to stick his neck out to win. Zehut will provide, whenever elections happen, such a candidate," he told supporters in January, according to Middle East Eye. "For us, the war in Gaza is not merely a defensive war. It's a war of liberation, the liberation of the land from its occupiers."
In an October 2023 interview with Al Jazeera, he also advocated for the "complete destruction of Gaza, before invading it... Destruction like Dresden and Hiroshima, without a nuclear weapon."
Zehut's 2019 platform included the cancellation of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, according toHaaretz.
"Don't talk to me about international law, because there is not such a thing. You know, the minute you use the word 'Palestinian,' you stop saying the truth. Because there is no Palestinian nation, and they know it," Feiglin said that same year.
Other currently governing Israeli politicians have also called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in January that the Israeli government should "encourage the migration" of Palestinians out of Gaza.
Later the same month, Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attended a right-wing conference calling for the "resettlement" of Gaza.
I have been reflecting recently that I was not learning the same lessons about the Holocaust as some of my classmates. I got the impression nothing like it should ever be allowed again and we should do everything we can to stop it when we see the signs. I assumed everyone got that impression but I'm realizing that was not the case.
I think part of the problem is that when you read about the horrors of the Holocaust as a kid, you can't help but think of Nazi Germany as a cartoonishly, outlandishly evil place full of people who spend every waking second thinking about how much they hate impure bloodlines.
You come away with an impression that it should be obvious when genocide is happening.
Then you go home after school and you see something about genocide in the Middle East, and you ask your parents about it and they say "Well... it's complicated." And if it's complicated -- if it's not cartoonishly, outlandishly evil -- then it must not be genocide.
Yeah, I think this "cartooning of evil" is at the core of American patriotism and entitlement. There are a lot of Americans who legitimately believe that we're immune to certain phenomena "because we're American". It's the same as when people say they're not racist "because they're not trying to be". Or the rich man bankrolling the presidency isn't evil because he doesn't twirl a mustache.
In the same way, this can't be genocide, because we would never do a genocide! We're just doing what we believe needs to be done to maintain our standard of living...
My Oma was in the Netherlands in the 1930s. Her family sheltered part of a jewish family(the elderly mother who was too sick to escape to North America, and one of her sons, a lawyer, who stayed behind to care for her.) This was before the invasion and the start of the war.
At the time, late 1930s, she said that everyone knew something bad was happening to the Jewish people the Nazis rounded up, but not what.
After more than a year of occupation, they were turned in by a neighbor for extra rations because none of her family needed daily visits from a doctor. The Nazis took the two Jewish people and her Dad into a camp.
A local factory owner, some months on, tried to have everyone from the area released in return for his compliance in letting them use his factory output. Her dad was among those released, but they refused to release any Jewish prisoners. Her parents then immediately joined the resistance and helped it out until the end of the war. The factory owner allegedly ensured that the output to the Nazis was changed to be only subtly defective units, pipe walls too thin, cooled too quickly etc.