Shoah Revisionism After Gaza

Key Findings:

The article explores the controversy surrounding Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa’s decision to describe Israeli actions in Gaza as a “Holocaust,” and the broader implications of Holocaust comparisons in discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

Efforts to wrest the legacy of the Holocaust from Jews and Israel are part of a larger geopolitical struggle. The world is undergoing profound changes—marked by the decline of Western influence, the rise of populism and authoritarianism, and conflicts like the Israel-Hamas war. In this context, reframing the Holocaust as a narrative about Palestinian victimhood rather than Jewish suffering aligns with extreme movements seeking to reshape the current world order.

The erosion of Holocaust memory and liberal democratic norms is evident in the portrayal of the Palestinians as the true moral heirs of the Holocaust. The Jewish people are thus turned into symbolic props in a broader struggle over global narratives, with their own history and identity sidelined in the process.

Abulhawa was commissioned by The Guardian to write an article on Palestinian suffering during Israel’s assault on Gaza, but the piece was ultimately rejected because she refused to replace the word “Holocaust” with “genocide.” She argued that the term “Holocaust” was the only word that adequately conveyed the magnitude of suffering, claiming it reflected the cruelty and sadism she believed was being inflicted on Palestinians. The article was later published by Novara Media, a UK-based far-left news outlet.

Holocaust analogies are a recurring feature of anti-Israel rhetoric, where Israel is frequently likened to Nazi Germany, and Gaza is compared to Auschwitz. Abulhawa’s insistence on using the term “Holocaust” is not just a linguistic choice but a politically charged act. Using this term appropriates the unique historical significance of the Nazi Holocaust (which is deeply tied to Jewish identity and history) and redirects its moral weight to frame contemporary Israeli actions. 

The example of Anne Frank’s paradoxical manipulation in anti-Israel narratives illustrates this phenomenon. While anti-Israel street art depicts her as a Palestinian victim, her statue in Amsterdam has been defaced with blood-like paint, symbolically accusing her—retroactively as a Jew—of responsibility for Palestinian deaths. This contradiction highlights a larger theme: if Anne Frank had survived the Holocaust and moved to Israel, she might have been reimagined as an oppressor, reflecting a broader tendency of the anti-Israel left to conflate Zionism with oppression. This dual treatment exposes the unresolved contradictions in the left’s narratives around the Holocaust, Zionism, and modern Jewish history.

The author also critiques an essay by Pankaj Mishra, which argues that Israel's actions have undermined the Holocaust's moral legacy. Mishra's essay, "The Shoah after Gaza," claims that Israel's reliance on strength, rather than victimhood, contradicts the universal moral lessons of the Holocaust. He portrays Israel as undermining global norms established post-1945, implying that Israel's actions have a disproportionate impact on the world order compared to other conflicts.

Mishra selectively uses Holocaust survivors like Jean Améry because Améry’s nuanced views on Israel can be simplified to fit his argument. While Améry criticized aspects of Israeli policy, he also defended Israel’s necessity for Jewish survival, recognizing antisemitism as central to Zionism’s justification. Mishra frames Israel as having abandoned moral authority, and advocates for the transfer of Holocaust memory’s “custodianship” to pro-Palestinian activists.

The Holocaust is increasingly reframed within left-wing discourse as a manifestation of European colonialism. This reframing serves a political purpose: to align Holocaust memory with contemporary anti-colonial movements and critiques of Western imperialism.

Pankaj Mishra claims that Nazism was the "twin" of imperialism, and draws parallels between Auschwitz and Western atrocities in colonial Asia and Africa. This claim erases the role of antisemitism in Nazi ideology because it presents the Holocaust as part of a broader pattern of Western exploitation rather than a genocide specifically targeting Jews. It also cannot explain why Jews from Western Europe were transported to Eastern Europe to be killed, even when they were not occupying land earmarked for Nazi expansion.

The anti-Israel left frames Israel as a settler-colonial state—a relic of European imperialism akin to French Algeria or British Rhodesia. This delegitimizes Israel’s existence by denying its Jewish historical and cultural foundations. Within this framework, both the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel are portrayed as products of Western imperialism, with the creation of Israel seen as another form of colonial imposition.

This narrative has a dual effect. It positions the Palestinian cause as part of a global decolonization struggle, and reframes the Holocaust as a moral argument against colonialism — turning its legacy against Israel and Zionism, and therefore, global Jewry.