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‘Eichmann With a Kippah’? The Immorality Behind the Genocide Libel
Students accusing Israel of genocide at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 16, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
For the past few weeks, I’ve been regularly receiving hate messages calling me “Eichmann with a kippah.” The phrase appears in angry screeds from anonymous accounts — often by people apparently pretending to be Jewish women “ashamed” of me for defending Israel. The script never changes: Israel is Nazi Germany, Zionists are fascists, and the IDF is committing “genocide.”
The vocabulary may sound new. The hatred is not. This moral inversion — turning descendants of refugees and survivors of pogroms and genocides into the heirs of their murderers — is one of antisemitism’s oldest tricks, refitted for modern politics.
The “Genocide” Libel Long Predates Oct. 7
The claim that Israel is committing “genocide” didn’t arise after Oct. 7, 2023. Nor did it begin during the Gaza wars of 2008 or 2014. It’s decades old — part of a propaganda campaign that long preceded the current war.
Within hours of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, and before Israel fired a single retaliatory shot, protesters from London to Los Angeles were already chanting “genocide.” The accusation was preloaded, not provoked — waiting to be forced into whatever followed.
Its roots trace back to the 1970s, when Soviet and Arab League propaganda began branding Israel “the new Nazis.” State-controlled media in Moscow, Cairo, and Damascus weaponized Holocaust imagery against the Jewish State, reframing Jewish survival as Jewish supremacy.
By the 1980s, “Zionist genocide” was a standard slogan — even as the Palestinian population in Gaza and Judea and Samaria grew faster than almost any on Earth.
The population growth numbers alone should have ended the claim. But this was never about demography or evidence. It was about demonology — portraying Jewish sovereignty itself as a moral offense.
Why “Israel = Nazis” Is Antisemitic
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism explicitly lists “drawing comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy and that of the Nazis” as antisemitic. That’s not censorship — it’s moral lucidity.
Equating Israel with Nazi Germany desecrates Jewish memory while denying Jewish self-defense. It turns the Holocaust into a political weapon, stripping Jews of moral legitimacy and redefining their sovereignty and survival as crimes.
That’s why these comparisons surge whenever Israel fights back. They aren’t moral critiques but psychological projections — attempts to turn collective Jewish self-defense into the personification of evil.
The “Appeal to Authority” Fallacy
When challenged, those spreading the “genocide” libel typically resort to what Aristotle first called the appeal to authority fallacy. They list various academics and NGOs — the International Association of Genocide Scholars, UN commissions, and other self-declared arbiters — as if citation equals truth.
None of these are credible judicial bodies. Many are activist-driven and politically biased. The UN Human Rights Council has condemned Israel more than all other nations combined, including Iran, China, and North Korea. Even the highly politicized International Court of Justice has made no finding of genocide — only procedural rulings allowing South Africa’s case to proceed.
And even those arguments collapse under scrutiny. Before Oct. 7, the “genocide” claim was absurd: Israel had withdrawn from Gaza in 2005, leaving it under Palestinian rule, even as Gaza’s population doubled.
After Oct. 7, the same activists rebranded Hamas’ war — launched with barbaric mass murder and hostage-taking — as “Israeli genocide.” They ignored the central element of genocide: intent.
Israel’s actions show the opposite intent — an intent to avoid civilian casualties. It issues evacuation warnings, opens humanitarian corridors, coordinates aid deliveries, and risks soldiers’ lives in ground operations to spare noncombatants. No nation in history accused of genocide has ever done those things.
The Ethical Reality
If genocide requires intent to destroy a people, Hamas and its patron, Iran, fit that definition far better than Israel ever could.
Hamas’ charter calls for the extermination of Jews everywhere. Its leaders boasted that Oct. 7 was “only the beginning” and vowed to “repeat it again and again.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has long declared that Israel must be “wiped off the map” while arming Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis — all sworn to Israel’s annihilation.
In Gaza, Hamas hides in hospitals and schools, fires rockets from residential areas, and turns its own civilians into human shields. It even has uniforms for parades but not for combat — deliberately fighting in civilian clothes to endanger its own population. Hamas has built more than 700 kilometers of tunnels, not to protect civilians, but to shelter its commanders and stockpile weapons. When Gazans try to flee to Israeli-designated safe zones, Hamas often blocks or attacks them to increase civilian death tolls.
This is not a liberation movement. It is a fascist death cult that thrives on civilian suffering. Every Palestinian death becomes Hamas propaganda.
Israel, by contrast, spends billions on defense — bomb shelters, Iron Dome, and precision weaponry — yet is condemned as genocidal for refusing to surrender to the openly genocidal forces Iran has armed and financed around it.
If the genocide label were applied honestly, it would have been used for Syria, where over half a million non-Alawites were slaughtered, or in Yemen, Sudan, and Ethiopia, where famine and ethnic killings reach truly genocidal levels. But the same NGOs and academics most vocal about “Israel’s genocide” are largely silent in the face of those atrocities. Their outrage isn’t proportional to suffering — it’s proportional to Jewish sovereignty.
The Psychological Comfort of the Lie
The “genocide” accusation persists because it serves two needs.
First, it comforts those who crave moral simplicity. Admitting that Hamas and Iran are fascist aggressors would mean acknowledging that evil exists outside the West — and that Jews are its target once again.
Second, it soothes those who resent Israel’s existence — who hate that Jews took “Never Again” seriously and built a thriving democratic state to ensure it. The libel restores the moral hierarchy they prefer: Jews as either evil or as victims, but never as defenders.
Calling Israel “Nazi-like” lets these moral poseurs feel righteous without learning anything. It turns ignorance into empathy and hashtags into heroism.
The Continuity of Antisemitic Tropes
From “Christ-killers” to “baby-killers,” from “poisoners of wells” to “genocide perpetrators,” the accusation never truly changes — only the vocabulary does.
Now a new smear circulates alongside “genocide”: “denier.” Anyone who defends Israel or questions Hamas’ death tolls is labeled a “genocide denier,” as if doubting Hamas propaganda were equivalent to denying the Holocaust. This isn’t moral reasoning. It’s moral sadism.
What we’re witnessing isn’t a policy debate but a war over moral reality. One side believes Jewish sovereignty and self-defense are rights; the other believes their crimes.
The Hatred That Never Dies
Those accusing Israel of “genocide” aren’t defending human rights. They’re heirs to a long tradition of antisemitic inversion — from medieval blood libels to Soviet propaganda — now repackaged as “justice.”
It should go without saying: Israel is not Nazi Germany. It is the living refutation of Nazi Germany — a pluralistic democracy where Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Druze, men and women alike, share full civil rights, and whose army does more to prevent civilian casualties than any military in history.
The “genocide” libel says less about Israel than about those who need to believe it. Because to accept the truth — that Jewish self-defense and sovereignty are not crimes — would mean confronting an ancient hatred they can’t let go of.
And that hatred, history shows, never dies. It just changes its vocabulary.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, antisemitism, and Jewish history and serves on the board of Herut North America.
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Trump Says US Will Sell F-35s to Saudi Arabia Ahead of White House Talks With Crown Prince
US President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman shake hands during a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signing ceremony at the Royal Court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
US President Donald Trump on Monday said he plans to approve the sale of US-made F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, announcing his intention one day before he hosts Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House in Washington, DC.
The high-stakes meeting comes as rumors swirl about the possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia, long-time foes who in recent years have increasingly cooperated behind closed doors, normalizing ties under a US-brokered deal.
“They want to buy. They are a great ally. I will say that we will be doing that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We will be selling them F-35s.”
Reuters reported earlier this month that Saudi Arabia has requested to buy as many as 48 F-35 fighter jets in a potential multibillion-dollar deal that cleared a key Pentagon hurdle.
Such a sale would be a policy shift for Washington, which primarily sells the F-35 to formal military allies, such as NATO members or Japan. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has the elite fighter jets, in accordance with longstanding bipartisan policy for US administrations and the Congress to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region. Saudi Arabia’s acquiring them would at least somewhat change the military balance of power.
However, Axios reported over the weekend that Israel does not oppose the US sale of F-35s to Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil producer — as long as it’s conditioned on Riyadh normalizing relations with Jerusalem.
“We told the Trump administration that the supply of F-35s to Saudi Arabia needs to be subject to Saudi normalization with Israel,” an anonymous Israeli official told the news outlet, adding that giving the fighter jets without getting any significant diplomatic progress would be “a mistake and counterproductive.”
It has been widely reported that Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the verge of a deal to establish formal diplomatic ties until the discussions were derailed by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Saudi officials have said that they will only agree to a normalization deal if Israel commits to a path toward a Palestinian state.
Saudi Arabia’s close partners Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were among the Arab states to normalize ties with Israel in 2020 as part of the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords. Trump has said he is intent on expanding the accords to include other countries, above all Saudi Arabia.
“I hope that Saudi Arabia will be going into the Abraham Accords fairly shortly,” Trump told reporters on Friday.
The F-35 deal and possible Israeli-Saudi normalization are expected to be central to the agenda when bin Salman, widely known by his initials MBS, meets Trump.
It will be the crown prince’s first trip to the US since the death of prominent Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul in 2018. US intelligence concluded that bin Salman approved the capture or killing of Khashoggi, although Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader has denied ordering the operation.
Seven years later, Washington and Riyadh, longtime strategic partners, are looking forward, with bin Salman set to receive full ceremonial honors at the White House. Their meeting comes six months after Trump secured a $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the United States.
Beyond investment, Riyadh has been eager to reach a security agreement with Washington expanding arms sales such as advanced missile-defense systems and drones, and deeper military training partnerships. Most importantly for Riyadh, however, is the US offering certain guarantees ensuring the kingdom’s security. Many observers have suggested that such a defense deal could be part of a broader arrangement to broker Saudi-Israel normalization.
Trump and bin Salman are also expected to discuss broadening ties in commerce, technology, and potentially nuclear energy.
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Catholic Church in Berlin Condemns Antisemitism as Anti-Israel Agitators Vandalize Historic Crucifix
Illustrative: Hamas supporters at a rally in Cologne, Germany, on Oct. 22, 2023. Photo: Reuters/Ying Tang
As antisemitic incidents continue to rise in Germany, the Catholic Church in Berlin has taken a firmer stance against anti-Jewish hatred by issuing new guidelines prohibiting its members from expressing racist, antisemitic, or extremist views.
On Saturday, the Archdiocese of Berlin, the governing body of the city’s Catholic Church, announced that all candidates for leadership positions must sign a special declaration rejecting racism, antisemitism, and extremist views.
“With this decision, responsibility falls where it belongs. Anyone seeking to serve on the diocesan committees and run in the elections must actively uphold the values of our Church,” Karlies Abmeier, president of the Diocesan Council, said in a statement.
The Catholic Church’s latest move aims to ensure that anyone seeking a leadership role within the institution commits to rejecting “racism, antisemitism, ethnic nationalism, and hostility toward democracy.”
“It is crucial for us that such statements never come from those in positions of power within our Church,” Marcel Hoyer, executive director of the committee, told the German Press Agency.
Candidates would also be prohibited from belonging to any party or organization that the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution has designated as extremist.
The archdiocese’s announcement comes amid a climate of rising hostility and radicalization in Germany, where the local Jewish community has increasingly become a target.
Last week, anti-Israel protesters vandalized a church with paint in the Vogelsberg district of Hesse in central Germany.
According to local media reports, a crucifix was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, including the slogans “Free Palestine” and “Jesus is Palestinian,” and the church walls were also defaced with red paint.
Pastor Ingmar Bartsch denounced the incident, describing himself as “angry and bewildered.”
“What affects me most is that it’s a historic depiction of Jesus, at least 200 to 300 years old, and truly one of a kind,” Bartsch told the German newspaper Bild.
He explained that the crucifix will require a professional restoration, with initial damage estimates reaching into the thousands of dollars.
Local police have launched an investigation into the incident as a case of property damage, noting that the items involved hold religious significance.
As the restoration process begins, Bartsch said the church will remain closed for now, reopening only for religious services.
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Columbia University Rejects Latest Israel Divestment Proposal
Columbia University on Sept. 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ryan Murphy
Columbia University said on Friday that it will not divest from Israel and other corporations which anti-Zionist activists denounced for selling materials to the Israeli military.
The university’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI) stated its position on the matter as a response to a group which submitted three proposals calling for the policy in December 2024, when the institution’s campus was being roiled by anti-Israel protests and a deluge of antisemitic incidents. The group had charged that Israel is guilty of “human rights violations” and “war crimes.”
Israel argued it went to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties during the latest war in Gaza, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targeted them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. It noted that Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group it was targeting, embedded its fighters within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeered civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
In three separate statements, Columbia said that the group behind the boycott proposals lacks consensus support on campus and has reduced one of the most complex geopolitical conflicts in the world history to “vague and excessively broad” categories, sewing partisan division and confusion where a university would, ideally, aim to promote clarity and sober analysis of fact.
Additionally, ASCRI said that the group’s proposals are of “similar … substance” to other ideas put forth by the notorious Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) group, a spinoff of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) which Columbia resolved neither to recognize nor correspond with due to its culpability in antisemitic assaults, hate speech, and a slew of illegal occupations of campus property.
“As noted in the ASCRI’s decision on the CUAD proposal last year, members of the university have a wide range of views on contentious issues,” ASCRI wrote. “Hence, it will be difficult or unprecedented for the university, with such diverse views, to sponsor shareholder proposals of the kind this proposal envisages.”
It added, “There is significant opposition in the Columbia University community to divesting from companies that are involved in Israel, as evidenced by the actions of many students, faculty, and alumni.”
Columbia University has begun implementing a series of reforms it says will address campus antisemitism.
In a statement issued in July, university president Claire Shipman said the institution will hire new coordinators to oversee complaints alleging civil rights violations; facilitate “deeper education on antisemitism” by creating new training programs for students, faculty, and staff; and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — a tool that advocates say is necessary for identifying what constitutes antisemitic conduct and speech.
Shipman also announced new partnerships with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other Jewish groups while delivering a major blow to the anti-Zionist movement on campus by vowing never to “recognize or meet with” CUAD, a pro-Hamas campus group which has serially disrupted academic life with unauthorized, surprise demonstrations attended by non-students.
“I would also add that making these announcements in no way suggests we are finished with the work,” Shipman continued. “In a recent discussion, a faculty member and I agreed that antisemitism at this institution has existed, perhaps less overtly, for a long while, and the work of dismantling it, especially through education and understanding will take time. It will likely require more reform. But I’m hopeful that in doing this work, as we consider and even debate it, we will start to promote healing and to chart our path forward.”
Columbia University had, until that point, yielded some of the most indelible examples of anti-Jewish hatred in higher education since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel set off explosions of anti-Zionist activity at colleges and universities across the US. Such incidents included a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
Amid these incidents, the university struggled to contain CUAD, which in late January committed infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, ADP reportedly distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students.
Columbia has since paid over $200 million to settle claims that it exposed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to antisemitic discrimination and harassment — a deal which secures the release of over $1 billion dollars the Trump administration impounded to pressure the institution to address the issue.
“Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to retain the confidence of the American public by renting their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,” US Education Secretary Linda McMahon McMahon said at the time. “I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.