Why the genocide libel is central to the propaganda war against Israel and Jews

The Gaza war may have ended, but the genocide libel marches on. That libel, the false accusation that Israel and Diaspora Jews perpetrate genocide against others, allows anti-Zionists to invert the Holocaust, erasing Jews’ Holocaust victimhood and bestowing it upon Palestinians. And given this libel’s ubiquity, it’s worth understanding the libel’s origins, why it was amplified and went viral after Oct. 7, 2023, and why some Gazans dubbed themselves “Holocaust survivors” on social media as combat ceased.

The genocide libel is a central plank in “the propaganda war against Israel, which has become one of the most organized and sophisticated narrative campaigns in modern geopolitics,” said Faran Jeffery, director general of operations at the U.K.-based Midstone Centre for International Affairs. It focuses on “framing Israel … as a moral aberration.”

This propaganda war builds upon decades-old Soviet anti-Zionism. While the postwar West marginalized Nazi-style antisemitism, anti-Zionism evaded that strong taboo with thinly disguised libels about Israel and “Zionists.” Leveraging that loophole, the contemporary Western Left has recycled the extensive Soviet playbook, and its emphasis is clearly on efficacy over accuracy.

Professor Gunther Jikeli, associate director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University, wrote, “If we apply the accepted legal definition of genocide, the accusation is simply untrue, and constitutes a form of defamation and demonization of a country. Second, it has a direct impact on Jews in the U.S. and elsewhere: Jews face constant suspicion of supporting an ‘evil’ state.”

Anti-Israel slurs and ‘moral theft’ of the Holocaust on display, Madrid, Jan. 8, 2026, (Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket/Getty)

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Lest this prompt cognitive dissonance, anti-Zionism offers a preemptive remedy. “Anyone who senses that hostility toward Jews might be racist risks feeling a kind of moral contamination, becoming, in that sense, ‘like a Nazi,’” said Adam Louis-Klein, founder of the Movement Against Antizionism. With Nazism still widely considered objectionable, “that guilt must be instantly inverted and projected onto the object of hatred itself. Thus, a core feature of anti-Zionist ideology is to depict ‘Zionists’ as ‘racists’ and ‘Nazis,’ while Palestinians are recoded as the ‘Jews’ or ‘Holocaust survivors.’”

Izabella Tabarovsky, senior fellow at the Z3 Institute, called “the equation between Zionism and Nazism, and Israelis and the Nazis,” possibly “the most important libel of anti-Zionism, because so much flows from there. It is the equivalent of religious antisemitism equating Jews with the Devil.” The Soviets alleged “Zionists collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust,” Tabarovsky said.“If you believe that Zionists are the Nazis, then you can easily believe they commit genocide,” and “if a people stands accused of genocide, then there is nothing that can redeem this people.”

Therein lies danger. If Zionists, or Jews, more precisely, are believed to be genocidaires, then violence against Jews seems justifiable. And the last time Diaspora Jews were targeted for mass violence, two-thirds of European Jewry were murdered.

“The tension is between the Holocaust, which has been recognized as a civilizational rupture by European intellectuals, and colonial violence,” said Norman J.W. Goda, Norman and Irma Braman professor of Holocaust studies at the University of Florida. “The resentment comes from the belief that the magnitude of the Holocaust crowds out other mass crimes in the global consciousness … that ‘the Jews’ deploy the Holocaust to paint themselves as the eternal victims, and that the state of Israel deploys the Holocaust to cover what are allegedly colonial crimes.”

Anti-Israel slurs and ‘moral theft’ of the Holocaust on display, anti-Israel slurs and ‘moral theft’ of the Holocaust on display:

Melbourne, Sept. 14, 2025 and London, Sept. 6, 2025. (Recep Sakar/Anadolu/Getty; Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto/Getty)

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Holocaust inversion is downstream from that resentment. It relativizes the Holocaust and recasts the victims as villains.

Holocaust inversion is also “a form of moral theft” common in anti-Israel activism, “where the Holocaust’s moral clarity is weaponized against its historical victims,” Jeffery observed. “The motive is political subversion of Jewish memory or Israel’s moral standing. Various pro-Palestinian and leftist groups have mastered the art.” To wit, German anti-Zionists announced an April vigil at Buchenwald “against … the genocide currently taking place in Palestine,” timed to the 81st anniversary of Buchenwald’s liberation. (German authorities vetoed that event location.)

Following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, anti-Zionists repeatedly charged the Jewish state with genocide in Gaza. That has required disregarding proof that no genocide occurred and redefining the term to bludgeon Israel. But accusing Israel of genocide isn’t new.

Israel was accused of committing genocide against Arabs amid a United Nations Security Council debate during the Six-Day War. Goda pointed to Yasser Arafat’s appearance at the U.N. in November 1974, when Arafat mentioned “the imminent threat of liquidation” facing Palestinians and Israeli “concentration camps.” Tabarovsky recalled Soviet media charging Israel with “committing genocide against the Lebanese” during the 1982 Lebanon War. Goda observed that this pattern has continued across several Gaza wars, it’s simply “supercharged” now.

“It is pretty easy to find prewar comparisons of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto and prewar comparisons between Israelis and Nazis,” Goda wrote. “More recently, before the war too, there were artists’ renditions of Gaza tattoos that were to be seen as comparable to Auschwitz. But with the charge of genocide in the past two-plus years, the comparisons of Gaza with the Holocaust are in full flower.”

Gaza’s extended headline dominance meant the territory and its symbolism loomed large for many Americans. Anti-Zionist activists, and America’s adversaries, capitalized on that attention, amplifying resonant messaging. And with Americans universally aware that “Nazis” signify epic evil, communication keying off that point was potent.

A protester in Warsaw holds a banner equating Zionism with Nazism, Sept. 9, 2025. (Neil Milton/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty)

" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Fea.Genocide4.062426.jpg?w=696" height="658" width="1024" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Fea.Genocide4.062426.jpg?w=696" alt="A protester in Warsaw holds a banner equating Zionism with Nazism, Sept. 9, 2025. (Neil Milton/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty)" class="wp-image-4617737" style="width:821px;height:auto" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Fea.Genocide4.062426.jpg 1400w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Fea.Genocide4.062426.jpg?resize=300,193 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Fea.Genocide4.062426.jpg?resize=768,494 768w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Fea.Genocide4.062426.jpg?resize=1024,658 1024w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Fea.Genocide4.062426.jpg?resize=150,96 150w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Fea.Genocide4.062426.jpg?resize=696,447 696w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Fea.Genocide4.062426.jpg?resize=1068,687 1068w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">A protester in Warsaw holds a banner equating Zionism with Nazism, Sept. 9, 2025. (Neil Milton/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty)

Louis-Klein noted that the Holocaust and its inversion are central to anti-Zionism, “transforming racism against Jews into the accusation of Jews as racists.” Building on this Soviet formulation, former Columbia University professor Edward Said “later gave it postcolonial respectability by describing Palestinians as ‘the victims of the victims.’” Among leftists, there may be no higher honor.

“Sociologists like Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have described ‘victimhood culture,’ where status derives not from honor or achievement, but from being seen as oppressed,” Jeffery shared. And within this worldview, “Holocaust victimhood is seen as the gold standard of recognized suffering.”

This makes no sense from a Jewish point of view, of course. Jewish Holocaust survivors would never have volunteered for the experience. However, identifying as a “Holocaust survivor” now brings benefits in the attention economy, and surviving an actual genocide isn’t required.

“Because we live in a post-truth world where victimhood is not grounded in historical reality but in the construction of the self, many will seek to be seen as victims of genocide,” Stop Antizionism founder Naya Lekht reflected. “‘Holocaust victims’ [can] be redefined to apply to anyone who perceives themselves as the target of a genocide. It is not difficult to see how easily bad-faith actors exploit these loosened definitions.”

Revised definitions reflect the narrative war’s needs more than linguistic accuracy. The time it takes to propagate anti-Jewish propaganda has also changed. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Soviets and Arab nationalists “deliberately portrayed Israel as a ‘Nazi state.’ Palestinian textbooks and media have often repeated such analogies, embedding them into public consciousness,” Jeffery mentioned. However, the internet can now instantaneously spread anti-Jewish venom worldwide.

A counter-protest by pro-Israel activists in London, Dec. 14, 2024. (Mark Kerrison/In Pictures/Getty)

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Jikeli emailed, “In our research lab, we see this pattern across social media: turning victims into perpetrators and perpetrators into victims has become a central antisemitic strategy. It’s meant to confuse, erode moral clarity, and normalize hostility toward Jews.”

Anti-Zionism unites “several overlapping dynamics: ideological, cultural, psychological, and digital,” Jeffery explained. “Online, this manifests through memes, irony, and so-called ‘trolling,’ the kind that hides behind sarcasm or dark humor but ultimately recycles classical antisemitic imagery, global conspiracies, blood libels, depictions of Jewish control, and mockery of Jewish suffering. The anonymity of the internet amplifies this.”

“There’s also a meme-driven nihilism at work,” Jeffery said. “For younger users immersed in irony culture, trolling Jews” may begin as “an exercise in boundary-breaking humor. Yet over time, repetition desensitizes audiences, normalizing bigotry.”

Polling captures this cultural shift. A February Blue Square Alliance survey found 30% of millennials and 24% of Generation Z believe “stereotypes about Jewish people controlling the world” are either “not at all harmful” or “not very harmful.” Seventeen percent of millennials and 15% of Gen Z likewise don’t see harm in “using name-calling or slurs to describe” Jews. Blue Square concluded that normalization “changes what people tolerate,” with millennials and Gen Z more than twice as likely as baby boomers to dismiss Jew-hatred as a problem.

Notably, millennials and Gen Z are active on social media, which remains a battlefield in the war against Israel. When the post-Oct. 7 war wound down, anti-Israel libels didn’t disappear. Rather, another genocide-related phrase began circulating widely online. Healthy-looking, neatly groomed Gazans posted pictures of themselves on X as “Holocaust survivors.”

(Koen Van Weel/ANP/AFP/Getty)

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“The notion of a Gaza ‘Holocaust survivor’ is aimed at moving the epicenter of contemporary mass atrocity from Poland to Gaza,” Goda wrote. “In a sense it is one more attempt to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish State, but it is also an effort to ‘steal the Holocaust,’ as it is seen to be an improperly-acquired story of mass killing that never should have belonged to the Jews in the first place.” Put differently, Jews deserve nothing, not even stories of their people’s suffering.

Amid this toxic brew, there are lessons. Lekht, for instance, sees history repeating. “The lessons of anti-Zionism will mirror the lessons of every earlier form of anti-Jewish hatred, whether anti-Judaism or [Nazi-style] antisemitism, that when libels against Jews go unchallenged, they … fuel harassment and violence. And just as the world eventually recognized the ‘race-polluter’ libel or the ‘Christ-killer’ libel as dangerous tools for demonization,” the genocide libel belongs to that “long history of anti-Jewish libels.”

Relatedly, Louis-Klein considers it crucial to recognize “anti-Zionism itself as a hate ideology, just as [Jews and allies of the Jewish community] were ultimately forced to recognize ‘antisemitism,’” which was excused “as a semi-reasonable political position” before the Holocaust.

Tabarovsky remarked, “The demonology of Zionism is perpetual,” so “the next round of this war is coming.” Anti-Zionists “will use the same libels,” keeping whatever works. American Jews must prepare like military planners would, spending years developing strategies and tactics. “What are we going to do now, even to perhaps inoculate ourselves and the people around us against these libels?” It’s possible to “pre-expose [people] to propaganda in a safe way,” effectively offering a cognitive inoculation. American Jews must also “be prepared psychologically” to prevent feeling “crushed the next time we’re abandoned by our allies.”

Assessing the landscape, Jikeli concluded, “We shouldn’t be afraid to call out this madness for what it is and to speak with moral clarity, even when it’s unpopular. There’s an urgent need for voices that are unambiguous and morally grounded.”

Jeffery offered several thoughts about this “digitally rebranded antisemitism.” First, “Jewish visibility and legitimacy can never be taken for granted, no matter how integrated or secure a community may appear.” Prejudice can arrive “wrapped in new, moral language,” and Holocaust remembrance “must be coupled with vigilance, clarity, and courage in naming new forms of hate.” Second, “silence and appeasement invite distortion.” It’s important “not merely to defend, but to define” contemporary Jew-hatred and “make the moral argument without apology.” Third, “countering hatred” should include “living Jewishly and proudly. … The most powerful answer to those who mock or invert Jewish suffering is not despair, but vitality.”

NICHOLAS KRISTOF’S ANTI-ZIONIST CONSPIRACY THEORIES

“Finally, for non-Jews who care about the Jewish people, this moment is a test of moral consistency,” Jeffery advised. “True solidarity means rejecting the idea that Jews must justify their existence or the legitimacy of their state to earn empathy. … The defense of Jewish dignity is, ultimately, the defense of a moral order that insists truth matters, memory matters, and human beings cannot be dehumanized in the name of ideology.” Combating antisemitism is “about preserving civilization’s capacity to tell right from wrong.”

Right now, too many are failing that moral test. They are taken in by an oft-repeated and continually debunked libel. But this belief isn’t harmless. It’s one that carries a serious risk of poisoning, both for the individual and the body politic, and the only antidote is truth.

Melissa Langsam Braunstein (@slowhoneybee) is an independent writer in metro Washington.