Israel’s campaign by relentless bombardment Protests against the Gaza Strip had been raging for three weeks when the country’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked to comment on the violent protests Number of civilian deaths in the Palestinian enclave.

Netanyahu, who had previously mentioned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in 2001 to describe the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, took this opportunity to look to World War II for confirmation .

The aggressive Israeli prime minister was referring to the time in 1945 – he mistakenly mentioned 1944 – when a British air raid targeting a Gestapo site mistakenly hit a school in Copenhagen, killing 86 children. “This is not a war crime,” he told reporters. “This is not something you blame Britain for. This was a legitimate act of war with the tragic consequences that accompany such legitimate acts.”

Since then, the Allied campaign against Nazi Germany and Japan during World War II has become something of a historical precedent for an Israeli state seeking to justify large-scale killings of the people of Gaza while allegedly pursuing Hamas militants. Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, has described the Israeli election campaign as devastating Allied bombing of Dresden, which took place over three nights in 1945 and was intended to force the Nazis to surrender, resulted in the deaths of approximately 25,000 to 35,000 Germans. Non-governmental supporters of Israel have also drawn similar comparisons.

But these attempts obscure the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians Displaced from their land during the creation of Israel in 1948, the destruction of then 500 towns and villages and the subsequent illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. They also ignore how World War II gave rise to a new regime of international law and serve to dehumanize Palestinians while justifying Israel’s decades of violence and discrimination against Palestinians – which many international human rights groups have called apartheid – say historians and analysts .

Israeli historian and socialist activist Ilan Pappé told Al Jazeera that these efforts by Israel “serve as a justification for its brutal policies towards” Palestinians and that they represent an old playbook for the country.

He cited the case when former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin compared then-Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat to Hitler and war-torn Beirut to Berlin Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

“As prime minister, I feel empowered to command a brave army before ‘Berlin,’ where Hitler and his henchmen are hiding among innocent civilians in a bunker deep beneath the surface,” Begin said in a telegram to then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan Early August 1982.

But Begin’s words sparked criticism from many in his own country, with Israeli writer Amos Oz writing that “the urge to resurrect Hitler only to kill him again and again is the result of a pain that poets can afford, not.” but statesmen.” “.

Recourse to the past to legitimize modern conflicts can also be ahistorical. Scott Lucas, a specialist in U.S. and British foreign policy at the University of Birmingham, said that Israel and its supporters’ relentless exploitation of World War II to blunt criticism of its bloody war on Gaza suggests that Israel is “wishing away the postwar period ” want. The promise of 1945 – by lawyers, NGOs, activists and politicians – to say that we need a better system so that civilians in war zones do not suffer unnecessarily.”

He added that Israel’s decision to withdraw from membership International Criminal Court (ICC) and his attempts to “actively…undermine [the authority] of the United Nations,” founded after the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, believe its claim to be part of an allied struggle is disingenuous.

Israel has accused multiple times The UN agencies and their officials, including Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, are biased for calling for a ceasefire. Meanwhile, Israeli bombs have killed more UN staff in Gaza since October 7 than in any other conflict in the organization’s history.

“In war, civilians are killed,” Lucas acknowledged, but added that Israel appears to be violating international law Principle of proportionality. Essentially, a military whose war results in the deaths of civilians, including through attacks on hospitals, schools and shelters – targets that Israel has repeatedly attacked in this war – must be able to make reasonable military gains from those attacks . That’s a bar that many experts say Israel has not yet reached.

“An excessive number of civilians are currently being killed because the force carrying out the attack is not providing adequate protection,” Lucas said. “And the Israelis should be judged by that. Including World War II and other narratives is a given [just] peripheral.”

Israel’s supporters continue to argue that the parallel exists with World War II. Jake Wallis Simons, editor of the London-based Jewish Chronicle, said there were “two points of similarity” between the conflicts.

“The first is a sense of existential threat during both World War II and Hamas’ attacks on Israel,” claimed Wallis Simons. “The other thing is the nature of the attacker.” He described Hamas’ actions as “barbarism.”

But UN experts, international human rights groups and many nations around the world have warned that Israel’s actions have been the same since October 7 – more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and almost the entire population of 2.3 million people have been killed killed offset – that could represent modern genocide. Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch accused Israel of using it Food as a weapon of war. Israel has retained one blockade The situation in the Gaza Strip since 2007 and since the start of the current war has made it even more difficult for aid supplies to reach the Strip. At the very beginning of the current war, Israel also imposed a strict ban on imports of fuel and water – a restriction that it has largely maintained.

Against this background, it makes sense for Israel to project the Second World War onto the conflict with Palestine, said the German-Palestinian scientist Anna Younes. It helps Israel dehumanize Palestinians and weakens sensitivity to their suffering.

“By equating Israel with Judaism, it is easy to project Nazism onto the Palestinians, but also onto all their supporters,” Younes told Al Jazeera. “Nazi has become a globalized, Eurocentric rhetorical vessel for everything that deserves no empathy, no context and can simply be killed.”