Conversation

It’s popular to compare the behavior of the Israeli state in Gaza to that of Nazi Germany, probably because that is, for most people, the historical touchstone for this kind of violence.

But people don’t need to look that far away or that far back for an analogy. The closest comparison is to Israel’s neighbor and contemporary, Syria under the Bashar al-Asad regime.

Asad’s forces also use mass murder of civilians. They use sieges and starvation. They kidnap and they torture. They destroy infrastructure and bomb entire cities into ruin and rubble. They do all of this with the barest sanction from the international community and with the active support of major regional and global powers.