From a young age, clear examples of individuals whose behavior we should not mimic or tolerate were present both in the classroom and at home — whether that be litterers, people who use their hands instead of their words or people who don’t follow the golden rule. There is a moral framework built into the way our society socializes and conditions us, especially our children. We try to instill morality in kids because we want them to become productive members of society who create relationships built on moral values like trust, kindness and benevolence. We reaffirm this moral framework through education, where, as we grow older, we’re exposed to historical examples of what and who not to imitate. These manifestations of evil have become familiar in the history we teach — from Apartheid-era South Africa to notorious figures like Mussolini and Hitler — to instill clear moral judgments. In doing so, we as a society hope to be better equipped to prevent these evils from ever happening again.
Under this framework, condemnation of Nazis and their sympathizers seems like a given. We’ve long decided that it is objectively dangerous and irrational to believe you are racially superior to another person; therefore, individuals who subscribe to these ideologies are dangerous and irrational. On most social media platforms, college campuses and work environments, espousing Nazi ideology qualifies as “hate speech” — and rightfully so — but remains under the protection of the First Amendment. You can’t be arrested for being a bigot unless you threaten violent action, yet the majority of people and private businesses will kick you out of their spaces or have security escort you from their property. This intolerance is rooted in the moral framework that we have learned from childhood: It instills within us the conviction that Nazism, and comparable ideologies, have led to such extreme suffering that we simply should not tolerate the behaviors of those who are associated with them.
We take this stance due to the incredible violence and hatred that Nazism has inspired since the time of its inception. This truth is easy for us to accept. It’s imperative we face the additional fact, however, that when we compare the barbarity and language of the Nazi regime with that of the current violence perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), striking parallels emerge. In keeping with our already-agreed-upon moral sentiment, we must recognize the similarities between our nations’ arming and funding of the IDF, and the actions of people who supported and funded Nazism.
The language adopted by the IDF echoes language used in Nazi Germany; politicians in both the Nazi and current Israeli governments have used language that frames their targeted groups as subhuman “vermin” that are to be “annihilated.” Before the state of Israel was even created, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder of the revisionist Zionism movement, stated that “preservation of national identity is possible only under conditions where racial purity is preserved, and for that we need a territory of our own in which our people will be the decisive majority.” Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws of 1935 also use this language of purity, as the nation claimed to be “moved by the understanding that purity of the German Blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the German People.” Today, the Israeli government, too, massacres in the name of creating an ethnostate. The dehumanization — and thus further extirpation — of Palestinians will continue if we do not first recognize these ideological parallels.
Furthermore, there are many similarities between the way that the Israeli government and the Nazi government systematically perpetuate violence against ethnic minorities. The Israeli parliament passed a bill earlier this year that mandates the execution of Palestinians convicted in court of killing Israeli civilians.
Yet we are unable to apply what we’ve learned in our history classes and recognize these undeniable patterns, even when these crimes are paid for with our tax dollars and happening right in front of our own eyes, because we have been led by major institutions and news outlets not to recognize them. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance defines “comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as anti-Semitic, and this definition has been adopted by both the Anti-Defamation League and the U.S. government. This definition draws on the fact that it is morally abhorrent to compare Jewish people to Nazis, who brutally murdered millions during the Holocaust. This is true, and is simply not what is being argued. This argument is not comparing the Jewish people to anyone; rather, it draws attention to the fact that the IDF and the Nazi regime used similar language and tactics to create ethno-states, and we should not obscure this fact.
Institutional efforts to sanitize the atrocities and minimize media coverage of the genocide have been further compounded by Western media outlets’ self-censorship: a memo leaked from the New York Times in 2024 revealed that editors purposefully instructed journalists not to use the terms “massacre,” “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide,” which incontestably manipulates the public’s perceptions of objective truths. The publication has continued to use passive language when describing Palestinian deaths, while using active language to describe Israelis killed. Perhaps in the past, the American public could have been more easily manipulated to maintain apathy, but, in the modern age, we are uniquely positioned to resist these narratives as we directly consume the evidence of these crimes against humanity on our social media feeds.
We are not passive bystanders — our direct involvement, through taxpayer dollars and the military industrial complex, is part of why it is so crucial we see these atrocities for what they are. Last year, the average taxpayer spent $4,049 on weapons and war, far more than any other program funded by our taxpayer dollars. Of course, we don’t have the power to sign off on every proposed government budget — but we need to recognize that they’re spending it on children getting blown to pieces; on millions of people and their families being uprooted from where they have lived for generations; on the settler colonial project of an increasingly despotic government. Israel invaded Lebanon for the third time in the last half-century in March, killing more than 2,000 people and annexing the southern part of the country. Israel has violated its ceasefire agreement in Gaza at least 2,400 times, killing hundreds, if not thousands. By many estimates, the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 75,000 people.
We’ve spent decades teaching our children that Nazis were evil, that Apartheid was evil, that there are things a society simply must refuse to tolerate. We’ve built that consensus based on a moral framework developed from past experiences that proved that ethnonationalism and racial cleansing are evil. This same framework must be used to condemn these atrocities that are occurring now.
Yet, over and over again, that framework is forgotten in practice. Pomona College signed a resolution with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization that has openly denied the IDF’s genocide against Palestinians. It’s unequivocally important that Pomona, like all educational institutions, works to cultivate an environment that is safe for all Jewish students; part of this entails fully addressing any anti-Semitic incidents. Indeed, it must not be overlooked that there has been an increase in anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish people and institutions since October 2023. At the same time, it is unconscionable for our educational institutions to sign agreements or display tolerance toward organizations that defend the IDF’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Has history not already established that support and proliferation of a genocidal regime is intolerable?
If we acknowledge that the IDF’s ideology and actions reflect past genocidal regimes, we, as a collective society, will be able to recognize our responsibility to hold our institutions to participate in more conscientious partnerships and divest from the genocide. We must reconcile the parallels of this modern genocide with historical examples that we’ve already deemed unacceptable, and bring this newfound understanding into our conception of morality.
James Lyon PZ ’29 needs to scroll on social media less, but will continue to consume short-form content, as he has done since Vine.
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