Israeli officials have equated the ideology behind the atrocities committed during the Hamas onslaught — in which 1,200 people were brutally murdered, most of them civilians, and over 240 were kidnapped to Gaza, triggering the ongoing war — with the worldview that brought about the systematic mass murder of millions of Jews by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.
Answering a question Monday by The Times of Israel about budget changes allocating NIS 390 million ($105 million) for beefing up security and security infrastructure in the West Bank, the far-right Smotrich said: “There are 2 million Nazis in Judea and Samaria, who hate us exactly as do the Nazis of Hamas-ISIS in Gaza.” He was using the biblical term for the West Bank commonly used in Israel.
Smotrich was apparently referring to two surveys from this month that found that some two-thirds of West Bank Palestinians support the October 7 atrocities. Around 3 million Palestinians are estimated to live in the West Bank.
Many Israeli officials have sought to draw a parallel between Hamas — which openly seeks Israel’s destruction and has vowed to repeat the October 7 massacres over and over to bring it about — and the Nazis. READ MORE