“Israel has done something truly incredible—Israel has managed to turn Jews into Nazis!”
—from Bob Avakian, as a companion to his statement that: After the Holocaust, the worst thing that has happened to Jewish people is the state of Israel.

On November 7, 1938, an angry young Jewish man, filled with rage that his family and thousands of others had just been driven out of NAZI Germany by terrorist ethnic cleansing, assassinated a German diplomat in Paris in an act of desperate revenge.

Seizing on that incident, Joseph Goebbels, a high-ranking NAZI official in charge of propaganda, blamed the killing on all Jews, and set in motion one of the most pivotal events in what became the NAZI genocide, the systematic murder of millions of Jews. Goebbels announced that the NAZI leader, Hitler, instructed that "demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the [NAZI] Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered."

That message set off Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass). Throughout Germany, Austria (which had been annexed by Germany), and Czechoslovakia (which was about to be invaded by Germany), mobs vandalized, destroyed, and burned Jewish synagogues and businesses in full view of fire departments, police, and the public. The rabid lynch mobs killed dozens of Jews while, as ordered, police did not “hamper” the terror and death. In addition to enabling violence and murder by the mob, police arrested and deported 30,000 Jews. 

In this way, NAZIs could tell the world this genocidal rampage “wasn’t officially us, it was just ordinary Germans, and we had to let them express their outrage at the Jews.” In German-occupied Austria, where the population widely supported the NAZIs, and Kristallnacht was especially violent, more than 115,000 Jews, who had witnessed their non-Jewish neighbors incited to kill them, fled the country; almost the entire Jewish population of Austria.

The tactic of promoting genocidal “protests” while the authorities do not “hamper” them is being orchestrated by the rulers of Israel, right now. While Israeli authorities stand aside, “protesters” are portrayed sympathetically by Israeli and U.S. media, for shutting down desperately needed aid from getting into Gaza.

In January, as conditions in Gaza became horrifically desperate, Israeli “protesters” began blocking trucks with food, water, medical supplies, and other essentials from entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel. Kerem Shalom is the only modern, high-volume truck route into Gaza.¹

Mainstream Israeli and U.S. media reporting characterizes these “protesters” as just relatives of Israeli hostages and activists, who are demanding Hamas free Israeli hostages seized on October 7. But the on-record genocidal agenda of the dominant organizations in these “protests” is the complete ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip, driving out all the Palestinians, and the occupation and settlement of Gaza by Zionists.²

And in parallel with the “protesters” enforcing the starving-to-death of children in Gaza, fascist Israeli “settlers” have gone on a bloody rampage in the West Bank region of Palestine.³

In the spirit of Hitler’s order that NAZI police not “hamper” the fascist rioters at Kristallnacht, Israeli police and the so-called Israeli “Defense” Forces (the Israeli military) have repeatedly stood by while these genocide-demanding “protesters” shut down the Kerem Shalom crossing. On January 28, the New York Times reported that “Video footage filmed by the Israeli news media and reposted on social media by the group behind the demonstrations showed Israeli security forces standing by as protesters at the crossing on Sunday waved Israeli flags and chanted through megaphones that no aid would pass through until all the hostages were returned.”

The Washington Post reported on February 10 that “The Israel Defense Forces—ostensibly [supposedly], at least—have made Kerem Shalom a closed military zone since late January. But there are no checkpoints at night, making it easier to bring in busloads of protesters.” Numerous news accounts show “protesters” and Israeli police and military posing together. NPR reported on February 12 that “for three days in a row one week, [the Zionist protesters] managed to stop all trucks from crossing” into Gaza (emphasis added). 

These “protesters” are not burning the homes and businesses and mosques of Palestinian people (at least not in this action) to drive them out of their homeland, like the NAZI-incited mobs did during Kristallnacht to Jews. The Israeli military is doing that with full backing of the U.S.

But these “protesters” are demanding, as revenge for deaths, kidnapping of hostages and other crimes by Hamas, the murder by starvation, exposure, and disease of thousands and thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza by depriving them of food, water, medicine, and fuel. And a dominant section of the “protesters” is demanding the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestine. As such, these “protesters” are inheritors of the spirit of the NAZI-supporting civilians who carried out Kristallnacht. And Israeli authorities are channeling Hitler, who instructed police to not “hamper” genocidal mobs during Kristallnacht. 

Sources: 

• Kristallnacht, Holocaust Encyclopedia

• International Court of Justice Says Israeli Genocide Against Palestine Is “Plausible”… But Limits Itself to an Empty Warning, revcom.us 1/29/2024

• Israel Moves to Block [sic] Protesters From Preventing Flow of Aid into Gaza, New York Times, 1/28/2024

• Protesters blocking delivery of aid to Gaza plan march to Jerusalem, The Times of Israel 2/3/2024

• As Gaza strains under a food crisis, some Israeli protesters are trying to block aid, NPR, 2/12/24