You don’t compare Gaza to Auschwitz ever

There are things people say that they may one day regret. Words uttered in haste, in anger, or in the intoxication of moral certainty. But then there are utterances so revealing, so corrosive, that they cannot be walked back, not because the speaker refuses to, but because the damage is already done. The words have burned through the air and embedded themselves not just into public record but into moral memory. What was once hidden becomes clear. What was once debated becomes known.

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote an blog post about Hamed Abdel-Samad, a man long considered a fierce critic of political Islam, a survivor of fatwas and death threats, and someone who built his reputation on intellectual courage. I wrote it in sorrow, watching his descent from brave dissenter to one more accuser of the Jewish state, falsely branding Israel’s defensive war against Hamas a “genocide.” It was an act of betrayal not only to Israel but to truth itself.

Now he has crossed another line. In response to a Facebook comment questioning the veracity of information emerging from Hamas-controlled Gaza, Abdel-Samad responded with a single sentence:

“How many independent reporters were there in Auschwitz?”

Let that settle. This wasn’t just a tasteless analogy. It was a moral implosion. A rhetorical crime. A desecration of memory so profound it cannot go unanswered. To invoke Auschwitz, not as a warning, not in reverence, not to elevate understanding, but to weaponize it against the Jewish state is not ignorance. It is indifference at best, malice at worst.

Auschwitz was not a metaphor. It was the collapse of civilization. It was hell manifested on earth.

To compare Gaza, a territory ruled by a genocidal terror regime, to the site of the industrialized extermination of European Jewry is to spit in the face of every survivor, to stomp on every grave, and to cheapen a tragedy that must never, ever be cheapened.

What Hamed Abdel-Samad has done is not an isolated slip. It is the logical endpoint of a long, steady unraveling. First, it was criticism of Israel’s military policy, then it was declarations of “genocide,” despite the fact that Israel goes to unprecedented lengths to avoid civilian casualties in a conflict initiated by a group that targets civilians by design. And now, Auschwitz. There is a pattern here. And it is not just Abdel-Samad. It is a chorus of once-liberal, once-thoughtful voices who, in the fog of war and the fever of moral panic, abandon all reason and restraint. First, they blur the lines. Then they erase them. We must draw the line again.

There is no moral equivalence between a democratic state defending its people and a death camp designed to erase a people from existence.

There is no line that connects Gaza to Auschwitz, except the one that exists in the fever dreams of those who hate Israel more than they love truth.

The Holocaust is not your metaphor. It is not your debating tool. It is not your political bludgeon. It is sacred ground. And to tread upon it with dirty rhetorical boots is to declare yourself unfit for serious discourse.

Abdel-Samad is no fool. He is not uninformed. He is a published author, a former academic, and a man who once had the courage to speak truth to radical Islam, which makes his descent all the more tragic and all the more damning. People change, yes. But some changes reveal the soul, not its growth.

In the end, what you say in your darkest hour becomes your truest mirror.

And this, this invocation of Auschwitz as a cudgel against Israel, reveals a darkness that no intellectual reputation can wash away. There are names and places that must remain beyond exploitation. Auschwitz is one. And anyone who violates that sanctity loses not only moral authority but moral gravity.

As I wrote once and will write again: Am Yisrael Chai. The Jewish people live. And so does their memory. And it must be guarded by Jews, by allies, by anyone with a conscience, against rockets, against lies, and against those who desecrate the past to poison the future.