Fanning the Flames or a Troubling Truth? The Politics of Comparison in the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Abstract

The politics of comparison in the Israel-Palestine conflict is largely encapsulated in the use of two analogies. The first is the 'Holocaust-Hitler analogy' used by Israel and its supporters, which portrays Israel as a beleaguered nation surrounded by Nazi sympathisers who seek to destroy it as the Jewish homeland. The second is the 'apartheid analogy', which compares the conflict to that of Apartheid-era South Africa and portrays Palestinians as being the victims of racism and settler colonialism. This article analyses why, how and with what desired impact these two comparisons are invoked.

‘You Realise We’re Not the Only Ones Stuck Living Like This’: Comparative Learning, International Partnerships and Civil Society Peace Education in Conflict-Affected Societies

“…They are obviously open to propagandistic use. Thus, writers on political/rhetorical comparison emphasise the need to interrogate the extent to which a political comparison reflects reality, as well as whether it serves a just outcome, because comparisons shape power relations and delineate the boundaries of what actors deem possible or desirable in a conflict situation (Kühn, 2019; Turner, 2019).…”

“Lessons from Northern Ireland” in Israeli Public Discourse: The Politics of Analogies in Conflicted Societies

“…In Israel, the analogy with NI is not a staple of everyday life and has not necessarily been the most dominant. The analogy with Apartheid South Africa, increasingly offered by critics of Israeli policies and vehemently rejected by their supporters (Turner, 2019), has probably captured more attention. However, in recent years NI has gradually become for many Israelis a source for learning about how to address conflicts.…”

“…In political conflicts, analogies are often also used to demonize opponents. The practice of comparing adversaries to the Nazis is the prime example of this (Turner, 2019). There is a variant of this practice at work here, where Israeli commentators use the analogy with NI to denigrate the Palestinians, and especially the Islamist Hamas, through a disadvantageous comparison with Irish Republicans.…”

“…The undisputed infamy of the Munich appeasement is a clear illustration. So are some other popular analogies—which also receive much attention in the literature—such as the Vietnam war, an analogy which serves as a clear shorthand for the inadvisability of intervention, a paradigmatic cautionary tale (Miller, 2016); or Apartheid South Africa, an undisputed symbol of evil that therefore became an analogy often deployed, discussed, and debated (Turner, 2019). Other cases are seen as unquestionably positive, such as the fall of the Apartheid regime or the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1989 transitions in Eastern Europe, which have clear positive connotations of democratic inevitability (Mumford, 2015: 16), and are thus also often deployed as analogies.…”