How sloppy history lends itself to ill-intentioned propaganda

Historical analogies are inevitable. They can be used constructively. Or they can be used for dishonest propaganda purposes.

I was reminded of this by a recent comment ba a columnist for Haaretz:

The implicit message in Israel's public messaging is clear: President Franklin Roosevelt refused to bomb the railroad to Auschwitz in 1944. Trump now has the chance to level the "new Auschwitz" at Fordow [Iranian uranium enrichment facility]. For years, Netanyahu has described Iran's nuclear program as a modern version of the Nazi death camps. In recent days, he has avoided such statements, but it's likely that the war plan devised by Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir is based on a "final step" that the U.S. must take, a bombing raid with a massive payload, that would destroy the nuclear facility buried deep underground. If Fordow remains intact, Iran could rehabilitate its nuclear project much more quickly. [my emphasis] (1)

There is a long-standing dispute about whether the United Nations allies (US, USSR, Britain, France) should have done more to directly prevent mass killing during the Holocaust. In the most hardcore Zionist version, that failure showed the callous indifference of most of the world to the fate of Jews.

The British historian William Rubinstein examined those accusation in The Myth of Rescue (1997), finding that there was actually little the Allies could feasibly have done to directly interfere with the mass exterminations during the war itself. The actual mass killings of Jews by Hitler regimes began just after Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. There was serious and systematic repression, mass arrests, and serious persecution of Jews in German-ruled areas before that, but not systematic mass killings.

Tom Segev, one of the best-known Israeli historians, deals with an early version of the accusation that the Allies could have done more to save the lives of Jews in Axis-controlled areas in his book The Seventh Million (1993). One of the controversies in Israel on which he focuses was known as the Kastner affair, which dealt with a specific negotiation during the war that could have potentially ransomed some Hungarian Jews.

The claim that the Allies should have bombed the railway tracks leading to Auschwitz is a popular one, perhaps because it’s so easy to picture and therefore sounds obvious. Certainly one part of the reasoning was the coldly pragmatic general calculation that Allied bombers, who by no means had uncontested control of the skies, should be used primarily against targets that were immediately connected to Germany’s capability to wage war.

But there is also the reality that targeting railroad tracks as such was not only a big challenge for the targeting capabilities of bombers at the time. We could almost say that in the wartime conditions, it was a feat to hit the right city. And more specific targeting of individual buildings are apartments like the ones we hear about daily in Israel’s ongoing wars just was not a capability the bombers of the 1940s had. In addition, antiaircraft defenses forced bombers to fly at a high altitude.

And, in any case, railway tracks could be replaced rather quickly and easily. Mass killing of Jews was one of Hitler’s main goals, arguably his chief obsession. Germany was diverting military resources even during the most critical later phases of the war from defending the country to imprisoning Jews and shipping them to be killed in the death camps.

But there was a set of bombing missions that did interfere with rail traffic to Auschwitz: the bombing of Dresden in 1945. Germany was shipping Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz through Dresden. The related but separate issue about whether Hungarian Jews could have been saved by a deal is one of the topics covered in Segev’s book as well as Rubinstein’s.

The rail hub connecting Hungary to Auschwitz ran through Dresden. And the Dresden bombing did briefly delay those shipments of Jews to Auschwitz. But Germany was able to repair those connections within a few days and resume the deadly traffic.

It worth mentioning here that “Dresden,” i.e., the 1945 Dresden bombing, has been and remains a standard talking point in Nazi-friendly and Holocaust-denier pseudohistory. (2)

In an at-least-superficially bizarre twist, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has also used the Dresden bombing as a justification for Israel’s current genocidal violence against Palestinians:

[T]he Allied campaign against Nazi Germany and Japan during World War II has become something of an historical precedent for an Israeli state seeking to justify the large-scale killings of the people of Gaza as it ostensibly pursues Hamas fighters. Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Tzipi Hotovely, has compared Israel’s campaign with the devastating Allied bombing of Dresden, which, conducted over three nights in 1945, was intended to force the Nazis into surrender, and led to the deaths of some 25,000-35,000 Germans. Non-state affiliated advocates of Israel have also drawn similar comparisons. [my emphasis] (3)

The analysis continues:

Yet, these attempts erase the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land during the creation of Israel in 1948, the destruction of 500 towns and villages at the time, and the subsequent illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. They also ignore how World War II led to a new international law regime, and serve to dehumanise Palestinians while justifying Israel’s decades-long violence and discrimination — described by many international rights groups as akin to apartheid — against Palestinians, say historians and analysts.

Israeli historian and socialist activist Ilan Pappé told Al Jazeera that these efforts by Israel are aimed “as a justification for its brutal policies towards” Palestinians and that they represent an old playbook used by the country. [my emphasis]

This is a reflection of the deep xenophobic and militarism that both opinion polls and practice have shown are widespread in Israel, particularly among the more rightwing Zionists. As Orly Nor writes this week:

Over the years, the Israeli public has grown convinced that it can exist in this region while harboring deep contempt for its neighbors — engaging in murderous rampages against anyone, whenever and however it pleases, relying solely on brute force. For nearly 80 years, “total victory” has been just around the corner: just defeat the Palestinians, eliminate Hamas, crush Lebanon, destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities — and paradise will be ours.

But for nearly 80 years, these so-called “victories” have proven Pyrrhic. Each one digs Israel into a deeper pit of isolation, threat, and hatred. The Nakba of 1948 created the refugee crisis that refuses to go away and laid the foundation for the apartheid regime. The 1967 victory gave rise to an occupation that continues to fuel Palestinian resistance. The war of October 2023 spiraled into a genocide that turned Israel into a global pariah.

The Israeli military — central to this entire process — has become a mindless weapon of mass destruction. It maintains its exalted status among a sedated public through flashy stunts: pagers exploding in men’s pockets at a Lebanese market, or a drone base planted in the heart of an enemy state. And under the command of a genocidal government, it digs itself deeper into wars it has no clue how to exit. [my emphasis] (4)

Notes:

(1) Benn, Aluf (2024): For the First Time Ever, Israel Is Asking America to Fight Alongside It – or for It. Haaretz 06/17/2025.<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-17/ty-article/.premium/for-the-first-time-ever-israel-is-asking-america-to-fight-alongside-it-or-for-it/00000197-7eda-d9fe-a597-ffde6f610000> (Accessed: 2025-17-06).

(2) Breuer, Rayna (2025): Fact check: Myths about Dresden 1945 victim numbers debunked. Deutsche Welle 02/13/2025. <https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-myths-about-dresden-1945-victim-numbers-debunked/a-71584565> (Accessed: 2025-19-06).

(3) Soussi, Alasdair (2023): Israel says Gaza war is like WWII. Experts say it’s ‘justifying brutality’. Al Jazeera 12/23/2023.<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/23/israel-gaza-war-wwii-palestine> (Accessed: 2025-19-06).

(4) Noy, Orly (2025): Israel’s greatest threat isn’t Iran or Hamas, but its own hubris. +972 Magazine 06/15/2025. <https://www.972mag.com/israels-greatest-threat-isnt-iran-or-hamas-but-its-own-hubris/> (Accessed: 2025-17-06).