Nazism was never truly defeated: Sawt Al-Azhar editorial draws parallels with Gaza - Foreign Affairs
The latest editorial of Sawt Al-Azhar, penned by Editor-in-Chief Ahmed El-Sawy, challenges the global celebrations marking the anniversary of the fall of Nazism, highlighting the moral contradiction posed by the ongoing war in Gaza.
The editorial, which questions the global moral compass, is titled "How Can the World Celebrate the Fall of Nazism … While Gaza Tells a Different Story?"
It condemns what El-Sawy describes as the West's selective memory and ethical double standards in commemorating the defeat of Nazism while supporting Israel's actions in Gaza.
The editorial, published amid global ceremonies marking the anniversary of the allied victory over Nazism, draws a provocative comparison between Nazi ideology and the ongoing Israeli military assaults in Gaza.
"Was Nazism truly defeated? While it may have fallen militarily in Berlin in 1945, its spirit was never buried … Some of its core ideas, tools, and methods remain alive—practised daily in occupied Palestine," El-Sawy writes.
He underscores the parallels between Nazi racial ideology and what he describes as a religious-nationalist Zionist project based on supremacy and exclusion, referencing policies of displacement, siege, and the systematic denial of basic rights in Gaza.
"Homes are bombed over their residents' heads. Schools, hospitals, and refugee camps are struck. Access to water, food, medicine, and electricity is deliberately denied. Incendiary rhetoric describes Palestinians as 'human animals'—the same language Nazis used to strip their victims of humanity before exterminating them," he continues.
El-Sawy also accuses the West of moral inconsistency, saying: "The so-called 'free West' cannot claim Nazism was defeated while Palestinian refugee camps have stood for 75 years, and a defenseless people continue to be crushed by internationally banned bombs."
Moreover, the editorial cites several prominent Jewish intellectuals who have criticized Israeli policies, including Noam Chomsky, who described Israel as "a fascist state where the ideology of Jewish supremacy dominates everything," and Norman Finkelstein, who called Gaza "the largest open-air prison in the world."
The piece also refers to B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, which described the regime from the river to the sea as "a single regime founded on Jewish supremacy."
The editorial's central message is a call to recognize that the defeat of Nazism must go beyond historical commemoration and extend to confronting its manifestations wherever they appear.
"The true defeat of Nazism will only be realized when we defeat its essence, its culture, its ideas, its tools, and its practices—no matter the name, the slogans, or who the perpetrators and victims may be," El-Sawy concludes.
The editorial offers a forceful moral argument, urging global powers to reconcile their historical memory with present-day realities, especially in Gaza, where El-Sawy believes the principles that fueled Nazism are being replicated under a different banner.
On 18 March, Israel resumed its genocidal war on Gaza after unilaterally ending the ceasefire agreement with Hamas, which Egypt, Qatar, and the US mediated.
Since 2 March, Israel has also blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid to Gaza, putting more than two million Palestinians on the brink of famine.
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This was three times now, and we did not get in. We decided to go bigger and try to organize a big flotilla. A Turkish campaign joined, there was a Greek campaign, an Italian campaign, a Swedish campaign. I'm forgetting how many there were when we first came together as the FFC. In May 2010, we finally had eight ships, 700 people and 10,000 tons of aid and we set out toward Gaza. But Israel launched a lethal attack on May 31 and killed nine people, one other was put in a coma for five years and later died as a result of his injuries. We didn't let that stop us. The next year we organized an even bigger flotilla, more people wanted to join. But Israel started playing this bureaucratic sabotage game where it was threatening insurance companies so that they would not insure us, putting pressure on countries not to let us leave from their ports. In 2011, we were planning to leave from different ports in Greece, but we weren't able to disembark because Greek authorities stopped us. In 2012, I left the coalition for personal and strategic reasons, but we sent a lot of boats between 2012 and 2018. I rejoined in 2023. MM: What did the freedom flotilla intend to achieve with the Madleen's voyage, and what, in the end, do you think it achieved? HA: We always had the goal of breaking the siege of Gaza. It is an illegal siege, and the fact that states are tolerating, even respecting and assisting Israel in maintaining this illegal siege is unacceptable. Of course, things changed and became dramatically worse after October 2023. Israel is now using its siege — used since 2006 as a way to punish the civilian population of Gaza — as part of this campaign to really destroy the Palestinian people, cutting off food, water and electricity, and pushing people out of their homes. Now more than ever, it is obvious that what is happening is a genocide and the world needs to do something about it. In addition to all the protests around the world, we need to directly confront Israel, and so we started organizing. Last year, we were supposed to leave from Istanbul, but we had a lot of bureaucratic delays, unfortunately. We had three big boats, including one cargo ship with 5,000 tons of aid, and we were highlighting the fact that Israel, a country on trial for genocide, should not be able to dictate, to decide, if aid can get to the people that it is actively exterminating. So that is what we wanted to challenge with carrying life-saving aid. At the same time and as always, we said 'this isn't just about aid.' For me, as a Palestinian, this is very important — not just talk about getting aid to people that is needed right now, but that Palestine is not a charity case. It is about really breaking the siege and Israel's illegal control, because Palestinians deserve freedom. After the bureaucratic warfare that stopped our flotilla from leaving last year, we continued to work and finally, in May, we were ready to go with one of the three ships that we had last year. The night before it was supposed to leave, Israel bombed it. We did not let that stop us, of course, and we set to work on preparing the Madleen, and the Madleen left with the same goal: getting to Gaza, distributing the small amount of aid and getting more boats to follow, because there was no way this boat or a hundred more boats like it could carry all the aid that Gaza needs. As for what it achieved, I think it managed to inspire a lot of people into believing that we can do something. Sometimes we feel like, 'what can I do? The situation is horrible and I am just one person,' but this was 12 people, at sea, going to confront the Israeli military. I don't want to suggest that people aren't doing anything. People are of course doing so much in their own home countries and it is important to keep pressuring our local governments in any way we can because they are enabling Israel. But at the same time, this is part of that mobilization, to go and stand up to this genocidal entity, to directly confront them and say: this blockade is illegal and we do not respect it; we are insisting on going through.' The Madleen, I think, sparked that hope, the belief, the imagination. MM: How do you see this initiative compared to previous ones, such as in 2010 or those from 2008? HA: I don't think a lot changed except for the context. In 2008 and even in 2010, we always knew that Israel likes to represent itself as the victim, 'defending' itself, as it is always saying. So we know that Israel is very concerned about its image. We thought that if we had certain media attention with us, Israel would be careful or not be so willing to kill internationals. We always knew attention can help keep you safe, not 100 percent, but it helps. It was much easier to get social media attention this time, given how present people are online and because of the horror of what is happening in Gaza. But this time, people really didn't necessarily believe that [attention would keep them safe]. Israel killed the World Central Kitchen staff — it does not care because nobody is holding Israel accountable. You can argue that, strategically, a state would not want to do this, but Israel is not really acting like a rational actor. We realized that we probably can't rely on past experience [completely] just because of the impunity that Israel has become so used to — because of just the level of violence, the extent to which the violence has been multiplied. In the end, what went out after hours and hours of discussions and disagreements is that we have to do something, and there are people who know the risks and are willing to take them. Before people got on The Conscience in May, we made sure they knew of the risks — we were like 'look, you need to give us a copy of your will so that you know you may get killed,' which we always told people, but we wanted them to understand the danger was magnified much more. MM: What do you think helped you reach Gaza five times in 2008? HA: With that first mission, we didn't know that it was going to work, but we wanted to create a lose-lose situation for Israel. It was either we got to Gaza and we won in making it to Gaza, or we force them into a situation where they took over our boat by force. Back in 2008, Israel was saying that Hamas controls Gaza. I mean, it was a lot of the same stuff: 'this blockade is to prevent Hamas from getting weapons.' It is a security thing.' So we had two fishing boats, like the Madleen, and we had 44 people from 17 different countries. We said that we are not a security threat, so if you block us from getting in you have to forcefully sink us, kill us, or arrest us and then be clear that it is not about security, because what kind of security threat are we? We had a parliamentarian with us, a doctor, an artist and a journalist. So we wanted to expose that — either we make it, or we force you to expose to the world that you are just lying, that this isn't about security, that it is about punishing the Palestinian people, that this is about collective punishment, that this is unlawful. We hoped that the world would not tolerate Israel continuing to do this once it was exposed that it is not about security. But this much has been exposed. There is a deadly blockade that we know is not about security. Starving children is not security, but still, still states do nothing. Still, states tolerate Israel doing this. So that was a huge shock, I guess. Maybe a naive shock back then. And now I think a lot of it is exposed. People are horrified by what Israel is doing. People are outraged and even states talk about the fact that this is not about security, but they don't do anything. They don't sanction Israel. So again, it's like this naive shock that we can reach this level of livestream genocide and announced deliberate starvation and still countries do nothing. So, now, we are organizing this challenge to Israel, but also challenging our governments who are not only not putting out their own aid and also don't help us, but sometimes actually work with Israel to stop us, like the bureaucratic sabotage that happened. Turkey speaks so well of Palestinian rights and whatnot, but they stopped our boats from leaving. So we are highlighting the responsibility of states in our actions now. In 2008, we really didn't think we would get there. We planned for almost every scenario, like they might drown us. They might sabotage us in this way, arrest us or just kill us, but we didn't actually plan for the scenario of making it to Gaza, because we did not think we were getting to Gaza, and Israel was threatening us until the last minute. But we just kept sailing, and, at some point, we reached Gaza's territorial waters, and they did not interfere. Really, that was not the scenario we had planned for, but we made it and the reception was so incredible. People were just grateful and happy and thinking we had broken the siege. But we knew that we had not broken it. We just overcame the blockade once. We had to keep doing it, keep going back and forth until you break the siege. We promised the people of Gaza that we were going to keep doing this until we break the siege, and we have kept sailing since, but we haven't really broken it yet. It is in that spirit, that context with that history that we continue to sail. It is so much more necessary now, the role of states' complicity is so much more obvious: that you can see and agree even that what Israel is doing is illegal, and still really won't do anything about it: that is why people have to act. MM: What are the coalition's next steps and what are the possibilities for the future? HA: We are already planning another one. It is not easy to get and manage boats but we are planning another one and hopefully it can be bigger. Our hope is that more people will be mobilizing to join us. Keep watching the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and let's see what the next one brings. I don't know if it will be the thousands that we are dreaming of, even the hundreds, but hopefully it will have the support and the backing of many more people. Hopefully, eventually, states will come around. You know there was a saying I used to repeat all the time, I think it was from Gandhi who said 'when the people lead, the leaders will follow,' and hopefully the leaders will follow what global civil society is saying, so it is with that that we move forward.
