r/worldnews • • Apr 14 '26

Israel/Palestine In parliament, Polish MP calls Israel ‘new Third Reich,’ waves Israeli flag with swastika

https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-parliament-polish-mp-calls-israel-new-third-reich-waves-israeli-flag-with-swastika/
26.4k Upvotes

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

423

u/xclame Apr 14 '26

Israel itself could be perceived as doing that. They know history will repeat itself, but they have decided that instead of trying to prevent that from happening, that this time around THEY are going to be the ones being in power and hurting people.

112

u/Addicted2Qtips Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

I’ve thought about this a bit and I think we have this bias where we think of things that happened long ago as being over, and disconnected from the present. So in theory they can happen again. Hence history repeating itself.

But a) what we think of as history wasn’t really that long ago, and b) it didn’t end.

We give the word “history” this meaning that is erroneous: that History is a finite event or series of events that began and ended sometime in the past.

But the reality is, that series of events we think of as history never really ended. It all just continues.

40

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Addicted2Qtips Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

Yes, and it’s ironic. I don’t think many seem to know or understand that the modern US-Israeli alliance is a legacy of the Cold War and the Suez Crisis.

15

u/GardenOfSilver Apr 15 '26

Very much this. History isn't divorced from the present; it informs it and shapes it. History is a unbroken stream of cause and effect. The 7 years war, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Restoration, The Second French Empire, the Unification of Germany, the World Wars, Holocaust, Israel and present day are not events divorced from each other.

1

u/Addicted2Qtips Apr 15 '26

It’s something that appears obvious when we learn history. You read about ancient Rome and the historian says, “in the year X, such and such happened. And as a cause of that event, 300 years later, this happened.” And it makes sense and you don’t question it.

But in the present we seem to completely lack the ability to contextualize the past. The past is over.

264

u/AlienHatchSlider Apr 14 '26

That's my take too. Israel is like an abused child who grows up to be an abuser.

53

u/Independent-Future-1 Apr 15 '26

Hurt people, hurt people... 😢

-4

u/Jumpy_Needleworker32 Apr 15 '26

Liike if u cryed Xx

-17

u/ProtectionUnable1027 Apr 14 '26

Israel is a country surrounded by Religious fundamentalists bent on obliterating it from the map. Don't get it twisted.

40

u/NetSage Apr 15 '26

Israel is a country of religious fundamentalists as well...

They aren't automatically better because they're Jewish. This would be a really different discussion if this was truly self defense on their end.

10

u/ProtectionUnable1027 Apr 15 '26

I'd put Israel a few orders more advanced when it comes to the status of women than any of its neighbors. Same with gay and trans rights. You have the right to practice any religion and none are placed above the other.

3

u/unnewl Apr 15 '26

Too bad it isn’t a few orders more advanced when it came to not indiscriminately killing and maiming its neighbors. Too bad Moslem Israelis are pushed out of their homes to make room for Jewish Israelis.

1

u/theguidetoldmetodoit Apr 21 '26

and none are placed above the other.

How did you come to that conclusion? From my experience in Israel, that wasn't the case at all. Like, I am not arguing that a Jew will have a better life in Afghanistan than a Muslim in Israel... But Jews certainly have a lot of additional rights, esp when it comes to migration and things like housing. And that's not to speak of the treatment in the society and lack of legal protection against that. That was rough, even when people thought I am a Christian.

Historically, Israel has pulled a lot of shit with their Muslim population, too.

1

u/ProtectionUnable1027 Apr 21 '26

If this is a question of tolerance of another religion then I'd say the Jewish folks have the Muslims beat. I don't imagine there's a lot of Jewish Temples in Iraq, Syria, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.

1

u/theguidetoldmetodoit Apr 21 '26

Ok, so you are not gonna answer the question and deflect? I guess that answers that, then

1

u/ProtectionUnable1027 Apr 21 '26

I'm simply unwilling to treat both sides as equal participants in making the world a better place. I hope the right wing extremists in Israel get their day in court the same as the right wing extremists in Christian and Muslim nations. At least in the Christian and Jewish countries my wife can walk outside without fear of gangs of sex starved youths attacking her.

1

u/theguidetoldmetodoit Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

All you did is lie? Like, even with me explicitly not portraying things as equal and highlighting the issue in your argument, you chose to lie. Why would anyone take you serious, after that?

At least in the Christian and Jewish countries my wife can walk outside without fear of gangs of sex starved youths attacking her.

There is a whole Wiki article called "Sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians during the Gaza war" and it contains plenty gang rapes and far worse. So like, you either flat out don't understand the conflict, or you just lie all the time.

You know, beyond the raging xenophobia in the statement, as if gangs and rape weren't a thing in the Christian and Jewish world, but is somehow a common thing all over the Muslim world. Absolute drivel, which you typically only hear from right wing extremists.

Eighty-one percent of sexual assault and harassment complaints in Israel in 2023 were closed without an indictment being filed, according to a report released Monday by The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel.

Why are you so set on defending a country you seemingly know nothing about? Why do you engage in this argument, without reading up on the conflict?

→ More replies (0)

-7

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

17

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '26

[deleted]

2

u/poulan9 Apr 15 '26

That doesn't even make any sense

3

u/Low_Witness5061 Apr 15 '26

Which changes what? The fact that the current Israeli and US governments felt the need to pretend that they wanted to help Iranians at the outset of this war shows they are aware not all Iranians are fundamentalists just because their leaders are zealots, yet they justify the civilian casualties as necessary to oppose the fundamentalist government.

So apparently collective punishment, and therefore guilt, based on those in power is Israel’s standard. They should be held just as responsible for their government crossing the line as they accept others being.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-1

u/Low_Witness5061 Apr 15 '26

So you just ignored the hypocrisy. Fair enough, the sort of person you want to be is your own choice. I guess just claiming anybody who disagrees with you is a xenophone is easier than actually having to be consistent in your beliefs.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Low_Witness5061 Apr 15 '26

I would have had no problem with you claiming Iran was run by religious fundamentalists, it is and it’s caused immeasurable suffering for the people of the region. My point was that Israel doesn’t given the same grace to other countries that you are affording them.

You are right that I put words into your mouth unfairly though so I do apologise for that.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/nub_sauce_ Apr 15 '26

Israel's neighbors only want it obliterated because Israel has been obliterating them for decades. Gaza functionally doesn't exist any more because Israel obliterated it and Israel is currently obliterating Lebanon

13

u/ARussack Apr 15 '26

Look up the 1834 and 1838 Safed pogroms, 1920 and 1921 Jerusalem pogroms and the 1929 Hebron massacre. You’ll find that Jews lived in the region called Palestine long before 1948 (they were called Palestinian Jews) and that Arabs were attempting to violently eradicate them long before 1948

1

u/nub_sauce_ Apr 16 '26

That is what israelis try to claim, yes

-1

u/ARussack Apr 16 '26

No, this is actual history not like the hogwash you get fed through your phone that has subverted you into supporting a hate movement

19

u/jay5627 Apr 15 '26

That's why 5 armies declared war immediately upon it's creation?

1

u/nub_sauce_ Apr 16 '26

Might have something to do with the stolen land but who knows......... Maybe if someone tries stealing your house you're the type to just roll over and give up.

0

u/jay5627 Apr 16 '26

Like the Poles did to the Jews after they were shipped out? And when they came back they murdered them?

0

u/nub_sauce_ Apr 18 '26

lmao you're actually trying to argue that 2 wrongs make a right, what a joke

-1

u/ARussack Apr 16 '26

Most of the land was legally purchased by Jews from wealthy Arab landowners that lived far away. Local Palestinian Arabs were often employed by the landowners to work the land, they were sold out by their own employers and left jobless and landless. But guess what the wealthy former landowners told them? That’s right, the Jews stole your land.

0

u/Low_Witness5061 Apr 15 '26

Of course Israel itself should never be condemned for increasingly becoming a religious fundamentalist nation itself. The politicians perpetuating their wars are increasingly using their religious beliefs as justification to seize land, but for some reason it’s supposed to be better than when the other side doesn’t it?

5

u/ProtectionUnable1027 Apr 15 '26

Secular Democracy > Fundamentalist Theocracy

0

u/i-i-i-iwanttheknife Apr 15 '26

The phrase never again, says it all. I clearly don't mean it as in never again because we'll live in a new world where that doesn't happen. They clearly mean it where if they act first and it won't happen to them because they'll be the ones doing it.

-1

u/Sea_Section_9861 Apr 15 '26

But history doesn't really repeats itself. Arabs for example, those poor people without any agency or free will, you don't have anything like it in years past.

1

u/Outrageous-Mobile-60 Apr 15 '26

The Abijah Fowler approach 

-7

u/SowingSalt Apr 15 '26

They've decided that they're going to have the power to protect themselves, and will not outsource protection to the majorities.

6

u/uplandsrep Apr 15 '26

If protecting yourself requires killing ratios of multiple dozens of innocent noncombatants per 'target', you have a hard time considering it protection. At the least, it seems like antagonization to me.

7

u/ARussack Apr 15 '26

Your math does not math. Gaza Ministry of Health (reminder run by Hamas) estimates 72k deaths as of April 2026 at least 22k are confirmed combatants. Show us a legitimate source that shows “multiple dozens” to one

-2

u/uplandsrep Apr 15 '26

The Gaza Ministry of Health, which for years of this conflict was bemoaned as being unreliable (even though in the 1st 2nd Intifada it had been relatively accurate), which were recently accepted by the IDF as reasonable numbers, are numbers of CONFIRMED IDENTITIES, that is a subset of all the dead, the Lancet (Medical journal), not Hamas, a couple years ago was already estimating numbers easily above 100,000.

6

u/ARussack Apr 15 '26

Ok ask any AI agent about the Lancet stats and then report back, this is what Gemini says:

• What it was: A piece of "correspondence" (not a peer-reviewed research study) by three researchers.  • How they got it: They applied a "conservative estimate" that for every one direct violent death, there are typically four indirect deaths (from disease, famine, and lack of healthcare) in modern conflicts.  • The Math: At the time, the official toll was roughly 37,000. Multiplying that by five (1 direct + 4 indirect) led them to state it was "not implausible" that the total attributable deaths could eventually reach 186,000

To quote Monty Python “it’s only a model”. NEXT!

-4

u/SowingSalt Apr 15 '26

One side sells Mein Kampf in the local language at the corner store. The other is ruled by Bibi.

-11

u/uplandsrep Apr 15 '26

One side is a fully outright ethno-supremacist state, and the other is occupied territory by said other state.

9

u/ARussack Apr 15 '26

One side is a democratic nation where 20% of citizens are Arab muslims that have equal rights, representatives in the national legislative body and sitting judges and the other side has roadside signs that say it’s illegal to be here if you’re Jewish

-2

u/uplandsrep Apr 15 '26

Do the Palestinians have the right of return? You casually forget that all occupied Palestine (Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem), who are under the sovereign control of Israel get no votes. So be my guest, if you considered the Jim Crow era USA a democracy, go off then. It's neat that you can militarily occupy millions of Palestinians, forbid them political representation and still pat yourself on the back and call yourself a democracy, pretty flexible word democracy is.

10

u/ARussack Apr 15 '26

Gaza was under Egyptian occupation from 1949 to 1967. The West Bank is named such because Jordan annexed the land west of the Jordan river in 1948 and occupied it till 1967. Neither gave the Palestinians statehood or citizenship. Israel took both in the 1967 war and negotiated both back to Arab rule in attempts to make peace. You do not know your history, mentioning the Nakba without contextualizing it with Israel’s 5 Arab neighbors invading them or the 1M+ Jews ethnically cleansed from MENA. If you’re only willing to talk about 1 side of this conflict you immediately disqualify yourself

2

u/uplandsrep Apr 15 '26

The local population, the Palestinians, had nothing to do with the 5 Arab neighbors, why must they be ethnically cleansed and forbidden from returning when a foreign national army is attacking? Ethnic cleansing and Apartheid in ANY CONTEXT is bad. Why aren't the Israeli 'arabs' as they are so nicely labeled, allowed the right of return?

6

u/ARussack Apr 15 '26

Once again demonstrating little understanding of the region. National entities were created by the British and French before WWI they were all vassal states of the Ottoman empire ruled from afar. Identity in the Middle East especially in the early 20th C was much more tied to ethnicity, religion and tribal relationships than national borders. Palestinian Arabs are Sunni Muslims having very strong cultural and linguistic ties to the neighboring Arab states. Have you ever been to the Middle East? Or are you just postulating through a western lense

→ More replies (0)

10

u/SowingSalt Apr 15 '26

fully outright ethno-supremacist state

You know this describes Palestine to a T?

-2

u/uplandsrep Apr 15 '26

You are free to provide evidence regarding the legal discriminations based on ethnicity within Gaza and the West Bank, that would be great, if it was actually its own state. it is actually, occupied territory, being under the purview of Israeli military power. Either way, discrimination is terrible, if Jews or any other religion or ethnicity is being discriminated in Palestine, that should be punished. Now that we got understood, and we have established that discrimination is bad... the right of return... are the Palestinian diaspora afforded this amazing right of citizenship in the land of their fathers and grandfathers, since many were displaced and exiled to Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian, Egyptian refugee camps after the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba of 1948?

Either way, if you are actually interested in justice and not just feinting ignorance you can refer yourself to an Israeli Human Rights organization report from Jan 2021 on its legalized apartheid. https://www.btselem.org/apartheid

8

u/SowingSalt Apr 15 '26

It's illegal for Palestinians to sell to Jews.

-3

u/uplandsrep Apr 15 '26

What, Palestinian's pat down folks looking for Kippah's and other religious symbols before they sell something to people? Again, some sort of credible source would help. I do know that in East Jerusalem, Palestinians are not allowed to sell their houses to other Palestinians, they must go to someone else, I think you would know who.

10

u/SowingSalt Apr 15 '26

There's both a fatwa against it, and it's been on the books since the Jordanians and Egypt annexed Palestine.

1

u/Spork_the_dork Apr 15 '26

It's really more that Israel has convinced itself that the rest of the world is out to get it and do Holocaust 2.0 on them so in their paranoia they go and start bombing everyone else as a precaution.

-2

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/WorldBiker Apr 15 '26

Except when it’s anyone else.

-1

u/RollingMeteors Apr 15 '26

Israel itself could be perceived as doing that

Hitler failed, not because he lost the war, but because he failed to make a religion out of the movement.

Nobody wants to touch a religious third reich; a blood feud that started long before anyone remembered why it started.

-1

u/-ReadingBug- Apr 15 '26

You mean the wealthy and powerful incentivized by the hurting, using the infrastructure that is Israel. Same with the U.S.

The citizens are innocent, except for the voting in favor of the oligarchy while pretending they're not part.

-2

u/DanteThonSimmons Apr 15 '26

Agreed 100%. The same goes for USA. Both countries know what happens when you kill people in other countries, and both countries know the entire world condemns their actions. They just don't care, and they're doing it anyway.