Netanyahu labels Hamas ‘the new Nazis’ alongside Germany’s Scholz

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Hamas the “new Nazis” on Tuesday at a press conference alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

“This is the savagery of, that we only remember from the Nazi crimes in the Holocaust,” Netanyahu said, after describing a list of Hamas’s brutal tactics deployed against Israelis.

“Hamas are the new Nazis. Hamas is ISIS – in some instances, worse than ISIS,” Netanyahu continued. “And just as the world united to defeat the Nazis, just as the world united to defeat ISIS, the world has to stand united behind Israel to defeat Hamas.”

Netanyahu acknowledged the significance of Germany’s support for the Jewish people and solidarity with the state of Israel.

“Eighty years ago, our people experienced the worst savagery in the history of humanity with the Nazi crimes against the Jewish people on the soil of Germany and Europe,” Netanyahu continued. “I must tell you, my friend, that the savagery that we witnessed, perpetrated by the Hamas murderers coming out of Gaza, were the worst crimes committed against Jews since the Holocaust.”

Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel’s southern border Oct. 7, killing more than 1,400 Israelis and taking nearly 200 people hostage. Israel has killed more than 3,000 Palestinians in retaliatory airstrikes.

Scholz’s visit also comes ahead of President Biden’s planned visit to Israel on Wednesday, after both Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited the region this week.

More than 6 million Jews — a third of the world’s Jewish population at the time — were killed in the Holocaust under Nazi Germany. Netanyahu compared the goals of Nazi Germany and of Hamas, saying the difference primarily is in capability. 

“The open goal of Hamas is to kill as many Jews as they could,” Netanyahu said. “The only difference is they would have killed every last one of us, murdered every last one of us, if they could. They just don’t have the capacity.”