Op-Ed: Pernicious Antisemitic Propaganda Unmasked
By Rachel Avraham
The facts of history are often rewritten and misunderstood by the generations that follow. Here is an explanation of three major forces for evil in recent history – within the last 100 years – that has been distorted and misunderstood – and must now see the light of historical accuracy in order that we not repeat the mistakes of the past.
Nazi Propaganda Unmasked
If there is one fact that cannot be disputed, it is that members of the Nazi Party were inherently evil.The Nazis were evil, of course, because of what they did to the Jewish people—good, innocent men and women whose only “crime” was being born into a Jewish family. They were loyal citizens of European countries, yet they spent their lives feeling like second-class citizens.
But it was not only for what they inflicted on the Jewish people that the Nazis were evil; it was also for what they did to the German people themselves. The Nazi Party brainwashed the German nation through relentless propaganda, morning and night, in homes and in the streets. They spoon-fed their ideology to German citizens while erasing their individuality and original thoughts.
Nazi propaganda essentially placed German citizens on an assembly line, producing obedient subjects for the Führer. That was always the goal: power and control. Jew-hatred served as the “common enemy” around which the Nazis could unite the German people, who were too blinded by hatred and lies to realize they were losing their humanity. Nazi propaganda became institutionalized through the apparatus of the German state.
In 1933, after Hitler rose to power, he established the Ministry of Propaganda, headed by Joseph Goebbels, widely regarded as the architect of Nazi propaganda. The Nazi regime, like other fascist and totalitarian systems, was centralized, so it is no surprise that the Propaganda Ministry directly controlled the press, literature, theater, cinema, radio, art, and exhibitions. When antisemites today claim that “the Jews control the media,” it is ironic, since the Nazis literally controlled the media against the Jews.
What did it mean to control the media? The party disseminated its own newspapers widely, while independent papers that refused to promote Nazi messages were either shut down by the regime or censored to fit its dictates. The Nazis also used cinema to spread their propaganda, most notably through the films of Leni Riefenstahl, who directed documentaries glorifying the Nazi Party. These films highlighted the Reich’s power and spread its ideology—the very essence of what the regime wanted.
But the Nazis’ preferred tool was the radio. They relied on it so heavily that the party actually distributed radios to German households to ensure no family would miss the daily messages, broadcast several times each day.
But the vilest Nazi propaganda effort was the aggressive campaign directed at the younger generation—German children and youth. First, they rewrote all school textbooks to shape a new generation of Germans, who would accept Nazi ideology as an unquestionable truth, as natural as the sun setting in the west.
From 1933 onward, school lessons looked entirely different than just a year or two before. In history classes, students were taught that Jews had always been parasites harming German society from within. In science classes, they learned about the so-called “Aryan race theory” as if it were an established scientific fact. Pupils were drilled on the differences between the Aryan race and supposedly inferior races. In math classes, students solved word problems steeped in antisemitism, such as calculating how much money Jews were costing the German state.
The Nazis also made sure that German children would not consume non-antisemitic material at home after school. Children’s books were poisoned with propaganda. Before any children’s book could be published, it had to be reviewed and approved by the Ministry of Propaganda. As a result, German children grew up with books like The Poisonous Mushroom, which depicted Jews as deadly fungi—seemingly harmless but actually dangerous. Another, The Jewish Beast, portrayed Jews as wicked creatures to be feared. In general, villains in children’s books were drawn with antisemitic features: long noses, cunning expressions, deceit, and greed. Even older works like the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales were edited to reflect the new era, adding antisemitic traits to their villains.
Youth movements, too, were corrupted by antisemitism and Jew-hatred, with full support from the Propaganda Ministry. The Hitler Youth for boys and the League of German Girls for girls were established at Hitler’s directive once he came to power. Afterward, all other youth organizations were banned, and parents were compelled to send their children to the Nazi youth movements, whether they wanted to or not.
These groups instilled Nazi ideology, racial theory, and the belief in Aryan superiority. They also nurtured the cult of personality around Adolf Hitler and had a profound influence on German society in the years leading up to World War II. Children were recruited at age eight and remained until age eighteen—ten years of systematic molding into Nazi subjects thirsty for Jewish blood. Like any cult, Nazi propaganda used symbols and rituals to tighten its grip on German minds. The Propaganda Ministry relied on swastikas, massive rallies, uniforms, and flags to create a sense of power and unity. Hitler’s fiery speeches, delivered in town squares to thousands of onlookers and broadcast live to homes across Germany, reinforced his image as the “savior” of the German people — a false messiah.
As with other totalitarian regimes, the Nazis needed a common enemy to unify the nation, so they never ceased vilifying the Jews. But Jews were not the only targets: the Nazis also railed against communists and Western democracies, portraying them as enemies of Germany. Still, none of these campaigns compared to the sheer intensity of their propaganda against “the Jewish enemy”. It was all too easy to blame Jews for Germany’s troubles, as though Jews had not fought and died for Germany in World War I. By making Jews the enemy of the people, the Nazis smoothed the way to implementing their ideology, beginning with excluding Jews from public life, and leading to what we now know as the Holocaust, the brutal murder of six million Jews as a matter of national policy.
It is painfully clear that people in the West have not truly learned the lessons of history, or at least have failed to internalize its lessons. The processes that unfolded in Europe during the 1930s are repeating themselves 90 years later — only now the propaganda is not institutionalized but grassroots.
If you look closely, you will see that Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their allies in Qatar and the media outlet Al Jazeera have been spreading antisemitic (or anti-Israel, which is just another name for the same thing) propaganda in precisely the same manner the Nazis once did through their Propaganda Ministry. Instead of recognizing when they are facing a new wave of antisemitic propaganda about a conflict that does not concern them, Europeans succumb to it, siding with the aggressor rather than the victim.
If only the West taught the history of Nazi Germany with the same intensity that people in Israel experience it, Europe would be a much safer place for Jews. But that has not happened. And so, 90 years after the rise of Nazism in Germany, Jewish blood has once again become cheap in Europe.
Hamas Propaganda Unmasked
Over the past decade and a half social networks have become an inseparable part of our lives. Some people use them to share what they experience, some use them to gain fame in whatever field they work in, and most people spend at least half an hour a day mindlessly scrolling through their video feeds or status updates. One thing is certain: a large percentage of the general population is on social media every day. Evil people in the world understood this fact more than a decade ago. These are people who act in concert with dark forces, people who do not care about humanitarian problems or the suffering of innocent people, people concerned only with their own benefit and the success of their personal agendas. Those evil people have concluded that humanity is glued to screens and social networks and that they must use those platforms to spread their message to as many people in the Western world as possible.
There are terrorists who do terrible things, film them, and upload them to social media to show the world the atrocities they commit. In doing so, these people harm both those they physically attack and the viewers of their content, as well as those whom they threaten through that content.
You will, of course, immediately think of the Islamic State, which in 2014 used social media extensively to publicize the atrocities committed by its members, to showcase the power of the Islamic State and the Islamic nation, and to spread fear in the West. But it was not only ISIS in 2014; there was another Islamist organization operating in a similar way, which is the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas. Shortly before ISIS became widely known internationally, in mid August 2014, an intense military campaign took place between the State of Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas. Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on July 8, 2014 after Hamas continued to fire rockets into Israeli territory and after Hamas in the West Bank abducted and murdered three innocent Israeli teenagers. In addition, Israel discovered Hamas’s tunnel system from Gaza into Israeli territory, tunnels dug so Hamas operatives could cross the fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel and kill as many Jews and Israelis as possible (which is exactly what they did on October 7, 2023). For these reasons Israel went into Gaza to carry out a just operation, after which Hamas kept its head down for a long time.
During that operation one of the senior Hamas figures in Gaza realized that on the ground Hamas had no chance of defeating the State of Israel in combat, but in terms of information warfare or propaganda warfare, not only could Hamas win, it had a crucial advantage because it was “weak.” Obviously Hamas does not have the military or technological capabilities of the State of Israel, there is no debate about that. Nonetheless, Hamas understood that the suffering and the victims among Gazans are what would strengthen it politically on the world stage and damage Israel’s standing.
But Hamas did not publish videos that showed authentic life in Gaza. Instead, their videos featured all kinds of horrors that did not actually happen but were planned and staged by Hamas leadership. Sometimes they uploaded footage shot in Syria and labeled it as filmed in Gaza (this still happens). Most of the time they staged the footage so well that it was impossible to believe it was not authentic. Even when the footage was real and not staged, Hamas leadership did not sit idly by and allow events to unfold on their own, because Hamas operatives hide behind women and children who, if they die, serve their purpose as well.
Islamist terminology about holy death and martyrs going to paradise helps Hamas members justify sacrificing women and children, sometimes even their own relatives. These people have no conscience for their actions, only a hunger to destroy Israel at any cost. The person who began developing Hamas’s media and social media propaganda apparatus was Abu Ubaida, who was considered Hamas’s spokesperson for the last 20 years, until he was recently eliminated. This man was responsible for some of the most despicable lies told about Israel and the Jewish people since the Holocaust. He understood that sending a cameraman into battle would damage Israel’s image in the world because viewers would see the IDF defeating Hamas fighters and conclude that the aggressors were the ones who started the war, or because Israelis would see their brave soldiers taken and fallen while defending their country.
In the years since Operation Protective Edge, Hamas’s system for spreading lies has grown considerably. On October 7th, 2023, members of Hamas’s media terror unit that numbered some 1,500 militants broke across Israel’s border, each equipped, in addition to automatic weapons, with a GoPro camera. With every squad of militants that crossed the border into Israel, a fighter with a camera joined them, documenting and streaming live the atrocities Hamas committed to Hamas’s propaganda headquarters in Gaza. There, under Abu Ubaida’s leadership, Hamas decided which videos to post to social media.
Many Israelis learned that their loved ones had been killed or abducted while they were scrolling through Telegram, TikTok, or Facebook. This cruel, inhuman policy adopted by Hamas can be classified as a propaganda attack or even an act of war. Everything Hamas uploads to social media or broadcasts through traditional media is intended to harm Israel, whether by influencing world opinion about Israel’s legitimacy to fight and recover its abducted citizens, or by damaging the national morale of Israeli citizens. Hamas posts fake videos that show IDF soldiers as cold-blooded murderers (when it is Hamas members who committed the murders), or videos of captive Israelis reading scripts written for them in advance by Hamas.
Abu Ubaida studied Israeli society for years, as well as European and American societies, so he already knew how to get the reactions Hamas aimed for.
For Western audiences, Hamas releases staged and edited videos that portray Gazan children and their mothers as helpless and impoverished to elicit pity for Gaza residents and anger at those who have harmed them. For Israeli society, Hamas published videos showing Israeli captives in dire medical condition, thin and broken, causing intense feelings among their families and across the entire Israeli nation, both in Israel and in the diaspora.
Hamas are people of chaos who only know how to destroy and ruin; they are not fighters for justice and peace as some in European capitals believe. Recently, IDF forces finally managed to eliminate Abu Ubaida. You understand why I say finally. Hamas members are evil people, truly human beasts. They are murderers (both Israelis and Palestinians), thieves, rapists, and they take pleasure in abusing people. Showing a mother how her son is dying after two terrible years in captivity underground is cruelty. Destroying a kindergarten and then blaming your enemy, just days after slaughtering 1,200 people in a single day, is vileness. Filming raids by armed guerrilla forces on undefended civilian communities and uploading the best clips to the internet is the best example of “spreading terror.” Crying that you are the victim while you were the first to spill blood embodies the idea of Palestinian nationalism.
Until the State of Israel establishes an effective information apparatus, Hamas will continue to score goals against an undefended gate, and we must not allow them to keep doing so.
Iranian Propaganda Unmasked
There are many forces of evil in our world that drive cruelty and atrocities. It is hard to dispute that one of the most significant forces spreading evil today is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC), which dominates Iran.
Like every tyrannical regime that works to strengthen itself and pursue its own interests rather than national ones, it relies on propaganda—both internally and externally—to justify its malicious actions. After all, the IRGC is responsible for a considerable number of horrifying terror attacks in and beyond the Middle East, in which many civilians were killed. What makes the IRGC unique is that propaganda is not merely a tool for achieving certain objectives—it is woven into its most fundamental ideology.
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran was not only a political upheaval within the country; it was also a profound transformation within Shi’a Islam. Before the revolution, Shi’a Muslims generally separated religion from politics, unlike Sunni Muslims, whose political leaders (the caliphs) were also considered the highest religious authorities. Throughout history, the Shi’a—who were and remain a minority in Islam—kept a clear division between clerics and political rulers. This may have been influenced by the fact that they often lived as a persecuted minority under Sunni empires.
The Islamic Revolution changed that: Shi’a clerics seized power for the first time. According to the IRGC’s ideology, the head of state must be the supreme Islamic jurist. During the revolution, that figure was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; after his death, the position passed to Ali Khamenei. Why does this matter in the context of propaganda? Because a central tenet of the IRGC’s ideology is the duty to export the Islamic Revolution to the entire Muslim world—not just the Shi’a community,but all Muslims, including Sunnis.
Iran seeks to convince all Muslims, whether Arab, Turkish,Persian, Sunni, or Shi’a, to accept clerical rule led by the supreme jurist. Iran worked tirelessly to export its revolution beyond its border — and succeeded. Hezbollah, for example, is the Lebanese version of clerical rule, and remains Iran’s most loyal ally, both ideologically and organizationally.
Hezbollah shares the IRGC’s revolutionary doctrine and unwavering loyalty to the supreme Shi’a leader of today, Ali Khamenei. For this reason, propaganda is not simply a tool for the IRGC—it is at the very heart of its foundational ideology.Beyond the ideological dimension, propaganda is also used in Iran to preserve the rule of the Ayatollahs. Since 1979, the authorities have built a powerful propaganda machine that operates constantly, inside and outside the country.
Its goals are several. The first is to reinforce the regime’s legitimacy within Iran. The IRGC portrays itself as God’s chosen representatives, who saved Iran from both internal enemies (such as liberal movements) and external ones (like the United States, Iraq, and Israel). They emphasize messages of national unity under the revolutionary Shi’a banner, while in reality brutally suppressing Iran’s many minorities—Baluch, Kurds, Arabs, Sunnis, and others.
The second goal is the demonization of external enemies. Just as the Nazis needed Jews as a common enemy to unify Germany around the Nazi Party, the Iranians need enemies to frighten their people and rally them around the IRGC’s ideology. Their greatest foes are, of course, the United States—“the Great Satan”—and Israel—“the Little Satan.”
The third goal is to present Iran as the leader of the “Axis of Resistance,” a loose coalition of states and organizations united against Israel and the West. Iran aggressively promotes itself, particularly among Palestinians and other Islamist groups, as the defender of the “oppressed peoples” of the world.
The fourth goal, as noted earlier, is to spread the revolution’s ideology throughout the Muslim world.Propaganda that is not focused on spreading the revolution can generally be divided into two categories: against Israel and against the West (primarily the “Great Satan”). In its anti-Israel propaganda, Iran never calls Israel by Hname. Instead, it refers to it as “the Zionist entity,” portraying it as an artificial regime, a foreign implant forced upon the Middle East by Western powers. Israel is blamed for nearly every problem in the region—wars, famine, poverty,tyranny. The IRGC also denies the Holocaust suffered by European Jews (and also by Jews in the Middle East and North Africa), mocking the victims through exhibitions in Iran. These exhibits portray Jews as greedy, cunning, and monstrous—disturbingly reminiscent of Nazi propaganda from the 1930s.
Furthermore, Iran accuses Israel of perpetrating a “new Holocaust” against Palestinians — a claim that is false and deeply offensive, trivializing the crimes of the Nazis not only against Jews but against humanity at large.
Palestinians are broadly used in Iranian propaganda, presented as pure and innocent victims, while Israel is portrayed as a brutal occupier—even though most of Israel’s wars were initiated by its enemies. For Iran, the Palestinian struggle is the front line of the Islamic battle against the “Zionist entity,” framed as a noble fight for freedom in accordance with international law.Anti-Western propaganda is directed primarily against the United States, labeled “the Great Satan.”
At official IRGC ceremonies, chants of “Death to America” (alongside “Death to Israel”) are standard. America is depicted as a demonic, imperialist, and corrupt force whose goal is to exploit the weak nations of the developing world. It is also accused of complicity in crimes committed in Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan. More broadly, the West is portrayed as a thief of Middle Eastern resources and history, and as an oppressor of Muslim peoples.Western culture, in Iranian propaganda, is depicted as shallow and morally bankrupt: a society of materialism, decadence, sexual promiscuity, alcohol, and drugs.
In contrast, the IRGC and its ideology are presented as a pure, moral, and spiritual alternative. To spread these messages, the IRGC uses every available tool, employing many of the same methods used by past dictatorships. They control traditional television broadcasts, restrict what Iranians can read or watch online, and run their own state media channels. These include Press TV (English), HispanTV (Spanish), and Arabic outlets such as Al-Alam. Social media is also heavily exploited: official figures like Khamenei publish anti-Israel and antisemitic content in multiple languages, including Hebrew.
In addition, Iran deploys online bots to spread disinformation and fake news.The propaganda effort extends to education as well. Iranian school textbooks are filled with false depictions of Israel and the United States, portraying them as bloodthirsty states that kill for pleasure. Children’s books depict IDF soldiers as evil monsters—even though the IDF is in reality the most moral army in the Middle East, and arguably in the entire world. Like Nazi propaganda, Iran’s propaganda system poisons innocent minds through media and educational content, instilling baseless hatred. All we can hope for is that the Ayatollahs’ regime will eventually share the same fate as the Nazi regime.
[Editor’s note] In the face of today’s growing rebellion of the Iranian people against the regime, there is hope that the people of Iran will prevail and the repressive government of the Ayatollah will fall. If this happens, the future of the Middle East and, by extension, the entire Middle East and beyond, will be freed of the repressive and hateful repression by the Ayatollah and his murderous government, and the Iranian people can once again experience and share the freedom that they lost when the Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979.
