As the October 2025 Gaza-Israel war paused with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire, a disturbing trend emerged online. Gazan influencers began posting selfies, videos, and donation links with captions like “I’m a Holocaust survivor” or “Gaza Holocaust survivor.” These posts falsely accuse Israel of committing a Holocaust, which refers to a singular, unparalleled event – equating the Holocaust with the Gaza conflict.
The term “Holocaust survivor” refers to those who endured the industrialized extermination campaign carried out by Nazi Germany, in which entire state infrastructures—transport systems, census data, medical institutions, and legal frameworks—were weaponized to identify, isolate, and annihilate the Jewish population of Europe. By 1945, survivors were emaciated, often orphaned, and visibly marked by starvation, torture, and trauma.
Equating Israel’s military action—however controversial—with the Nazi regime’s systematic genocide of six million Jews is historical revisionism. The Holocaust was a uniquely horrific event that reduced the global Jewish population by one third, from 18 million to 12 million.
Appropriating that language to describe political conflict crosses a line and poses important questions around societies’ tolerance for the amplification of a-historical narratives and tolerance for modern antisemitism, especially in digital spaces.
IHRA and misuse of Holocaust terminology
The misuse of Holocaust-related imagery, slogans and terminology—such as labeling the Gaza war as a “Holocaust”— constitutes a form of Holocaust Hate Speech, as defined by CyberWell’s Policy Guidelines, which are grounded in IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism. Under the IHRA framework, example 4 prohibits denying the fact, scope, mechanisms or intentionality of the Holocaust; example 5 prohibits accusing Jews or Israel of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust; and example 10 identifies as antisemitic drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
CyberWell applies these examples collectively to address the broader misuse of Holocaust memory online, including inversion, trivialization, distortion and denial. In this context, labeling Gaza a “Holocaust” represents inversion, because it reverses the roles of victim and perpetrator by equating Jews or Israel with Nazis; it also amounts to trivialization, because it diminishes the historical magnitude of the Holocaust by invoking it for a contemporary conflict.
While these categories can overlap, they all reflect the antisemitic abuse of Holocaust history that undermines remembrance and understanding of one of humanity’s worst atrocities.
The Data
According to CyberWell’s findings, over the final six months of the Israel-Hamas war, the period during which CyberWell checked comparisons of certain words, the term “Gazan Holocaust” appeared in over 525,000 posts on X, reaching a potential audience of 552 million. What’s new is the emergence of the term “Gazan Holocaust Survivor,” now used in highly stylized posts that trivialize the Holocaust to serve political and narrative agendas.
Since the 2025 ceasefire went into effect on October 10th, phrases like “Holocaust survivor from Gaza” and “I am a survivor of a real Holocaust” have appeared thousands of times online, with “I am a Holocaust survivor” spiking 42% from six months before the cessation of hostilities to over 20,000 posts five days after the agreement was signed on October 9th – further evidence of a growing trend that misrepresents historical memory to delegitimize Israel.
False Narrative, Real Harm
A few examples from social media illustrate this trend vividly – like this post that also mocks the Holocaust by awarding this user, claiming to have survived a so-called “Holocaust” in Gaza with a medal:
The post above would be an example of trivialization because it mocks the Holocaust by using imagery or language (in this case, both) in an unrelated context which diminishes the historical gravity of the actual Holocaust.
The posts below feature Gazans who, despite enduring significant hardship during the war, appear well-groomed, well-fed, and surrounded by remnants of normalcy — even pets — which visually contradict the devastation they describe.
These examples above would be best characterized as Holocaust trivialization because they misrepresent and minimize the historical reality of the Holocaust by drawing inaccurate and misleading comparisons based on selective imagery. Invoking Holocaust survivor comparisons in this context risks diminishing the unique suffering and systematic genocide that defined the Holocaust.
Below, is an example of a post that uses Holocaust denial because it attempts to erase Jewish history in the process of rebranding it for a new and unrelated conflict. A chilling example: Misappropriating an Auschwitz tattoo — a distinct symbol of the Holocaust — with a current political conflict.
For context relating to the post above, the number 135633 was originally branded on the arm of Yehiel De-Nur, a Holocaust survivor and writer, during his imprisonment at Auschwitz. He later used this number as his pen name, Ka-tzetnik 135633 (“Concentration Camper 135633”), dedicating his life to bearing witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust.
By repurposing this number in the context of Gaza or the Palestinian struggle, individuals are appropriating a symbol of Jewish genocide to frame a modern political conflict. This act also represents a form of Holocaust Inversion, transforming the mark of a Jewish victim into a tool for accusing Jews or Israel of the Nazi-like crimes perpetrated against them.
A Note to Platforms
This trend is circulating through engagement-driven algorithms, as it does not violate platform policies.
However, the purposeful online labelling of the Gaza war against Hamas as a “Holocaust” constitutes Holocaust hate speech in the following way:
- Inversion because it reverses the roles of victim and perpetrator by portraying Jews or Israel—the descendants of Holocaust victims—as the new “Nazis,” an antisemitic trope explicitly identified in IHRA example 10 and monitored by CyberWell as Holocaust inversion.
- Trivialization because it diminishes the historical gravity of the Holocaust by equating a modern military conflict with the systematic, state-sponsored genocide of six million Jews, aligning with IHRA example 10’s warning against inappropriate Holocaust comparisons and CyberWell’s policy against the misuse of Holocaust imagery or terminology.
Such terminologies undermine accurate Holocaust education and remembrance. They also contribute to the spread of antisemitic narratives, particularly in digital environments where provocative content is often algorithmically amplified. This trend reflects a broader pattern in which Holocaust memory is conjured for unrelated causes, eroding public understanding of antisemitism and of the worst global atrocity of the 20th century.
Platform Responsibility and Digital Ethics
Social platforms like Meta, TikTok, and X play a central role in shaping how users understand and engage with global events. As both Israelis and Palestinians turn to these platforms to process and share their experiences from the past two years, digital spaces have become powerful tools for storytelling, solidarity and reflection.
However, the same algorithms that amplify these voices also reward emotionally charged, misleading or ahistorical content. This includes trends such as “Gaza Holocaust” and the spread of false Holocaust survivor claims – forms of Holocaust misrepresentation that twist historical fact and contribute to the erosion of public understanding and empathy.
At this intersection of memory and media, we must ask critical questions:
- Why is “Gaza Holocaust” trending?
- Do we want a-historical information like this recommended to users globally?
- What are the long-term effects of Holocaust inversion and Holocaust hate speech?
These are not only questions of policy, but of digital ethics. Misrepresenting the Holocaust – history’s most well-documented atrocity against the Jews – undermines its historical record and the lessons it offers — including that all human being regardless of race, religion, or creed, are capable of incredible evil, alongside incredible good.
We have a shared responsibility to prevent such atrocities, including through the technologies we collectively use, design and regulate.
If you see Holocaust inversion or antisemitic content online, report it to the platform and at app.cyberwell.org.
