The Middle East has a long history of suppression and violence against Jews. Combined with the growth of Arab nationalism in the 1920s, it meant that the Nazis were pushing at an open door when it came to spreading their genocidal ideology further than Europe.

But they still faced a challenge: their ideology relied on perceptions of Jewish power that did not exist in the region, as Jews had little to no power under Islamic rule.

In order to infect the Middle East with their obsession to eradicate Jews, the Nazis tailored their propaganda by interweaving European antisemitic theories about Jewish power with the need to protect Islam. Propaganda containing messages such as “kill the Jews before they kill you” was transmitted via radio across the region, voiced by influential figures including the Mufti of Jerusalem. Inflammatory printed material such as “Islam and Jewry” was disseminated. The catchphrase “Allah above us in heaven, and Hitler with us on earth” was coined, and with it an even more extreme strain of antisemitism across the region.

The Iranian regime became the natural heirs of Nazi propaganda in the Islamic world and still uses it to this day, portraying Jews as a threat to Islam and threatening Israel with extermination. The fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion – one of the most harmfully antisemitic texts ever written – is widely disseminated in Iran and schoolbooks are replete with antisemitic propaganda, according to a report by the Anti Defamation League. Iran is also the world’s leading sponsor of antisemitic terrorism, such as the bombing of the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

Consistent with Nazi propaganda in the Middle East, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, described Jews as an all-powerful evil force trying to undermine Islam. Both he and his successor expressed the belief that Israel was the physical manifestation of this evil force.

Iran heavily influenced the first United Nations World Conference against Racism in Durban in 2001, also known as “Durban I”. Flagrant antisemitism was on display even during the regional build-up conference in Tehran, which was supposed to create an action plan against racism. Instead, its organisers banned Jewish groups from attending. The propaganda style of the Nazis could be seen in action, as the focus was put on the Jewish state as the sole source of wrongdoing in the region and falsely accused of the worst crimes imaginable, including apartheid and “Holocausts”. Israel was isolated and alienated.

The Tehran conference summary became the template for the NGO Declaration at Durban I. During the Durban conference, Holocaust survivor Tom Lantos described it as “the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews” he had seen since the Nazis.

Attendees described how copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were available at the conference stands, along with flyers approving of Hitler and Nazi-style caricatures of child-killing Jews with exaggerated features. Swastikas were seen being taped to the wall. A “Hitler was right” banner was unfurled amidst 20,000 “anti-Israel” demonstrators. Jews were heckled, threatened and banned from speaking before the final vote.

It was at Durban I that the taking down of Israel as an apartheid state became the cause du jour at the expense of other causes. Signed by groups including Amnesty International, the NGO Declaration called Israel a “racist apartheid state” guilty of “genocide”.

Fast-forward to 2022 and the methodology used by the Nazis, culminating in the Durban conference in 2001, has reappeared. Following on from Durban’s legacy, Amnesty have picked up the mantle and produced a report about Israel that reads like a conspiracy theory. In it, incomplete and incorrect pieces have been pushed together to confirm the pre-ordained conclusion that Israel is an apartheid state.

An interview with the Amnesty officials behind the report by Lazar Berman in the Times of Israel revealed a frightening lack of logic behind the report. Nor does it have any legal basis. Its publication is part of a wider campaign by those who perceive the Jewish state as symbolising a powerful evil in the world and something which must therefore be dismantled.

Amnesty’s report alters the very understanding of apartheid to shoehorn Israel in, and finds Israel guilty of the original sin of existing. Amnesty appears to want to remove the remaining Jewish presence, the Jewish state, from the Middle East.

The aftermath of the impact of Nazism in the Middle East is still being felt and its legacy seems to be reflected in the latest Amnesty report. What greater abuse of Jewish human rights could there be than this?