A very small minority of Palestinian Israelis decide to join the army to improve their otherwise largely dire life prospects in apartheid Israel. (Photo credit: BBC)

The Zionist propaganda works overtime to try and convince the world that Israel is not a state that practices apartheid. One of the key tactics they try to fool the world with is by showing pictures and stories of Muslims Palestinians joining the Israeli Occupation Forces, and “fighting for Israel” against the occupied Palestinians. This far-right account based in Poland is a repeat offender:

Muslim Palestinians joining the occupation forces as portrayed in Zionist propaganda is a distorted simplistic portrayal – there are circa 1.7 million Muslims Palestinians who live in their ancestral homeland of Palestine, which is now known as Israel. less than 1 percent serve in the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF, also known as the IDF to colonialists).

A little known fact is many Jews served in the Nazi regime. Why did they do it?

Thousands of full Jews and more than a hundred-thousand part-Jews joined the military of the Third Reich. 

“Some believed they could save their families by serving. One Mischlinge told of going to a Gestapo jail to help his Jewish father only to learn that the man had been sent to Dachau. He then volunteered in the Wehrmacht hoping it would help his father’s plight. It didn’t. Two brothers, whose gentile father had divorced their Jewish mother when the racial laws were promulgated, made a point of wearing their uniforms when they visited her. She was nonetheless sent to a camp.

Some salved their consciences with self-delusion. Nazi ideology was one thing, but surely their fellow soldiers who wore the same uniform, had the same needs and fears, instincts and feelings, must have an essentially human heart beating beneath that uniform. Surely they would not mistreat and murder their fellow soldiers’ mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandparents. The Waffen-SS officer whose family went back 400 years in Germany called his comrades the best anyone could want in war—though, he added, if they’d known he had Jewish blood they would have strung him up from the nearest tree.

A few, especially on the Russian front, would claim later that while they served in Hitler’s army, they helped save the lives of other Jews in lands where they fought and conquered. An Orthodox Jewish Wehrmacht lieutenant told of giving secret passes to Jews who’d been rounded up the by SS in Lithuania, Latvia, and Russia, and food to starving Jewish children in a Russian village. Years later, when he met another Orthodox Wehrmacht officer at a conference in Bonn, they agreed that they’d done more for Jews by staying in the military than had those who’d fled the country before the war. Who among us who wasn’t there can say they didn’t?

Perhaps the answer to their moral quandary lies in another question. What else could they have done? Refusing to serve, trading in their father’s or grandfather’s Iron Cross for their own yellow star would have sent one more member of the family to Auschwitz. A Wehrmacht lieutenant maintains that he always felt Jewish inside, but military service was the only hope for survival. Another veteran felt certain that God guided him into the military to save his life. When asked why God did not save 6 million others, he replied that the Almighty’s actions cannot always be understood.”

“Tablet Magazine”

The precise life experiences of Nazi Germany and Zionist Israel are different for Jews who were living in Nazi Germany and Muslims living in Zionist Israel – but the general motivators are the same as to why some Muslims would joint the IOF, to why some Jews joined the Wehrmacht; it was to have a better life for themselves, their family, a sense of feeling equal and to be safer in an unsafe state.

A number of international and Israeli human rights groups such as Amnesty International and B’Tselem have published comprehensive reports in recent years that concludes Palestinians living in Israel live under apartheid conditions, the odds are stacked against them, they are treated as second class citizens with a lot of inequalities – compared to their fellow citizens who are Jewish.

It is no surprise that some Muslim Palestinian Israelis decide to join the occupation forces when 54% live under the poverty line, which is substantially higher than the circa 20% Jewish Israelis.

Joining the IOF provides recruits with a relatively good salary as a soldier, and provides perks such as being able to apply for a grant for land. It provides a pathway for a relatively comfortable life in what otherwise would be a very uncomfortable one.

Palestinian Israelis are inherently perceived as the enemy by large swathes of Israeli society and the Israeli authorities – just like the Jews who joined the Wehrmacht to prove that they were loyal to Germany and by doing so hoped to keep their families safe from Nazis, the Palestinians in Israel too face similar issues and dilemmas – where they are systematically made to feel like they have to prove their loyalty to Israel. Any murmurings of support or perceived support for Palestine is treated with extreme harshness by the Israeli authorities. A Palestinian beauty salon owner was recently arrested for merely expressing sadness for the dying children of Rafah. In these scenarios it is common for the authorities to make life uncomfortable for the families of that person too.