Mehdi Hasan Deletes Tweet About the ‘Ways’ the War in Gaza Was Worse Than the Holocaust

Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan, who has long condemned Israel’s campaign in Gaza as a “genocide,” deleted a social media post Monday about the “ways” it was “worse” than the Holocaust after it drew backlash.

Hasan took to X on Sunday night to argue that “One of the ways in which the Gaza genocide is worse than a lot of previous genocides – Rwanda, even the Holocaust – is that you didn’t have Hutus or Nazis mocking the genocide after it was over. They were shunned/deradicalized/prosecuted.”

(Screengrab via X)

The post was immediately met by a pile-on from conservative and pro-Israel voices, who objected to his characterization of the military campaign and accused him of trying to “relativize” the Nazi mass murder campaign against Jews in the 1930s.

Some MAGA commentators called for the English-born journalist to be “deported”:

Fox News host Mark Levin blasted Hasan as a “loathsome monster,” while sharing an old clip of him ranting about homosexuals and non-Muslims.

Hasan later deleted the post.

The commentator defended his view, but admitted that his point was made “clumsily.” He also  slammed the “usual bad-faith, pro-Israel folks” he said were criticizing him. He clarified his belief that “Holocaust deniers are (rightly) condemned and ostracized in the West.”

He continued that he meant “no offense” to “the Jewish community” with his argument, adding: “I abhor and condemn all genocides, unlike those pro-Israel politicians and journalists who defend or, worse, deny the current Gaza genocide. Shame on them.”

He also pointed to a past op-ed written for The Times in 2012 in which he condemned Holocaust denial in the Muslim community, arguing that “the Nazi genocide cannot be relativised or generalised.”

Hasan, however, continued to spar with his critics, including former Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy, who called him a “Holocaust denier.”

Hasan clarified that he believed the Holocaust was “one of most evil acts in history” before jibing that Levy would face The Hague because he “participated” in the “Gaza genocide.”

The Israeli campaign in Gaza followed the October 7 attacks in 2023 in which Hamas breached Israel’s border and killed 1,195 people, including 38 children, before taking around 250 Israelis hostage. According to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, the subsequent military campaign by the Israeli military saw more than 63,000 Gazans killed and 160,000 wounded.

As the war continued pro-Palestinian activists and some international bodies, including most recently The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), passed resolutions stating that Israel’s conduct met the definition of genocide – a position which Israel’s government vehemently rejected.