After the Ceasefire, Gazans Celebrate: "We are Holocaust Survivors"

Since October 10, 2025, just days after the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, phrases like "Gaza Holocaust survivor" have surged, appearing in 3,200 posts on X alone from October 10-14, racking up 25,000 engagements and potentially poisoning 892,800 minds worldwide.

The broader "I'm a Holocaust survivor" jumped to 20,200 posts in the same window, with 93,300 interactions and a staggering 17.1 million potential views, a 42% spike from pre-ceasefire averages. And "I'm a survivor of a real Holocaust"? That venomous twist popped up 523 times between October 10-12, spreading to 184,700 users like a digital plague.

For context, this builds on a rotten foundation: Over the past six months, "Gaza Holocaust" has infested more than 525,000 X posts, generating 2.6 million interactions and exposing over half a billion people to this lie. But post-war? It's evolved into full-blown mockery, users posting polished selfies, claiming survival from a "holocaust" while looking anything but scarred. One viral offender, Ahmed Smiry flaunts a grinning photo with "I’m a holocaust survivor. Free Palestine," amassing over 36,000 likes and 3.2 million views.

Another declares "A SURVIVOR OF THE GAZA HOLOCAUST !! 11280 HOURS OF GENOCIDE, WE MADE IT OUT ALIVE ," complete with talk of healing wounds and blooming flowers, as if equating Gaza's conflict to the systematic extermination of Jews isn't a slap in the face to actual survivors.

And get this: One "survivor" poses with a cat, another lounges on a beach (probably not even Gaza's), raking in over 3 million views. Fadi's father begs for donations, "My name is Fadi a Gaza holocaust survivor," turning tragedy into a GoFundMe grift.

Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, CyberWell's CEO, nails it with righteous fury: "We are witnessing a cynical and blatant exploitation of concepts from the Holocaust of European Jews, one of the harshest traumas in human history, in order to compare Israel to its persecutors. This is not just antisemitism, but a deliberate dehumanization of Israelis and Jews in the digital arena." She blasts platforms for letting this slide, despite rules against Holocaust denial: "These offensive trends fall through the cracks. Not only is this a clear distortion of Holocaust concepts, but these contents have even received increased exposure by the algorithms of social networks worldwide."

Montemayor demands action: "Social networks must take responsibility; they cannot continue to be a tool for distorting history and echoing lies that harm not only the Jewish people but also the power and importance of the messages and lessons learned from the magnitude of the disaster of the Holocaust of European Jews."This trend isn't new, antisemites have long compared Israel's Gaza policies to Nazi atrocities, especially since Hamas's barbaric October 7, 2023, attack.

Ynet contributed to this article.