Queen Rania misquoted Israeli officials accusing them of spreading hate speech against Palestinians following the October 7 Hamas massacre.
Queen Rania of Jordan compared Israel's attitude to residents of Gaza during the war between Israel and Hamas and Nazi Germany's treatment of the Jews, speaking to a crowd of thousands of young people in MunichGermany on Tuesday.
Queen Rania spoke at the opening ceremony of the One Young World Summit, which brought together youth from more than 190 countries, on the topic of hate speech and the war between Israel and Hamas, Jordan's official news agency confirmed.
The Queen accused Israeli officials of spreading hate speech “after October 7 attacks,” claiming that they were following a “time-tested script” and were trying to “convince the public [they were] treatment of animals” to justify violence.
She reportedly referred to the infamous incident in which then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant referred to Hamas terrorists involved in the October 7 attacks as “animals,” which was then misquoted and used to accuse Israel of dehumanizing Palestinians.
Queen Rania compared Gallant's use of the word “animals” to the description of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany as “vermin”.
Prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Germany, where Nazi Walter Rauff built a killer van that fed exhaust fumes directly into the vehicle. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
“Every crime is unique”
In an attempt to justify the comparison, she acknowledged that “every atrocity is unique,” saying her statements were “not about weighing grief or comparing pain” but “about affirming that every human life has equal value” and honoring the memory of the Holocaust rather than challenging it.
“We have witnessed in real time the harsh reality of what hatred looks like when it transforms from feeling to words to action,” she told the crowd, adding that “to dismiss it as ‘just talk’ is to ignore how every genocide began: with words.”
She praised the world pro-Palestiniananti-Israel movement as “the largest and most organic mass movement in recent memory”, denouncing people who choose not to speak out about the polarizing conflict as people who “can't be bothered”.
In her speech, Queen Rania also accused Israel of continuing its “illegal occupation of Palestine” despite the IDF withdrawing to the agreed “yellow line” following the implementation of a US-brokered ceasefire on October 13.
