Queen Rania of Jordan sparked outrage Tuesday after comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
The remarks were made at the opening ceremony of the One Young World Summit taking place in Munich, which was attended by youth from over 190 countries.
According to a report in the official Jordanian news agency, the queen addressed the topics of hate speech and the Israel-Hamas war, accusing Israeli officials of inciting hatred following the October 7 massacre. She claimed they operated “from a time-tested playbook” and sought to “convince the public [they were] dealing with beasts” to justify violence.
Queen Rania referenced a statement by then-defense minister Yoav Gallant, who called Hamas terrorists “animals” in the aftermath of the massacre. She compared Gallant’s language to Nazi Germany’s description of Jews as “vermin.”
Attempting to justify the comparison, she then said, “Every atrocity is unique,” and insisted her comments were “not about weighing grief or comparing pain,” but rather about affirming the equal worth of all human life and honoring Holocaust memory.
“We’ve witnessed, in real time, the raw reality of what hate looks like when it transforms from a feeling, to words, to action,” she said. “To dismiss it as ‘just talk’ is to ignore how every genocide has begun: with words.”
Queen Rania further accused Israel of maintaining an “illegal occupation of Palestine,” despite the IDF’s withdrawal to the agreed-upon Yellow Line following the implementation earlier this month of a US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza.
This is not the first time that Queen Rania has been critical of Israel’s response to the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023.
In an interview with CNN several weeks after the massacre, the Jordanian queen claimed there is "no evidence" that Hamas terrorists beheaded Israeli infants, and that the reports of beheadings were never verified.
In another interview in March of 2024, Queen Rania again criticized Israel and said, “As devastating and as traumatic as October 7th was, it doesn't give Israel license to commit atrocity after atrocity. Israel experienced one October 7th - since then the Palestinians have experienced 156 October 7ths.”
“This has been a slow-motion mass murder of children five months in the making. It is absolutely shameful, outrageous, and entirely predictable what's happening in Gaza today because it was deliberate,” she claimed.
Two months later, Queen Rania said in an interview on CBS that she feels empathy for Israeli mothers who have children in Hamas captivity, but urged Israel not to channel the trauma of Hamas’s October 7 massacre to fuel a cycle of “retribution and revenge.”
Queen Rania argued that “Israel could have retaliated through surgical strikes against Hamas. But that's not what we're seeing today. You know, we are seeing a war that is not fought in a defensive way.”
She also said that it is wrong to see Hamas as representing the Palestinian Arab people.