Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, spoke about trends in Israeli society reminiscent of the dark European era between the world wars at a May 4 event marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, the start of an emotional and special period in which Israelis remember the Holocaust, honor their war dead (May 11) and celebrate their independence (May 12). Almost at the same time, the prime minister of Israel once again pointed to the anti-Semitic phenomena in the world and the Middle East, saying they remind him of the dark era that preceded the 1930s in Europe.

Israeli society is not an amorphous place; the prime minister is the one who bears ultimate responsibility for the shape it is in. He himself demonizes his country’s minorities. He is the one who entrusted the education of Israeli children to a political party (right-wing HaBayit HaYehudi) that believes the biblical designation of “chosen people” justifies trampling the dignity and basic rights of millions of other people. And so, the words of Golan could be interpreted as an arrow directed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. No wonder Netanyahu claimed Golan’s remarks were “fundamentally incorrect.”

Nonetheless, historic analogies are not a matter for generals, nor the jurisdiction of politicians. To examine whether Israel 2016 is reminiscent of the 1930s in Europe, or whether the association is indeed unfounded, Al-Monitor sought the help of professor Zeev Sternhell, the former head of the political science department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It is hard to find a greater authority to referee the stormy debate sparked by Golan.

Fascism is the central theme in Sternhell’s personal and professional biography. Sternhell’s Polish family was murdered by the Nazis. He lived in hiding until being taken to France on a train full of children by the Red Cross. In 1951, at the age of 16, he immigrated to Israel, alone. He served as an officer in all the wars from the 1956 campaign in the Sinai Peninsula to the first Lebanon War in 1982. In 2008, he was injured by an explosive device placed at the entrance to his home by a radical right-wing activist.