Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has condemned critics of Israel who liken its crackdown on a Palestinian revolt to Nazi efforts to exterminate Jews.
Speaking on the eve of a gathering of world leaders in Poland to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, Mr Sharon said the lessons of the Holocaust were still ignored by the world.
"This phenomenon, of Jews protecting themselves and fighting back, is deemed outrageous by the new anti-Semites," he told Israel's parliament, the Knesset.
"The legitimate self-defence measures which Israel takes in its war against Palestinian terror - measures any sovereign state would be obliged to take in order to safeguard its residents - are presented by sundry anti-Semites as Nazi-style acts of aggression," the right-wing former army general said.
Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and killing of more than 3,000 Palestinians in violence that erupted in 2000 have drawn comparisons in parts of the Arab and European press to Nazi actions.
"Sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the evil that begat the horror still exists, and still poses a threat," Mr Sharon said. "We know we can trust no one but ourselves."
More than 1,000 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian suicide bombings and other attacks during the 4-year-old Palestinian uprising.
More than 40 world leaders including will gather today in Auschwitz, near the Polish town of Oswiecim, to mark the 60th anniversary of the day when Soviet troops liberated the camp. Several hundred survivors will also attend the ceremonies.
Some 1.5 million people, 90 per cent of them Jews, perished in the gas chambers and crematoriums in Auschwitz during the World War II Holocaust that killed six million Jews in all.