Gaza:
The Auschwitz Of Our Time
By Khalid Amayreh
26 October, 2007
Global
Research
In 1940, several months after
invading Poland in September 1939, the Nazis forced about 500,000 Jews
into the Warsaw Ghetto, surrounding it with a high wall. Tens of thousands
died from hunger and disease. Eventually, 300,000 were sent to death
camps, mainly Treblinka in eastern Poland.
Similarly, Israel is now
incarcerating nearly a million and a half helpless Palestinians in the
Gaza Strip into a hell similar in nature to the Warsaw Ghetto. The Gaza
concentration camp is not only fitted with a wall, but also with every
conceivable tool of repression, such as electric fences and watch towers
manned by Gestapo-like trigger-happy Jewish soldiers who shoot first
and ask questions later.
Moreover, thousands of Israeli
soldiers, are surrounding Gaza in a hermetic manner, shooting and killing
any Palestinian trying to escape, e.g. enter Israel to search for work
or even food.
Palestinian kids survive
on bread and tea
Even Palestinian kids playing
soccer near the hateful fences, are routinely riddled with bullets or
reduced into pieces of human flesh by the "most moral army in the
world."
As a result of these genocidal designs, Gazans in the thousands are
dying of malnutrition and illness resulting from anemia. Moreover, Children
in great numbers are surviving on a meager and totally inadequate diet
consisting mainly of bread and tea.
This week, this writer contacted
several Gaza families and asked to speak with the kids. The answers
I received were truly horrifying. I did speak with 10 kids and was shocked
to find out that aseven of the kids told me their diet during the previous
week consisted mainly of bread and tea in addition to some tomatoes.
The grown-ups, especially
the parents, wouldn't reveal the extent of the unfolding tragedy they
are facing. They would only say a terse "al hamdulillah" (thank
God). But the tone of their voices tells us that they are in real distress.
The Gaza Strip into the largest
detention camp in the World
The harsh blockade of Gaza
didn't start in mid June when Hamas took over the small seaside region
after defeating and ousting the American-backed Fatah forces led by
Muhammed Dahlan and cohorts who had been planning, with American dollars
and arms, to murder the Hamas leadership in order to receive a certificate
of good conduct from the Bush Administration and Israel.
In fact, Gaza has been effectively under siege since 2000 when the second
Palestinian intifada or uprising broke out. Since, then Gazans have
been barred from exporting their products and produces.
Moreover, Israel, which has
been telling the world that it had ended its occupation of Gaza, still
retains full control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, thus reducing
the Gaza Strip into the largest detention camp in the world.
To make a long story short,
Gazans are being pushed into a situation very similar to that which
prevailed at the Ghetto Warsaw. They are not allowed to work (unemployment
in Gaza stands at more than 70%), they are not allowed to travel abroad,
they are not allowed to enter Israel for work, they are not allowed
even to go fishing offshore since Israeli gunboats would open fire at
any fishing-boat daring to go more than a mile off the shore.
The criminal and draconian
measures are meant to further impoverish Gazans to the extent that they
won't be able to purchase food.
The declared Israeli goal
behind starving and tormenting the people of Gaza is to force them to
revolt against the democratically-elected government, led by the Hamas
movement, and settle for a quisling-like government that would sell-out
Palestinian national rights, including the paramount right of return
for Palestinian refugees uprooted from their homes and villages by Jewish
gangs in 1948, when Israel was created.
It is believed that up to
two thirds of the inhabitants of Gaza are refugees. Hence, the intensive
repression and coercion being meted out to these people in order to
force them to give up their right to return to their homes and villages
in what is now Israel.
It is crystal clear that
Israel is steadily but certainly effecting a Nazi-like approach toward
the people of the Gaza Strip.
The PR-conscious Israeli
government, however, is hoping that the world will not take proactive
measures to expose the creeping genocide in Gaza . This is why Israel
is allowing limited shipments of food products , such as flour and cooking
oil, into Gaza , to avoid a possible international outcry.
However, the supplies are
conspicuously meager and don't meet the basic nutritional needs of the
vast bulk of Gaza children.
Unfortunately, the United
Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) seems to be conniving and colluding
with Israel to keep the unfolding Gaza tragedy as silent as possible.
UNRWA officials do make idle
statements from time to time, warning of an impending "humanitarian
crisis" in Gaza. However, the UN agency often refrains from "saying
it as it is," probably for fear of upsetting the Israelis and the
Americans, who apparently don't like to hear words like "starvation,
and concentration camps" with regard to the situation in Gaza find
their way to the international media.
Israel is undoubtedly the
central culprit in this man-made tragedy in Gaza, since it is up to
her to allow Gazans to obtain food and export their products and especially
their produces to the West Bank. Such a step, which would cost Israel
nothing, would help Gazans obtain some meager income to feed their children.
However, Israel, as always,
has apparently chosen to be faithful to long traditions of callousness
and moral depravity, not unlike the way the Nazis treated their victims.
US administration, Abbas
as guilty as Israel
But Israel is not the only
guilty party in this tragedy. The US is actually as criminal as Israel,
since the Bush administration is urging Israel to keep up the pressure
on Gaza.
In fact, American officials keep congratulating their Israeli colleagues
on the "success" of the blockade against Gaza. I wonder what
kind of politicians are those who enjoy watching children starve to
death? Are they human beings or cannibalistic beasts? This question
ought to be directed to Condoleezza Rice whose behavior toward the Palestinian
people is probably a thousand times worse than the behavior of the worst
American white slave masters toward here forefathers.
Maybe it is naive to appeal
to Rice's sense of justice and morality since her manifestly criminal
record with regard to the Palestinian cause leaves no doubt as to the
woman's unethical and evil character.
But if the Bush administration,
which has been carrying a holocaust in Iraq, and Israel, which has been
effecting ethnic cleansing in Palestine in the name of Jewish nationalism,
can be "excused" on the ground that only evil can be expected
from evil governments, the Palestinian regime of Mahmoud Abbas has no
excuse whatsoever to collude and connive with Israel against the very
people it is claiming to serve.
Such behavior, including
the tacit and implicit encouragement of Israel to tighten the blockade
of Gaza, and keep hundreds of thousands of encircled Gazans hungry and
thoroughly tormented, characterizes quislings and agents of a foreign
occupation.
Clearly, Abbas and his aides
have much to explain to the Palestinian people. They also have much
to atone for. This is if they still possess any sense of shame
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