[NYTr] Gaza: The Auschwitz of our time

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Riaz K. Tayob (activ-l) - Aug 12, 2007

Palestinian Info Center via Citizens Internatinal - Aug 9, 2007

 
Gaza: The Auschwitz of our time

By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

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.

Source: The Palestinian Information Center

Citizens International is a global initiative from Penang, Malaysia. It 
seeks to analyze the causes of increased militarization of the planet 
and to work towards an environment of peace and international security 
including the preservation of social justice, ecology and sustainable 
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