Gaza/Warsaw Ghetto
Auschwitz wasn’t any kind of positive learning experience, and the overwhelmingly majority of the Jews who had anything to do with the Holocaust learned nothing from it because they were killed by it. It wasn’t a learning experience and it wasn’t an experience which made people better, or more left-wing, or more anti-racist. There was no silver lining to the Holocaust. --David Hirsh
But something that I do want to comment on is the inappropriate comparisons people make in discussing the situation.
For instance, I've seen pro-Israelis claim Israel is experiencing a 9/11 24/7, because of Hamas rockets, and I've seen anti-Israelis claim that Palestine is experiencing the same thing. Of course, the notion is ridiculous: 3000 people died in a single day in the September 2001 attack (not counting the rescue workers who died later as a result). 3000 is greater the death toll of the entire Second Intifada. Even Assad's Ghouta chemical attack killed only half that number; even Syria is not experiencing a 9/11 every day.
But for me the most pernicious comparison is of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. Pernicious because the two events are utterly incomparable, and additionally offensive because it uses Jewish suffering against Jews.
Melvin Goodman, one of those ex-CIA paleocon wingnuts beloved of Counterpunch, wrote a stupid piece there comparing the two, for example noting that unemployment was a problem in the Ghetto, just like Gaza. Marginally smarter, Glenn Greenwald didn't invoke Warsaw, but did compare Netanyahu to Goebbels, then disingenuously added that to compare two things isn't to say they're the same. A retired academic writing for MondoWeiss uses the Warsaw Ghetto because an Auschwitz comparison is not quite right; what's going on in Gaza, thankfully, is "not exactly the same" as the actual death camps, but is comparable to the Ghetto.
Here's some more examples:
@idangazit you disgusting apologist for massacre ethnic cleansing collective punishment THIS is the Warsaw Ghetto Gazans the new Jews #Gaza
— George Galloway (@georgegalloway) July 18, 2014
Israel has dropped more bombs on #Gaza in a few days than the Nazis dropped on Warsaw in WWII. Defiling the memory of Holocaust victims #IDF
— Marcais (@IrelandUncut) July 17, 2014
Replace Warsaw Ghetto with #Gaza
Replace @IDF with German troops
Replace Hamas with Jewish Fighting Org Z.O.B
http://t.co/DJaskUtZDl
— Chez_Em (@Chez_Em) July 23, 2014
Why was it all right, indeed, a necessity for the Jews of Warsaw to resist but not the Palestinians of Gaza. Sorry Zionists no difference.
— Stanley Cohen (@StanleyCohenLaw) July 19, 2014
Jews in Warsaw, Auschwitz, Treblinka did NOT die so their surviving offspring could cause THIS
http://t.co/LwJeALED0i
| #GazaUnderAttack
— occupiedpalestine (@occpal) July 18, 2014
God cries tonight Israel learned genocide from Hitler, not love from God. God bless the dead in Gaza, I'm ashamed I have Jewish blood in me.
— Donna (@DCrose76) July 17, 2014
What do these comparisons actually mean?
The Twitter account RealTimeWWII, a project of history graduate Alwyn Collinson, has been tweeting the history of the Second World War as it unfolded on this day 72 years ago. It is now up to 1942: the Warsaw Ghetto. It makes for difficult reading.
Himmler, head of SS, orders "Final Solution" be completed in Nazi-occupied Poland this year: "no Jewish persons may remain, except in camps"
— WW2 Tweets from 1942 (@RealTimeWWII) July 19, 2014
Himmler: "For the security & racial hygiene of the German Reich a total cleansing of Jews is necessary." To SS, "deportation" code for death
— WW2 Tweets from 1942 (@RealTimeWWII) July 19, 2014
Nazi SS launching Gross-Aktion Warsaw: plan to empty Warsaw ghetto & ship all Jews to Treblinka extermination camp. pic.twitter.com/zkkKX2Q7lm
— WW2 Tweets from 1942 (@RealTimeWWII) July 22, 2014
83,000 people died of starvation or disease in Warsaw ghetto over 2 years; now Nazis want Poland "Jew-free" this year pic.twitter.com/ZGkKBXbmq3
— WW2 Tweets from 1942 (@RealTimeWWII) July 22, 2014
Marek Edelman, Warsaw: "Despite hunger, brutality, we felt ghetto life had some stability… now arrests are random. They mean to kill us all"
— WW2 Tweets from 1942 (@RealTimeWWII) July 22, 2014
In Warsaw, SS summon Jewish Ghetto Council, Judenrat, & order them to help with mass deportations- almost all Jews to be "resettled in east"
— WW2 Tweets from 1942 (@RealTimeWWII) July 23, 2014
Nazis plan to clear Warsaw ghetto of all except workers in German factories, Jewish doctors, Judenrat & ghetto police pic.twitter.com/xYlbWlThUq
— WW2 Tweets from 1942 (@RealTimeWWII) July 23, 2014
Adam Czerniaków, head of Warsaw Judenrat, pleads with Nazis to spare more Jews- SS refuse to exempt orphan children. pic.twitter.com/v9ZmXpXJb0
— WW2 Tweets from 1942 (@RealTimeWWII) July 23, 2014
Nazis order council & ghetto police to arrest 6000 Warsaw Jews to send to camps- otherwise SS will execute hostages incl. Czerniaków's wife
— WW2 Tweets from 1942 (@RealTimeWWII) July 23, 2014
In Warsaw Adam Czerniaków commits suicide: "They demand me to kill children of my nation with my own hands. I have nothing to do but to die"
— WW2 Tweets from 1942 (@RealTimeWWII) July 23, 2014
In the Warsaw Ghetto, 400,000 Jews were forced into an area of 3.4 square km (1.3 square miles). Gaza is 139 square miles with a population of 1.8 million. The population density of Gaza is high: 13,069.1/sq mi, twice that of Tokyo (but much less than, say Manila's 111,000, Chennai's 67,000, Macau's 55,000, or Paris' 54,000). The population density of the Warsaw Ghetto was 307,692.
In the Ghetto, nearly a quarter died of starvation and disease (that's comparable to 450,000* Gazans). Of those that remained, most were taken to Treblinka and killed, along with 2000 Romani people and some million other Jews. 7000 Jews were taken from the Ghetto to the camp every day in the summer of 1942. Around 20,000 survived after less than three years.
That is what genocide looks like. I don't think that is what Gaza, however bad it gets, looks like. I understand your anguish about Gaza, but please don't make this kind of comparison.
For pointing out that these comparisons are not on, here is the kind of response one gets:
ZIONIST @bobfrombrockley BLOCKED
— Ron Hughes رون هيوز (@wherepond) July 17, 2014
Comments
I'll definitely be linking to your site often!
And since it was the Jewish people that all the terrible terrible things has happened to for centuries, many just can't believe that a nation with it's sad history of being oppressed seems to have become the oppressor, doing these horrible, degrading and destructive things to the people of Gaza.
That said, the blame game is useless. The killing has to stop now.
Why do people need to draw any parallels in these cases? The situation in Gaza is dreadful in its own right; it doesn't need us putting a finger into the most painful wound in Jewish people just because we can't think of a better parallel.
Building of walls, controlling of supplies and checkpoints are features common, sadly, to many nation states, from Spain (with its barbed wire fence around Cueta) to the US (where the Mexican border has become hyper-militarised and literally hundreds die of dehydration trying to cross the border every year). The killing of children, tragically, is a feature of all modern wars and conflicts, most starkly just 118 miles from Gaza in Syria. We don't need to look far for plenty of parallels. Why look to the Holocaust?
It is seven years since the blockade, 9 years since the disengagement. Gaza has suffered horribly in that time, but it has also had a very high population growth rate, one of the highest in the world. If Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, it is doing it in a way that increases the population. Look again at the death rate in the Warsaw Ghetto: hundreds of thousands perished in just a couple of years. So: rage about Gaza, but on its own terms, not by meaningless and offensive comparisons.
Is it or isn't it like this or the other siege doesn't matter, what matters is that in absolute terms the shelling of Gaza is a war crime.
But even if every single one of your points was true, there would also be enormous differences, in the scale and in the intent, as I detail in the post above. I do not see in what way it illuminates or explains anything about Gaza to make this comparison.
a) Past bad experiences with lentil bombs
b) lentils are just too damn nutritious
1. the actual horrific situation in which this conflict places Gazan civilians is not bad enough (or their powers of description are inadequate to the task) and so they grasp for the most horrifying case they can think of; and/or
2. they want to delegitimise the Jews' historic memory of the Shoah by referring specifically to the worst thing which happened to the Jews, and say "You're just as bad as the Nazis". (perhaps a 3rd reason is ---as someone once said, and I cannot take credit for this burst of insight --- Europe has never forgiven the Jews for the Holocaust).
Yes, it is a terrible situation. Yes, it would be a legitimate (although in my view grossly erroneous) political stance to primarily blame the Israelis for this murderous mess. That's within the realm of fair (even if incorrect) comment. But no, it is not legitimate to accuse the Israelis of perpetrating another Holocaust, because that is not what's happening.
The reason Nazi comparisons are used is clearly to upset jews.
The holocaust is used to condemn Israelis and ask them to uphold standards that others are not expected to. It,s a kind of euro centric way of looking at the conflict and asking one side to uphold better morals,This despite many Israelis not originating from europe and having little to do with the holocaust.
The holocaust reduced to a event to chastise one side in this conflict.Of course the Palestinians have had a minor though tragic role in the holocaust. Providing pressure on the British to stop holocaust survivors reaching Palestine.In the case of the mufti of jerusalem collaboration with the nazis that depending on who you believe directly caused jewish deaths.