The Holocaust in Gaza
Nazi soldiers stole Jewish people’s jewelry and other possessions and kept them for themselves.
Israeli soldiers are doing the same to Palestinians in Gaza.
Nazi soldiers gave Jews numbers instead of names.
Israeli soldiers have done the same in Gaza. They wrote with marker instead of tattoo guns, but they are inflicting the same lifelong, intergenerational wounds.
Nazi soldiers ransacked Jewish-owned businesses.
Israeli soldiers are doing the same in Gaza.
Nazi soldiers murdered Jewish people in cold blood, with the intention of wiping them off the planet.
Israeli soldiers are doing the same to Palestinians in Gaza.
What is the difference between the Holocaust of Jews in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust of Palestinians in Gaza? Must gas chambers and crematoria be built before the savagery is haulted and before the ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people is called what it is by all news outlets, all leaders, all people?
I was ten years old when I first learned about the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. My Hebrew school classes were ushered into a large room where we watched The Diary of Anne Frank. Discussion and further history followed. I didn’t understand anything and had nightmares for months. How was this possible? For a time, I read obsessively about the Holocaust, trying to understand that which, to my mind and to my soul, defied comprehension. Over the years, I would come to comprehend — not on a soul level, but on an intellectual level — how easy it is in a world like ours to brainwash, manipulate, dehumanize — and how easy it is for human beings to stay silent, look the other way, find justifications for all manner of atrocities.
A holocaust is happening in Gaza. It is not a war. It is not a “conflict”. It is not a battle between the Israeli government and Hamas. And Israel is not “defending itself”. This is an attempt to wipe the Palestinians in Gaza off the face of this earth and forever take away their land and homes. An Israeli real estate firm has already created posters for the new beachfront properties that it would like to build in Gaza.
For those who were indoctrinated as I once was to believe that Zionism does not equal racism but is the only way for Jews to be safe in this world, for those who have lost the ability to feel another human being’s suffering without first knowing the tribe of the person who is suffering, I beg you to open your mind and heart to what is happening in Palestine. The savagery is on the same level as the Nazi brutality. The “final solution” is the same. And as this holocaust is being live-streamed, no one will be able to say they did not know.
