Comparing Gaza to the Holocaust can be dismissed in one line,
by looking at life expectancy and population growth.
Many people claim that Gaza is "starving".
For example, anti-Israel Irish TD
Joe Higgins
in the Dail,
29 June 2011:
"1.6 million Palestinians have been blockaded - in reality, imprisoned - in the most horrific, inhumane and barbaric conditions
... Children are malnourished and there is a desperate shortage of medicines and building materials,
all because of a barbaric, illegal blockade
...
Why does the Taoiseach not say, in the interests of suffering human beings, that they have an absolute right to the supplies that every other country will get unhindered? Would he accept it if Ireland were blockaded and our people were dying from lack of medicines,
malnourishment and so on, because of this type of hostile action?"
However, this does not stand up to the most cursory examination of
life expectancy:
Gaza and the
West Bank have higher life expectancy than
their neighbours
Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Iraq.
It turns out that being next door to the advanced Jewish state, and having at least some access to its facilities,
is good for their life expectancy.
Gaza and the
West Bank even have higher life expectancy than
Turkey,
which sends them ludicrous
aid flotillas.
Maybe Gaza should be sending aid to Turkey!
The Economist,
2007,
finds that
Palestinian men are the 8th most obese in the world.
Palestinian women are the 3rd most obese in the world.
It's just like Auschwitz, where obesity was a real problem.
Search for
later figures.
Peter Hitchens, 11th October 2010, visits Gaza, and finds it isn't really a concentration camp:
"It is lunchtime in the world's biggest prison camp, and I am enjoying a rather good caffe latte in an elegant beachfront cafe. Later I will visit the sparkling new Gaza Mall, and then eat an excellent beef stroganoff in an elegant restaurant.
...
Don't, please, accuse of me of complacency or denying the truth. ... I don't think it is a paradise, or remotely normal.
...
There is danger. And most of the people cannot get out.
But it is a lot more complicated, and a lot more interesting, than that.
...
Can anyone think of a siege in human history, from Syracuse to Leningrad, where the shops of the besieged city have been full of Snickers bars and Chinese motorbikes?"
Gazans "suffering" in a new Gazan shopping centre, 2010.
I love the subtitle:
"Gazans are forced to stand, humiliated, in long lines at checkpoints"
when it shows the tills!
Gaza 2011.
Just like Auschwitz.
Funny comment on the video:
"NOOOOOOOOOO this is lies!!why GaZa only get iPhone 3GS?
when IsRaeiil get iPhone4????
crimeeesss!!1 i tell UN!!!"
You may think reality could not be more ridiculous than that comment.
Well, read on:
iPhone 5 on sale in Gaza before Israel.
Report, Oct 2012.
Formerly here.
Now here.
Reuters
report:
"The iPhone 5 will not be available until December from mobile operators in tech-mad Israel ...
But the phones have been available for a couple of weeks in Gaza and they were on display on Monday
in three independent mobile stores in a one-block radius in downtown Gaza City."
Al Jazeera TV report on Gaza economy, Nov 2017.
Also here.
At the shop in Gaza, June 2019.
From "Mera World".
This shop is nicer and better stocked than 95 percent of the shops in my entire childhood in Ireland in the 1970s-80s.
I guess I grew up in a "concentration camp" too and just didn't know it.
The comparisons of Gaza
with the Holocaust are basically a form of Holocaust denial.
They are saying that the Holocaust was not so bad
- only roughly as bad as Gaza.
This represents a staggering failure of imagination.
Anyone comparing Gaza to the Holocaust
needs to read a book about the Holocaust.
The 9 hour documentary
Shoah (1985).
Everyone who has ever used "Nazi" and "Holocaust" language about Israel and Gaza
needs to watch this, and needs to read about the Holocaust.
