A prison camp. "The world's largest open air prison".
This page shows how such comparisons are beyond absurd.
This era is over now, after the
Hamas massacre of Israelis in Oct 2023.
The era when Gazans could have a good life is gone now.
Until Hamas is eliminated entirely and Gaza is re-occupied.
The old world is gone now.
Ramadan in Gaza, May 2018.
A scene of genocidal horror.
Egypt shows the GDP Gaza could definitely have, if Gazans stopped the war and lived in peace.
GDP per capita of Palestinians (West Bank and Gaza) over time, in 1990 dollars.
Stats from Angus Maddison.
GDP per capita of Ireland over time, in 1990 dollars.
Stats from Angus Maddison.
Just before Arafat's intifada wrecked things in 2000,
the Palestinians were as rich as Ireland in the late 1960s
(which was the richest Ireland had ever been up to that point).
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
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.
In 2014,
Gaza and the
West Bank had higher life expectancy than Jordan,
and
even higher than
Turkey,
which was sending ludicrous
aid flotillas to Gaza.
Maybe Gaza should have been 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.
Total population of the Gaza Strip.
Note in 1967 the brutal Israeli occupation begins and the Gazan population falls.
Then in 2006 after Hamas takeover the Israeli genocide of Gaza begins and the population is decimated.
There will be no one left in Gaza soon.
Sample videos of beautiful Gaza before the 2023 war
here and
here.
Many more!
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?"
The
"Roots" club and restaurant in Gaza City,
2009.
Copy here.
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."
Level Up, rooftop restaurant in Gaza City, 2015.
Al Jazeera TV report on Gaza economy, Nov 2017.
Also here.
The Louvre Restaurant in Rafah, Gaza, 2017.
"5 places to visit in Gaza", April 2019.
Another great video from the Turkish
TRT World.
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.
Sad to see
Al Mashtal Hotel after the 7 Oct 2023 war.
But Gazans chose this.
They didn't want the previous picture, so they chose this picture.
See full size.
Posted here.
Another view of
Al Mashtal Hotel before and after the 7 Oct 2023 war.
Gazans chose this.
They wanted this.
Posted here.
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.
