Echoes of history: From Nazi-era Jewish ghettoes to Gaza today
“Comparing Gaza to a Nazi-era ghetto is necessary” — Masha Gessen
“Who is Masha Gessen? Gessen is Jewish and his family lost loved ones in the Holocaust. He wrote a New Yorker essay published that likened the Gaza Strip to the WWII-era ghettos that Nazis developed to segregate and control Jewish people in occupied Europe.” — NPR
“No nation is all victim all the time or all perpetrator all the time. Just as much of Israel’s claim to impunity lies in the Jews’ perpetual victim status, many of the country’s critics have tried to excuse Hamas’s act of terrorism as a predictable response to Israel’s oppression of Palestinians… The fight over one rightful claim to victimhood runs on forever.” – The New Yorker
Compare the Nazi Jewish ghetto in Warsaw in 1940 to Gaza under Israeli control today with this StoryMap. Swipe right for the jewish Warsaw ghetto. Left for Gaza.
Open air prison
“The term “open-air prison” seems to have been coined in 2010 by David Cameron, the British Foreign Secretary who was then Prime Minister. Many human-rights organizations that document conditions in Gaza have adopted the description. But as in the Jewish ghettoes of Occupied Europe, there are no prison guards—Gaza is policed not by the occupiers but by a local force.
Presumably, the more fitting term “ghetto” would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.” — The New Yorker
Stoking violence to stay out of jail
Charges of breach of trust, bribery and fraud
“Netanyahu is immersed in a criminal investigation after Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced plans to indict the prime minister on charges of breach of trust, bribery and fraud. The Israeli prime minister would begin his unprecedented fifth term under a cloud of scandal.
Netanyahu courted more overtly racist elements of the Israeli far right as he eyed reelection. He agreed to bring two fringe right-wing parties, the anti-Arab Otzma Yehudit party and the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, into his governing coalition… The party might conceivably gain enough votes to enter the next Knesset, and potentially even become part of the governing coalition.” — Salon
‘Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.’ — Santayana
TakeAway: Don’t fall for politicians stoking violence, racism and religious extremism to stay out of jail.
Deepak
DemLabs
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Reposted from Democracy Labs with permission.
