Gaza in 2023 and the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 are two sides of the same coin

The destruction Israel is now raining down on Gaza, in retaliation for the Oct 7 uprising Palestinians launched earlier, has no more fitting parallel than that suffered in 1943 when the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rose up against the genocide being waged on them by the Nazis.

Driven from their homes and their properties seized, Europe’s Jews were herded into walled-off districts to await the pleasure of their Nazi oppressors. And just as that tyranny took place in Poland then, so has it been systematically executed by Israel in Palestine since 1948.

And just as happened then, after most of the Warsaw ghetto’s Jews had been transported to their deaths and the remainder rose up against their Nazi oppressors, so too have Palestinians, after 75 years and thousands of Palestinian deaths, risen up against Israel’s Nazi-like treatment of them.

As fair a comparison as it’s possible to consider.

In the exact same way Jews were treated, Palestinians have been driven from their homes, had their property seized and they have been herded into walled-off enclaves, And, just as the Jews of Warsaw did, rather than wait to become victims of another Holocaust, or Nakba as Palestinians know their experience, they have fought back.  

Like the Warsaw Ghetto’s Jews, despite knowing their survival was unlikely, yet determined “not to allow the Germans to pick the time and place of our deaths”, so too have Palestinians decided not to allow Israel’s Nazi-like Apartheid regime to determine the number of their days.

But you aren’t allowed to consider that comparison

To guard against such truths igniting your humanity, our craven media cuts and pastes foreign news agency Zionist propaganda, to keep you sympathising with Apartheid Israel.  News reports which always present Israel as the victim and any actions it takes against Palestinians as being born of “regrettable necessity,” are deliberately designed to distort your understanding of the reality. 

Our media always presents the suffering of Israelis as just that much more pitiful than that of Palestinians. Israeli forces are called “the IDF” to project them as “disciplined professionals”, whereas Palestinian fighters are disparagingly referred to as “Hamas”, “militants”, “terrorists”, and now as “human animals” and “snakes”whose actions are “barbaric” and comparable with “ISIS.” 

Formed in 1987, Hamas is a Palestinian nationalist movement dedicated to the establishment of an independent Islamic state in historical Palestine and its para-military wing, the Izz a lDin al-Qassam Brigade, which has conducted many attacks against Israel, is regarded as a terrorist organisation.

As contemptible as it is in wartime to weigh the brutality of opposing forces, to determine which is the most, or least, honourable, the findings count for nothing if the opposing forces aren’t fairly compared.

Zionist nationalist groups that compare most closely with that definition of Hamas fighters are the Hagganah, the Palmach, Irgun and the Stern Gang, all of them infamous for the savagery and barbarism of their attacks on Palestinians prior to Israel’s formal establishment in 1948, when they were universally recognized as “terrorists” .  

If Hamas can be described as “barbaric,” then they have had good teachers

The groups who fought the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto were divided politically, but to project their solidarity today they are presented as simply valiant Jews united against a common foe. But “solidarity” is the last thing our media wants conveyed when it comes to Palestinians, and so they are always presented as “extremists” and “radicals”, somehow apart from other Palestinians all suffering under the same tyranny. 

All war is barbaric, not least the killing of innocents, but the way of a victim’s death is no less barbarous when, instead of war-surplus hand grenade, it results from a multi-million-dollar guided missile launched from a bunker miles away.

The Media is Israel’s first line of defence.

If “the first casualty of war is truth,” then the media must be held to account for the distortions in foreign news agency reports it publishes, as was highlighted by the Radio NZ journalist, Mick Hall, who tried to bring balance to RNZ’s reporting on the war in Ukraine, but was rail-roaded for his trouble.  

The Warsaw uprising lasted from 19th April 1943 until 16th May when the SS commander ordered the ghetto’s “block by block destruction” which killed 13,000 Jews, about half of whom were burnt alive or suffocated.

Something similar is happening in Gaza right now.

References;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjVQgDhMuis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw-ghetto-uprising

https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/08/chris-hedges-palestinians-speak-the-language-of-violence-israel-taught-them/

https://www.dni.gov/nctc/groups/hamas.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/15/the-nakba-five-palestinian-towns-massacred-75-years-ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUCeQt8zg5o

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUCeQt8zg5o

PS; Interestingly, just as US defences were “down” when 911 happened, coinciding with the Neocons’ need of “a new Pearl Harbour” to ignite their “war on terror”, so has the failure of Israel’s state-of-the-art protection systems coincided with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s introduction of Nazi-like law changes being widely challenged.