[R-G] The Gaza Ghetto

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.killingtrain.com/node/673

The Gaza Ghetto

Justin Podur
Jan 6/08


The Warsaw/Gaza Ghetto <http://www.killingtrain.com/sites/killingtrain.com/files/images/gaza3.jpg 
 >

Joseph Massad from Columbia University has an article called "The Gaza  
Ghetto Uprising" <http://electronicintifada.net/v2/ 
article10110.shtml>, where he compares the current Israeli attack on  
Gaza to the Nazi attack on the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw. Any relative  
analogy can be broken. To make an analogy is not to say two things are  
the same. Just that they are the same in important respects. In this  
case, the gigantic disparity between the victims and the aggressors  
and the complicity of the rest of the world.

A note here. In this analogy, Palestinians are the Jews. And I do  
think of blaming the Palestinians for supposedly bringing this on  
themselves or discussing how poor their strategy is, is at about the  
same moral level as blaming the Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto  
uprising. The Jews were heroes, facing unstoppable enemies and the  
indifference of the world. In those respects, the analogy applies.

In any case, Joseph Massad is not the first to make this comparison.  
It was made in 2002 before Israel massacred hundreds of people in the  
West Bank and Gaza in what Tanya Reinhart described as Israel's moral  
low point (to that date - since then Israel has gone much lower). That  
quote from an Israeli military officer inspired an artist friend of  
mine to create this piece. Please feel free to use it or share it.