Much like Auschwitz

Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly, 25-31.10.07. Israel's regard for Palestinians can be summed up in how it imprisons and terrorises them. The pogrom-like attack in the quiet hours before dawn on the helpless Kitziot prisoners lasted for more than two hours as a huge cloud of smoke hovered over the area. When the dust settled, there were hundreds of prisoners who suffered significant to serious wounds, mostly in the head and upper body. At least nine inmates were severely injured, including Mohamed Sati Al-Ashkar, who was hit with a live round in the head, causing massive brain haemorrhage. On 23 October, Al-Ashkar was pronounced clinically dead. As is usual in such circumstances, the Israeli media and government spokespersons switched to damage-control mode, disseminating disinformation about what happened while barring reporters access to the notorious facility.

Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, Israel continues its slow-motion genocide of the occupied territory's estimated 1.5 million persecuted inhabitants. A plasterer, also unemployed because Israel won't allow raw materials, such as cement, into the Strip, insists on more daring language. "I don't know why the world doesn't call things by their real name. Here the Jews are starving us to death. Gaza is a large concentration camp. It is very much like Auschwitz. Yes, there are no gas chambers and crematoria. But people are dying for lack of food and lack of medicine. And I am 100 per cent sure that hadn't it been for the world media and international public opinion, or whatever is left of it, Israel would have disposed of us a long, long time ago," the worker added.

A few weeks ago, Israel declared Gaza a "hostile entity", as if the occupied coastal strip of land where poverty, despair and occupation violence define daily life had been treated as a friendly entity before.

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