The Warsaw Ghetto

In November 1940, the Nazis began building the Warsaw ghetto wall. Jews from Warsaw and other parts of Nazi Europe were confined there.

The Warsaw ghetto eventually had an estimated population of 400,000 people crammed into just under 4 square kilometers (approximately, as numbers differ somewhat according to sources).

Food rations for Jews were officially limited to a mere 184 calories per day, while Poles were entitled to 1800 and Germans to 2400.

The Gaza Strip (the other ghetto)

The Gaza barrier has been under construction since 1971, and has since been modified to be higher and more secure, making access to Gaza increasingly difficult. There are currently only two crossings into or out of Gaza.

The Gaza Strip ghetto is home to around 2 million people in 365 square kilometers, just over half the area of Madrid, which is 604 square kilometers.

In Gaza, before October 7, 2023, 80% of Gaza’s population was dependent on UNRWA emergency aid, and 59% were classified as food insecure. At least 58% were living below the poverty line, on less than $1 a day. (https://unrwa.es/misiones/supervivencia-en-gaza/).

After October 7, in Gaza, according to Abeer Etefa, communications officer for the UN World Food Program (WFP), “the population can only eat one meal a day“, “bread has become a real luxury” and “fishermen cannot go out to sea, nor can farmers reach their land, and the last bakery working with WFP assistance has had to close“. This was in November 2023, now it is much, much worse. (https://www.forbes.com.mx/poblacion-de-gaza-apenas-se-alimenta-una-vez-al-dia-y-solo-con-comida-enlatada-advierte-onu/).

The Resistance

On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German police and troops moved in to deport the remaining ghetto survivors. They were able to hold out for nearly a month, but on May 16, 1943, the uprising ended. Slowly, the Germans had crushed the resistance. Of the more than 56,000 Jews captured, approximately 7,000 were shot, and the remainder were deported to camps.

In the report of May 13, 1943, Jürgen Stroop said: “180 Jews, bandits and subhumans have been annihilated. The Jewish sector of Warsaw no longer exists. The large-scale operations ended at 8:15 p.m. when the Warsaw synagogue was blown up. The total number of Jews acted upon was: 56 065, including captured Jews and Jews whose extermination can be proved.”

The day of October 7, 2023, was yet another day in the resistance of the Palestinians. An episode in which in a single day Hamas escaped from the ghetto and killed 1200 people (https://www.nytimes.com/es/2023/11/13/espanol/israel-bajas-guerra.html), although from that number one would have to discount a good number of casualties caused by the Israeli forces themselves (https://www.telecinco.es/noticias/internacional/20231031/ejercito-israel-mato-indiscriminadamente-civiles-israelies_18_010849900.html).

The number of 1,200 killed on the Israeli side was far too high by ‘normal‘ standards. Since the first Intifada in 1988, the Israelis have killed 11,652 people to 1,766 killed by the Palestinians (https://elordenmundial.com/mapas-y-graficos/muertos-conflicto-israel-palestina-desde-1988-intifada-hamas/). On top of that, the Palestinians have held about 240 hostages, few compared to the 8,300 Palestinian prisoners (hostages), of whom more than 3,000 are held in what Israel calls “administrative detention“, that is, without knowing the charges against them and without an ongoing legal process. Among these prisoners are at least 200 children who remain in “Israeli custody” (https://www.aa.com.tr/es/mundo/ong-denuncia-que-880-ni%C3%B1os-palestinos-han-sido-detenidos-por-israel-este-a%C3%B1o/3059499)

This abnormally high number seems to have been the trigger or excuse to proceed with the Israeli “final solution“. Now, masks are off, the Israeli army is going to clean up the Gaza Strip. And by cleansing they mean wiping out all traces of life, men, women and children. As of February 5, 27,365 Palestinians have been killed (mostly women and children) and 66,630 wounded, not counting the countless missing in the rubble.

Similarities and differences

Interestingly, there are many similarities in both ghettos, and a link. Both peoples have been subjected to cruel extermination, to genocide. And ironies of fate, the victims of the Nazis mutated years later into the Nazis themselves, genocidal exterminators of the Palestinian people. It would be necessary to ask the sufferers of the concentration camps, what they think of the new holocaust.

The difference in the treatment of both genocides is very evident, even too evident. Seen under the prevailing prism of today, the Jewish uprising should have been qualified as terrorism and the Jews as terrorists. The armies of Europe should have sent arms to the Nazis and rushed out to support Hitler. Many of them should have visited the ghetto and conducted interviews in the places where the poor Nazi soldiers were murdered. And of course to punish the surviving Jews in the ghetto without food, water and medicine.

The sheep and the unwilling sheep

In the case of the Warsaw ghetto, the Jews were almost two and a half years without doing anything. A mere 50 SS soldiers, supported by two hundred civilians, managed to carry out their plan with little resistance, something that one of the ghetto’s most remembered tenants, historian Emanuel Ringelblum, author of ‘Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto‘, already wondered. “Why have we Jews allowed ourselves to be led to the slaughter like sheep?” he asked.

Well, the Palestinians have not wanted to be “sheep” and since 1947, the year in which the UN plan wanted to grant half of the territory to each party (the Jews represented a third of the population and had only 7% of the land), they have exercised their right to resist. To resist the occupation of their lands, to resist the expulsion from their territory and to resist the ethnic cleansing that the Jews of Israel have been carrying out for more than 75 years with the absolute indifference of the countries that call themselves “saviors of democracy“.

They will not have my condemnation for not wanting to humiliate or submit. They will not have my condemnation for not wanting to be sheep.

Meanwhile, the USA, the EU and the rest of the countries (with honorable exceptions) look the other way, lest they lose market share. Or we do not enjoy Israel in the ‘European‘ sports competitions or in Eurovision.