8 Ways In Which Gaza is Not Like the Warsaw Ghetto

This is supposed to be a blog about theology - which is usually what's predominantly on my mind.  In the last few weeks (for obvious reasons) I've been rather distracted from that and as such have been thinking about other things.  I have seen way too many comparisons between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto for my liking - one that strikes me as particularly pernicious and wrong.  As such, here are the first 8 ways that came to my mind regarding the great dissimilarity of the two populations.

1.  The Warsaw Ghetto was designed to lock Jews in.  In October of 1940 the Germans ordered the Jews of Warsaw to build (at their own expense) a walled off and barb-wired section of the city.  Anyone attempting to leave could be shot on sight.  Gaza has no such features as Gazans regularly come to Israel for medical treatment. Israel never required them to live there and would not protest if a Gazan desired to emigrate. 

2.  The Jews of the Ghetto lived on a starvation diet.  The average daily amount of calories consumed in the ghetto was 184.  Consequently, many Jews, including many children, died of starvation.  Gaza, on the other hand, receives thousands of tons of food and medical supplies from Israel itself through the Kerem Shalom crossing - even in wartime.  No one is starving.

3.  The Warsaw Ghetto received no international aid.  The Jews of Warsaw were on their own - which is why most of them died.  Gaza, however, is the recipient of extremely generous amounts of money.  In 2013, the US alone allocated 440 million. Sadly, much of this assistance seems to have been used to buy rockets and build terror infrastructure. 

4.  The Warsaw Ghetto was ultimately a way station to the extermination camps.  An estimated 300,000 out of a total population of 400,000 were either gassed in Treblinka, died in the ghetto uprising or died of starvation.  While the Jews were actual victims of genocide, there is (quite obviously) no such plan for Gaza.  In fact, if the Israelis are attempting genocide on the Palestinian population they are doing a very poor job as their population has actually increased by 2 million in the last 20 years.

5.  The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto had no state sponsor of weaponry.  They were able to fashion some simple incendiary devices and smuggled in some guns and bombs which they used to stage their well known uprising in 1943.  The Hamas rulers in Gaza receive thousands of short and long range rockets, automatic riffles, anti-tank rockets and mortars supplied by the Iranians.  Many of their fighters have undergone advanced military training.  In short, Gaza has a professional army - one that the Jews in Warsaw lacked.

6.  The Jews in the Ghetto had no diplomatic backing.  There was no UN or EU or Arab League to stand up for them and decry their inhumane treatment.  The Gazans have the ardent backing of each of these organizations and many others and are able to parlay world sympathies into leverage for more favorable cease-fire agreements, increased funding and as a tool to harm Israel's international standing.

7.  The Jews in Poland didn't do anything to the Germans or Poles.  Polish Jews had been quiet and productive members of Polish society for 1000 years.  Hamas, by contrast, was founded in 1987 for the express purpose of killing Jews as is stated in their charter in 12 places.  So whereas there was no logic to keeping the Jews separate from the Polish population, there is excellent reason for the Israelis to maintain strong and high fences between themselves and Hamas.

8.  When the Germans attacked the Ghetto, they systematically annihilated it block by block until nothing was left standing.  When the Israelis counter-attack Gaza they do it though an unprecedented series of warnings via leaflets, phone calls, text messages and the like.  So while the Germans did everything they could to raze every building, the IDF exerts the same type of effort to preserve them. 

In short, Gaza is nothing like the Warsaw Ghetto.

The Spiritual Origins of Jew-Hatred

Without bothering to recount the thousands of years worth of oppression the Jewish People have endured and the endless stream of explanations (and justifications) for it, I wanted to briefly touch on what I believe to be the true root of the past and present “Jewish Problem.”

As is well known, the Jews perennially take it on the nose – often, despite our very best efforts. If we keep to ourselves we are accused of failing to pull our societal weight. If we get too involved in world affairs we are suddenly running all of the media and the banking system and various shadow governments. We stand accused of creating Communism… and Capitalism. It’s been claimed that we poisoned wells (and the air) and eat children’s blood with our unleavened bread (despite the fact that blood is forbidden by our religion). As far as I know, we are the only people that had stood accused of Deicide.

It’s currently en vogue to dislike us because we have supposedly taken another people’s land – though even a small bit of research will reveal that the land was never controlled by that people and in any event was won in a series of defensive wars from yet other peoples. After a while it really starts to seem as though we will be disliked no matter what – that the goalposts will always be moved and some reason found to dismiss our (very many) contributions to world civilization in favor of an inexplicable and wildly disproportionate approbation - one that comes even when innocent Jews are kidnapped and murdered.

Syria is in the process of killing its second 100,000 citizens. Russia has just taken over another country. Iran has lied and tricked and manipulated its way to the brink of nuclear capability – one with which some of its officials have openly said they would use against the Jews (of course). Yet there is no BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) movement aimed at these or any other nation – except for the one Jewish nation. There are no “peace” flotillas launched to help the victims of any of these terror zones – only Israel contends with those. And in 2013 there were no less than 21 UN resolutions against tiny Israel while a whopping four were directed against the rest of the world. It seems to me that only one of two possible things is going on here. Either the Jews are truly the most despicable, demonic, and blood-thirsty people the world has ever seen (something that any half-sentient observer knows is complete bunk) or the majority of the world has been and is currently under the sway of a sub-conscious abhorrence of our goodness and more importantly the ultimate root of that good.

2,500 years ago the Jewish prophet Isaiah envisioned a time in which the nations of the world would come to recognize that they had it all wrong – that the Jews were the world’s “suffering servant” – the messengers of light and morality that God charged with steadfastly staying on message no matter the consequences. “He was despised and we had no regard for him. But in truth it was our ills that he bore, our pains that he carried… .” To me there is no greater confirmation of this prophecy than the utterly irrational, misplaced histrionics that characterizes modern Jew hatred. People who hate Jews ultimately hate God. People who hate morality (and want to live unshackled by it) hate the Jews and what we have to say.

Hitler himself said it best when he wrote that “Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortification of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence which only a very few can bear. The Ten Commandments have lost their validity. Conscience is a Jewish invention, it is a blemish like circumcision.” (Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 220-222)

Far be it for me to suggest that the BDS movement has that distinctive Nazi like stench but forgive us for noticing that the “Final Solution” started off with a series of boycotts as well. Forgive me also for saying that once again you have it all backwards -what you believe to be ugly is in truth beautiful and perhaps worse, what you believe to be beautiful is actually evil.

I have news that you may not like to hear – we are not going anywhere and we are not going to just shut up and die. We’ve been at this for more than three millennium. Do you think that you’re stronger or more clever than Egyptians or the Romans or the Third Reich? No, we and our message are here to stay. In fact, we’ve been promised: “And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you, throughout the generations, an eternal covenant to be your God, and the God of your descendants after you.” (Genesis 17:7)‎

Mark Twain also wondered about this dynamic and wrote:

“The Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Persian, rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dreamstuff and passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed, made a vast noise and they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up, held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

Perhaps both the secret of the world’s disdain for us and our “immortality” lies with the originator of the message and not in the messenger.