From Auschwitz to Gaza: The modern-day concentration camp
Roberto Amaral
GAZA has been transformed into the largest open-air concentration camp ever known to humanity.
An unimaginable 'death row' where the Palestinian people, more than half of whom are children, await their sentence without reprieve, dictated by the frighteningly belligerent and perverse Luciferian enemy. And, to the same extent, cowardly.
For months, the Zionist government of Israel has been promoting, under the blind eyes of the cynical international community, an open ethnic cleansing. In this true 'concentration and extermination camp,' the wretches do not walk on their own two feet to the gas chambers to which the victims of Nazism were condemned: they are torn apart by the bombs of the ultra-modern army of the State of Israel, founded in 1947 under the auspices of the UN precisely to guarantee a home for the people who survived the Holocaust.
Like the Jews of yesterday, today's Palestinians are incapable of defending themselves; but a powerful army – supersonic planes, drones, missiles, tanks and all sorts of artillery – is raining bombs down on them (as if hunger, vilification and theft of their lands were not enough). This is a genocide carried out in the open and in the shadow of the moral iniquity of an international community that watches everything impassively.
Unlike the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp, today's victims cannot dream of liberation from the Red Army, which in January 1945 advanced on Poland on its way to Berlin. No one comes to their aid. They are left 'to their own devices,' which has turned out to be a cruel fate.
Those who escape the siege of Gaza are already condemned to no future: without a homeland or land, they will have nowhere to go. They are poor, and do not have a chain of protection spread throughout the world; they are the new condemned of the earth. Without 'promised salvation', they have been condemned to exile, they will wander, their dreams shattered, and their most modest hopes lost.
In 1947, Palestine, then occupied by 600,000 Jews and 1.3 million Arabs (of whom around 700,000 Palestinians were expelled), was to be divided up so that two states could be established, one Jewish (the future State of Israel) and the other Arab. The first was established, and we know what it is today. The other, 78 years later, is awaiting international recognition, which has been denied.
The US and its cohort: the United Kingdom, Germany and most of the European Union are leading the refusal. Israel occupies and blockades the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, where it has been lying and rolling since the 1967 invasion, during the 'Six-Day War'.
The Palestinians of Gaza are a captive people in an occupied country waiting to be destroyed, hermetically blockaded, deprived of fuel, electricity, water, food and medicine, with their civil infrastructure destroyed, schools demolished and hospitals at the mercy of bombings. Estimates speak of somewhere between 35 and 45 thousand civilian victims. More than 15 thousand children have already died, and the UN warns that more, more than 15 thousand babies, could still die if the Israeli government continues to block the entry of food and medicine.
While the international community remains silent and Zionism applauds war crimes, Ehud Olmert, former Prime Minister of Israel (2006-2009), defines Zionist policy as 'perverse, malicious and irresponsible'. We must listen to him:
'Netanyahu typically tries to obscure the kind of orders he is giving to avoid legal and criminal responsibility in due course. But some of his lackeys say it openly: 'Yes, we are going to starve Gaza.'' He charges: 'Israel is committing war crimes.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The South African
10 hours ago
- The South African
Global Citizen Summit in Spain: SA actress to take the stage
Global Citizen has announced that its flagship summit, Global Citizen NOW, will take place on June 29, 2025, at CaixaForum Sevilla in Spain. This summit will also feature our very own Nomazamo Mbatha as the host The summit has been scheduled to take place ahead of the UN's Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4). A focus on reshaping global financial systems, promoting sustainable debt relief, and accelerating investment in renewable energy across Africa and Latin America. The event will be hosted by South African actress and humanitarian Nomzamo Mbatha and will see high-level speakers deliberate. These include Pedro Sánchez (President of Spain), Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission), Mia Mottley (Prime Minister of Barbados), Gaston Browne (Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda), Mark Suzman (CEO of the Gates Foundation), and Maria Fernanda Espinosa (former UN General Assembly President), and many others This summit is being held in partnership with the Spanish Government. Intensive discussions and focused panels will place an emphasis on transformational development finance and renewable energy investment, particularly in underserved regions. Another focus of the summit will be the Scaling Up Renewables in Africa campaign. This is supported by von der Leyen and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, in collaboration with the International Energy Agency. This campaign is aimed at tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, as well as creating 500 000 jobs in the energy field. This particular initiative also hopes to provide electricity access to 600 million Africans. The pledging conference is scheduled for November 2025 during the G20 Summit. Leaders like Sánchez and Mottley have called for urgent reform of the global financial architecture to meet today's challenges. Global Citizen CEO Hugh Evans emphasized the need for 'radical efficiency' to end extreme poverty. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 11. Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.


Daily Maverick
13 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Spare us from Big Men with big wallets, bigger lies and biggest egos
Ah, Chief Dwasaho. I was not going to write this letter today. I have exhausted my mental strength with human beings, the lies, deception, broken promises, rape, murder, genocide, missiles, bombs, drones, crime, corruption and obfuscation. There is not even a single statistic to confuse those with secondary education. While contemplating lying in bed and telling my editor I was unwell, I chanced upon the last letter from the founding Editor-in-Chief of this publication, Branko Brkic, who retired in 2024 after 15 years of service. Somehow, his resilience and sense of purpose made me rise from my slumber. I went to my family and told them I was despondent. With concern in her voice, my wife asked about what. I replied: 'Everything.' Thus, my leader, there is nothing intellectual about this week's letter, no links, no pleas for anything and no academic reflections, just despair and despondency. My readers should know that I aim to entertain as I inform. Not this week. The faces of despair I cannot unsee the images of Palestinian children's bodies I saw this week. Their faces already covered after meeting their fate at the hands of Israeli bombs, because Israel has a 'right to defend itself'. I saw aid seekers running frantically after the bombing rain, and yet when they spoke to journalists, there was no defiance in their faces. In their voices, there was no thirst for revenge, only despair. I witnessed a newsreader from the Iranian State broadcaster on Al Jazeera reading the news live while sirens wailed in advance of a missile attack; it all went black – no area is safe, not a media house, church, mosque, hospital, school, road or building. Just breathing alone is an invitation for untold suffering at the hands of Big Men with Bigger Lies, Biggest Egos and even the Thickest Wallets. At the receiving end are women and children, who have yet to start a single war in the history of Menkind – without humanity, but evil masked as the defence of sovereignty. Sadly, the children who watched the videos of Ukrainian women and children being bombed this week, like those of Gaza and Iran, are tomorrow's suicide bombers. The children who will survive the mayhem, which Al Jazeera calls by its first name, genocide, are tomorrow's members of Hamas, Isis, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hezbollah, the Lord's Resistance Army, among others. Arms or bread? But who arms these so-called extremist groups? Where do they acquire the mortars, the bombs, the deadly rifles, uniforms and the satellite phones? Who profits from the continuous flow of weapons into Israel, Gaza, Syria, the Sahel, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and beyond? How on Earth does a rebel group in Eastern DRC, such as M23, have the resources, the mortar bombs, to fight for decades on end while children starve and women perish? Who benefits from the minerals smuggled out, and who guarantees the weapons keep coming in? These are the questions that never get answered, as the cycle of violence creates only more despair. Men in occupied Gaza told Al Jazeera this week that 'all we want is flour to feed our children'. Flour to feed your children when you no longer have a house, a town, a friend or a neighbour, and you're stateless. I do not wish to overwhelm sensitive readers with the numbers of those killed in occupied Gaza and the West Bank since 1948. In Syria, Chechnya, Iran, Iraq, Ukraine, Egypt, Lebanon, Kosovo, Crimea and Donbas, as well as Kuwait, blood has flowed. The West's weaponry is always deployed, and bodies (what bodies? Body parts) were not even buried; they perished in the rubble. Tomorrow, it will be us. And no one will be left to defend us. The fate of rebels and the cost of proxy wars My leader, for how long are men, yes, men, going to feed their egos using taxpayers' money and substituting evidence with bogeymen like 'Iraq' with 'weapons of mass destruction'. The next minute, it's Iran with 'atomic bombs'. Not so long ago it was in Libya where the UN was used as a ruse for regime change. A man with an ego, according to my daughter, the size of Russia, who had been propped up for years by the West, outlived his usefulness. He was killed like a dog on live television. Proxy governments and puppet regimes fare no better. Their end is written in tears, betrayal and exile. Yet, while these games of power play out, women and children never know peace. Big Men with swollen bellies and even bigger egos crisscross the globe, claiming to end wars but only deepening the wounds. They demand 'unconditional surrender' from those under fire, or worse, urge besieged nations to cede territory to aggressors in exchange for foreign powers expropriating their minerals under the guise of protection. What word describes these Big Men? Extortionists? Bloody thieves. Heartless murderers, heavily disguised as human beings, their hands dripping with the blood of children and women from Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, there's always Gaza, and who knows who is next? Not to mention the giants of Africa's independence struggle: Patrice Lumumba (Congo) and Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso), all assassinated, and Samora Machel of Mozambique, allegedly dying innocently in an air crash on our soil. How convenient? But the list of African leaders assassinated since independence is longer and more tragic. Félix-Roland Moumié (Cameroon), Sylvanus Olympio (Togo), Eduardo Mondlane (Mozambique), Amílcar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau), Marien Ngouabi (Congo-Brazzaville), Anwar Sadat (Egypt), Melchior Ndadaye (Burundi), Juvénal Habyarimana (Rwanda) Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara (Niger)… the list is endless. The assassinations delayed Africa's freedom and plunged the continent into endless civil wars. Coincidence? Today, despair is all that remains, if not puppets. The machinery of suffering Sadly, it is those with melanin-rich skin who bear the brunt of modern warfare, even though we can hardly assemble a hand grenade, let alone manufacture the weapons that rain down upon us. Our former colonisers control the global armaments industry, producing everything from atomic bombs to mortar shells, and now, the latest horrors: kamikaze drones – loitering munitions designed to explode on impact, acting as the weapon itself – and reusable combat or surveillance drones, which drop bombs or fire missiles before returning to base. The world's leading arms exporters, nations that once carved up Africa and Asia, continue to profit from the endless cycle of violence, flooding conflict zones with weapons while preaching peace from raised podiums. Yet, my leader, for every so-called 'success' in these remote wars, a drone operator or pilot sits in a distant room, pressing a button that ends 100 lives here, a dozen there and 300 somewhere else. Somehow, in between the killing, they pause, give each other high-fives, and their countries honour them with medals dripping with blood. Careers are built and the orgy of rape, murder and mayhem continues. I wonder what these men tell their children when the end comes. Do they speak of honour, dignity and duty to country, or do they whisper of nightmares, regret and blood-soaked hands? Who will answer for the suffering of women and children in Lebanon, Gaza, Iran, Mozambique, Kenya, Nigeria and the next place marked for destruction? The world's top five arms exporters by value The five largest arms exporters in the world by value between 2020 and 2024 are the US, France, Russia, China and Germany. The US leads by a wide margin, accounting for 43% of global arms exports, followed by France (9.6%), Russia (7.8%), China (5.9%) and Germany (5.6%). Except for Germany, the world's leading exporters of deadly weaponry that kill and maim people mostly with melanin-rich skin, crude oil reserves and critical group minerals, so happened by accident of 'history' to own nuclear weapons. Coincidence? Till next week, my man – send me nowhere near Big Men with Biggest Lies, Egos and Thickest Wallets. DM


The Citizen
13 hours ago
- The Citizen
24 hours in pictures, 19 June 2025
24 hours in pictures, 19 June 2025 Through the lens: The Citizen's Picture Editors select the best news photographs from South Africa and around the world. A racegoer attends Royal Ascot on Ladies Day in Ascot, Britain, 19 June 2025. The horse race meeting and social event runs daily from 17 to 21 June 2025. Picture: EPA-EFE/NEIL HALL Nurses walk along a balcony corrider past a first responder filming with a phone as smoke billows from a building at Soroka Hospital following an Iranian missile attack in Beersheba in southern Israel on June 19, 2025. Soroka Hospital and two towns near Tel Aviv were struck after a barrage of Iranian missiles early on June 19, with rescuers reporting at least 47 people injured in the latest attacks. (Photo by JOHN WESSELS / AFP) A man dressed as a Dancing Devil of Chuao stands for a picture on a cocoa plantation during the second day of the Corpus Christi celebration in Chuao, Venezuela, on June 19, 2025. The Venezuelan Dancing Devils of Corpus Christi were recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2012. (Photo by Juan BARRETO / AFP) Female artists speak with visitors at an exhibition organized by the Union of Women Painters in Kabul, Afghanistan, 19 June 2025. Picture: EPA-EFE/SAMIULLAH POPAL Former MK Party SG Floyd Shivambu briefs the media at Mhulu Luxury Boutique Hotel on June 19, 2025 in Midrand, South Africa. This comes after Floyd Shivambu was removed from his position as uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party Secretary-General a few weeks back. (Photo by Gallo Images/Fani Mahuntsi) Palestinians leave their cars to seek cover from tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers during a military operation in the Balata refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Nablus, 19 June 2025. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 30 Palestinians were wounded during the second day of the Israeli operation in the camp. Picture: EPA-EFE/ALAA BADARNEH Members of ActionSA during a protest demanding the removal of National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) Head , Advocate Shamila Batohi outside the offices of the Department of Justice And Constitutional Development on June 19, 2025 in Pretoria, South Africa. Opposition parties have slammed the NPA for failing to successfully prosecute those implicated in state capture and botched extradition matters. (Photo by Gallo Images/Frennie Shivambu) People attend the Corpus Christi procession, which, in addition to Roman Catholics, also included Greek Catholics with their clergy, in Przemysl, Poland, 19 June 2025. Celebrations of the Feast of the Holy Body and Blood of Christ are taking place throughout Poland, one of the most important holidays in the Catholic Church. Picture: EPA-EFE/Darek Delmanowicz Fans collect autographs from the South Africa men's Cricket Team players during a meet and greet event, 19 June 2025, at the Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton after the team won the International Cricket Council (ICC) World Test Championship at Lord's over the weekend. Picture: Michel Bega/The Citizen Vehicles travel through a flooded street in Juchit Mexico, 19 June 2025. Hurricane Erick, the first of the 2025 season in the Mexican Pacific, made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane and weakened to a tropical storm after passing through the state of Guerrero, in southern Mexico, causing material damage but no casualties. Picture: EPA-EFE/LUIS VILLALOBOS Cuban artist Daldo Marto performs at the launch of the 'Art Brut' exhibition, as part of the 'Grand Palais d'Ete' (Summer of the Grand Palais) in Paris, France, 19 June 2025. The event gives the public free access to the exhibitions of the fully restored monument and runs from 11 June to 21 September 2025. Picture: EPA-EFE/CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON A person holds flags during a demonstration for peace in Iran and Gaza; in Caracas, Venezuela, 19 June 2025. Picture: EPA-EFE/MIGUEL GUTIERREZ MORE: 24 hours in pictures, 18 June 2025