The Lead

Stop Auschwitz in Gaza

by Marcia Merry Baker (EIRNS) — May. 11, 2024

The situation in Gaza is now at the extermination phase. Today, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued an “urgent warning” telling residents in central parts of Rafah to evacuate, because their area will be a “dangerous combat zone,” and to go immediately to the “humanitarian zone” in the coastal area of Al Mawasi. Likewise, Palestinians at the northern Gaza camp of Jabalia, are told to evacuate to the northwestern Gaza City.

What is there at these “humanitarian zones? Nothing at all. No water, electricity, health care, housing, food. Nothing. However, the IDF statement today asserts that its orders for civilians to relocate are done “in accordance with international law.” In fact, the IDF orders terrorize people already deprived of the means of life.

The IDF shut the two border entry points of Rafah and Kerem Shalom six days ago. A chorus of spokesmen for public and private aid organizations are sounding the alarm. UNICEF reports that for six days, no fuel nor humanitarian aid at all has entered Gaza. Today was the expected shutdown of five hospitals, 28 ambulances, and 17 clinics. The World Food Program and UNRWA report that as of this weekend, there will be no more food to distribute.

Some 300,000 people have fled the Rafah area, on IDF orders, in recent days; now thousands more are trying to leave. Oxfam’s spokesman called it “unconscionable.”

South Africa yesterday filed an emergency measure request with the UN International Court of Justice at The Hague, to have the court call upon the United Nations to act to remove Israel from Gaza. The South African request stated, “The situation brought about by the Israeli assault on Rafah, and the extreme risk it poses to humanitarian supplies and basic services into Gaza, to the survival of the Palestinian medical system, and to the very survival of Palestinians in Gaza as a group, is not only an escalation of the prevailing situation, but gives rise to new facts that are causing irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

The nation of Libya yesterday filed a “declaration of intervention” legal action with the ICJ, in support of the new South African filing, calling for a stop to Israel’s genocide. Libya’s filing states, “that Israel has violated the Genocide Convention ‘by engaging in genocide against the Palestinian people and the failure to prevent genocide and failure to punish genocide’” in violation of UN statutes.

Already in Gaza the death count is over 35,000 people, with over 78,000 injured. Unless the current extermination process is stopped, the death toll will jump into the hundreds of thousands, and claim the 2 million people of the Gaza Strip.

The League of Arab States, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, among the world’s Muslim population in general, and the whole international community, are faced with the specter of the mass elimination of the Palestinian people.

This extermination process is not occurring in the shadows. It is broadcast on mainstream and alternative media by the hour. The whole world is watching.

Now is the time to intervene to stop those imposing Auschwitz in Gaza. There must be a ceasefire, full-scale humanitarian aid, action for Palestinian statehood, and launching an “Oasis Plan” development approach to transform the immediate Trans-Jordan, and the entire region from North Africa through to South Asia and Europe.

Internationally, there are waves of protest against the genocide, seen in street rallies from Spain to Australia. Students continue demonstrating on hundreds of college campuses, in dozens of countries. In the United States, there is now growing pushback from faculty and others, against attempted brute control over campuses by the defenders of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The immediate task is to bring this activation as fast as possible into effective focus. The International Peace Coalition (IPC) is making available this weekend the powerful messages on this and on the danger of nuclear world war from the escalation against Russia, in Ukraine and elsewhere, that were presented at the weekly IPC meeting May 10, by several military, engineering and other specialists. The discussion at large includes the question of a national march in the United States; economic shock blockades against Israel, and at all times in all ways, giving orders immediately to the Biden Administration to stop Auschwitz in Gaza.

At the trials of Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg, the principle was observed that you are responsible for a crime, “if you knew or could have known” of its perpetration and consequences. We know what is going on in Gaza today. We know who is doing it. We know who supports it. They are committing heinous crimes in our name. Now is the time to stop them. Determine what you can do, and do it.