FORMER British prime minister David Cameron once described the Gaza Strip as a “prison camp”. 

That was in July 2010. Cameron was speaking to an audience of businessmen during a visit to Turkey where he criticised Israel for launching an attack on a convoy transporting Turkish activists and aid to Gaza. Nine Turkish citizens died in the raid. 

Israel and Egypt had enforced a blockade on Gaza, restricting goods and people from coming in or out freely. 

“Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp,” Cameron said. “People in Gaza are living under constant attacks and pressure in an open-air prison,” he added.  

Never before had a British prime minister been so blunt. 

Even prisons have basic electricity, food, and water. Not Gaza though. Most of its 2.3 million people are without these essentials after Israel announced a “complete seige” on Gaza. About 1 million of the population there are children, according to estimates by Unicef. 

Gaza’s sole power plant, which had been working intermittently for days, shut down on Wednesday after running out of fuel. Without power, water cannot be pumped into houses. At night, there is near-total darkness punctuated by fireballs and pinpricks of light from phones used as flashlights. 

Imagine our children in such a situation. Wouldn’t we be asking what they could have done to deserve it? 

To add to that, hundreds of Israeli strikes are raining down on the tiny enclave with an area of just 365 sq km. The people there have nowhere to run, with the only other border being blocked by Egyptian authorities. There is no exit by air or sea either. 

That is worse than being in a prison. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges wrote hours after the Hamas attacks on Saturday that there would be a genocidal assault on Gaza. A ground offensive now looms. 

Hedges reminded us of the Warsaw Ghetto, described also as an open-air prison. 

“The Nazis had sealed 400,000 Polish Jews inside the Warsaw Ghetto. The trapped Jews died in the thousands, from starvation, disease and indiscriminate violence. When the Nazis began to transport the remaining Jews to the extermination camps, the resistance fighters fought back. None expected to survive.”  

But Marek Edelman did. Hedges, a close friend of the survivor’s wife, wrote about Edelman. 

“Edelman, after the war, condemned Zionism as a racist ideology used to justify the theft of Palestinian land. He sided with the Palestinians, supported their armed resistance and met frequently with Palestinians leaders. He thundered against Israel’s appropriation of the Holocaust to justify its repression of the Palestinian people.  

“While Israel dined out on the mythology of the ghetto uprising, it treated the only surviving leader of the uprising, who refused to leave Poland, as a pariah. Edelman understood that the lesson of the Holocaust and the ghetto uprising was not that Jews are morally superior or eternal victims. History, Edelman said, belongs to everyone. The oppressed, including the Palestinians, had a right to fight for equality, dignity and liberty. 

“To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors, Edelman said.” 

An urgent intervention from the international community is needed. To be human is to be with the oppressed and never the oppressors. – October 14, 2023.  

* Hafiz Hassan reads The Malaysian Insight.  

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.