From Auschwitz to Rafah: A Promise Broken
Gaza is no longer on the brink. It is gone.
The buildings are rubble, the families are scattered, the children are buried. The land has been carved, cratered, starved, and strangled beyond recognition. What remains is not a territory under siege, but a graveyard still being expanded, one airstrike at a time.
What Israel has announced now is not a policy of security or peace. It is not even a pretense of negotiation. The planned "relocation" of 600,000 Palestinians into a single militarized encampment built atop the ashes of Rafah is not a humanitarian gesture. It is the closing act in a long, slow campaign of erasure, the largest act of civilian confinement since the defeat of Nazi Germany.
That is not exaggeration. That is arithmetic. Auschwitz, the horror against which the world once swore "Never Again," held about 150,000 people at its most crowded. The Israeli government now intends to build a camp four times that size in a place already stripped of shelter, water, food, and freedom. A camp in the middle of a war zone. A camp built not for living, but for locking people in.
Never Again, for Whom? Israel to Relocate 600,000 Palestinians Into a Massive Concentration Camp
Israel is preparing to relocate more than half a million Palestinians into a walled compound built atop the ruins of Rafah. They're calling it a "humanitarian city." The world should be calling it what it is: a concentration camp.
No one who speaks of "voluntary relocation" with a straight face while those people are being bombed should be allowed to speak the language of democracy, or human rights, or decency. This is not humanitarian policy. It is logistics. It is management. It is containment. Gaza is no longer a home for its people, and this camp is not meant to be one either.
"Never Again" was never supposed to be conditional. It was not supposed to be political. It was not meant to apply only to some genocides and not others. But somewhere along the way, it became a slogan of convenience. It became a shield to hide behind. It became a reason not to speak, not to act, not to care. And now, it is being used to excuse the very thing it was meant to prevent.
The victims of yesterday have been turned into the justification for today’s crimes. Those who mourned their dead with the world’s sympathy now invoke their memory to silence dissent and crush another people into the dust. The irony is not lost. It is just ignored.
Meanwhile, the world debates phrasing. As bodies pile up in the streets and under the rubble, officials argue over tone. Leaders issue statements that say everything except the truth. Governments fund the famine and then hold press conferences about aid. Journalists who dare call it what it is are accused of bias, while those who stay silent get rewarded with access.
The West has not only failed Gaza. It has betrayed it. It has armed the siege. It has paid for the missiles. It has watched, month after month, as hospitals were bombed, as children starved, as every line of so-called international law was crossed, erased, and then forgotten. Gaza has been turned into a wasteland with the full knowledge, and the full support, of the most powerful countries on earth.
This was not inevitable. It was not accidental. It was planned. It was deliberate. And it is still happening. There is still time to say no. There is still time to pull the plug on the weapons shipments, the diplomatic cover, the gaslighting press releases. But that window is closing.
Once that camp is built, the world will pretend it always existed. That this was always the plan. That the people there are not prisoners, but guests. That the fences are for safety. That the watchtowers are for order. And they will call it peace.
But we will remember what was there before. We will remember the homes. The streets. The names. We will remember that Gaza was not empty. That it was full of life, and joy, and pain, and struggle. That it was loved. That it mattered.
And we will remember who helped destroy it.