In a recent interview, Palestinian historian and Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, was asked, “We've been witnessing a genocide in Gaza for over a year now. Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, with some estimates suggesting the numbers are considerably higher. Over a million people have been displaced…. Where does this moment stand in [the] history [of the Palestinian people]?”

Rashid Khalidi replied, “It's a continuation of the Nakba, of ethnic cleansing but it's actually worse than any of the episodes that I can think of. A larger part of the Palestinian population was displaced in 1948 during the Nakba but what has been done during this genocide in terms of the punishment that the civilian population is being exposed to is actually worse than any phase that I can recall of Palestinian history.”

“Worse.” We need to confront that, and act accordingly.

Worse than the Nakba… a Holocaust

The Nakba refers to the founding of Israel in 1948. In Arabic, nakba means "catastrophe." Villages were destroyed. Residences and apartments were blown up at random to create panic. Israeli forces used rape¹ as a weapon of war. Libraries and museums were looted. Cities with Arabic names were renamed with Hebrew names. More than 700,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homeland. 

By standards established as international law after World War 2, the Nakba was a historic crime of genocidal ethnic cleansing. It is impossible to credibly denounce genocide and ethnic cleansing, without including Israel.

In the Nakba, 15,000 people were killed. 

In Israel’s over-one-year-long slaughter in Gaza, the official death count is three times that, nearly 45,000. But an October 22 letter to Biden and Harris from American medical professionals who served in Gaza projects a much higher death toll. An appendix to their letter takes into account the impact of disease, undocumented deaths, and fatal injuries. Based on that, the letter concludes: “It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population.”

What’s going on now is a whole other level of crime. And it demands comparison to the Nazi Holocaust of the Jewish people in Europe. 

From the 1930s until the end of World War 2, the Nazis systematically slaughtered millions and millions of Jews in Europe. They essentially destroyed every trace of a people who had lived in Europe for a thousand years. This was the Holocaust. It unfolded over almost a decade. And the world essentially stood by. That can never be permitted to happen again.

But what Israel, backed by the United States, is carrying out, before the eyes of the world, is another Holocaust. 

This demands a response that is commensurate, on the level of the horror itself. I’ll get to that. But first, additional evidence beyond what was in An Israeli Holocaust in Gaza: What Are WE Going to Do Now?

A Year of Turning Gaza into a Death Camp

Following are a few of the findings of a report submitted to the UN by the Secretary General of the United Nations on September 20, 2024, on Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People in Gaza and the West Bank region of Palestine.

Some of what is detailed in the UN report has found its way into mainstream news. Most of it has been completely whited out, buried, distorted, or presented as “one-off” incidents in the context of Israel “defending itself.”

The September 20 UN Report documents that:

• Israel has dropped tens of thousands of tons of bombs on tiny Gaza (141 square miles, about a quarter the area of New York City). In addition to killing more than 100,000 Palestinians, the resulting “debris (including from infrastructure, unexploded ordnance, munitions, white phosphorous, industrial and medical waste, and human remains) releases extremely high levels of carcinogenic [cancer-causing] asbestos and other hazardous substances.”
• Soon after October 7, 2023, Israel “ordered 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate southward within 24 hours.” Israel has driven more than 90 percent of the population from their homes. And “It is impossible to conceive of any durable solution” to the mass displacement of Palestinians given Israel’s systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, atop the immense psychological toll the conflict has taken on the people of Gaza.”
• Credible media reports [several are cited in the UN report] indicate that the Israeli military uses artificial intelligence (AI) to destroy whole apartment buildings at times when the most innocent civilians will be killed, while creating a pretense (false excuse) that a noncombatant Hamas member was sleeping in one of the apartments.

• Israel has “intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival.” Israeli officials have openly said, “The international community is warning us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this […] After all, severe epidemics […] will bring victory closer.” [emphasis added] 
• Israel’s genocidal slaughter targets women and children. “Pregnant women, in particular, have been prevented from obtaining necessary nutrition, care and emergency obstetric services… many face childbirth under horrific and unsanitary conditions, increasing medical complications and maternal deaths. The war’s psychological impact has also caused a rise in stress-induced miscarriages, stillbirths, and premature births. In addition, pre-existing malnutrition among pregnant women significantly worsened due to catastrophic levels of food insecurity, heightening the risks of disease and death.”
• Israel has carried out “unacceptable and unconscionable arrests, incommunicado detention, and alleged ill-treatment of healthcare workers.” And mass detentions, ill-treatment and enforced disappearance of possibly thousands of Palestinians from the north of Gaza. 
• As early as July 2024, the Secretary General of the UN warned that “nowhere was safe in Gaza and that everywhere was a potential killing zone.” [emphasis added]

These crimes go even beyond genocidal ethnic cleansing and apartheid oppression. This is a Holocaust. And all of this is armed, funded, defended, and all-around enabled by the United States.

A Holocaust Is a Holocaust and Must Not Be Repeated

In the Nazi Holocaust, far too many “Good Germans” were disgusted by what was going on but shamefully averted their eyes. As the Holocaust unfolded, and while there was a better chance to stop it, too many stood by silently. There was also courageous resistance, but that resistance was not sufficient, and not guided and framed by what it would have actually taken to STOP the Nazis and their genocide against the Jews (and other horrific crimes against humanity).²

Defenders of Israel claim that it is morally unacceptable to compare what is going on in Gaza to the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews in Europe. They claim making that comparison disrespects or trivializes the crime of the millions of Jews wiped out by the Nazis. 

Just the opposite is true! It does an unconscionable disservice to the memory of those killed in the Holocaust to use their memory to commit another Holocaust. And I am one of those people from a Jewish background who has enough moral integrity to insist that NEVER AGAIN MEANS NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE. 

So What ARE We Going to Do NOW?

Because this is even more relevant now, I’m going to repeat the challenge I posed at the end of the piece An Israeli Holocaust in Gaza: What Are WE Going to Do Now?:

What needed to happen as the Nazi Holocaust unfolded, and what needs to happen here and now in relation to Gaza, is resistance aimed at STOPPING a genocide... resistance that grows deeper and broader in the face of repression... resistance where people are opening up serious debate about the source of the problem and the solution.

And ultimately and fundamentally, what is needed is a revolution to overthrow the capitalist-imperialist system that is driving this U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinian people.

This challenge is particularly urgent now as we confront the coming to power of a fascist regime in the U.S., with Trump urging Israel to ignore world outrage and “finish the job” in Gaza.

There is a basis for an actual revolution in the very workings of this system that have brought us to this time and place. And a blueprint for a radically different and better system. One dimension of that fundamentally different system is that, instead of enforcing exploitation and oppression throughout the world, it will “support people throughout the world fighting for the goal of emancipation.” 

You will find the science behind all this in the work of Bob Avakian (BA). (You can start with A basic introduction: Real Revolution, In This Time: What the Powers-That-Be Don't Want You to Know in BA’s social media messages.) And thanks to decades of work, and ongoing timely leadership from BA, there is a scientifically based strategy and path for that revolution in these dark times.

Start to get with that by following and spreading the social media messages from Bob Avakian @BobAvakianOfficial on any social media platform.