On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization

by Douglas Murray

Still, the claim that Gaza was ever in any way a “concentration camp” should have been seen as absurd at face value. In 2005, when Israel withdrew all Jews from Gaza, the population of the Strip was around 1.3 million. By 2023 it was over 2 million. That would make it the first concentration camp in history in which the population actually grew. There was no population boom in Auschwitz in the 1940s. So why the claim? There are many things that Gaza under Hamas may have been called. But why a “concentration camp”? It seems it was for the same reason that Israel was accused of being “Nazi-like” in its actions. The aim of Israel’s critics for many years seemed to be not just to insult Israel and smear its actions, but to try to use the most powerful terms in Jewish history to wound and hurt the Jewish state. It was not enough that Gaza should be said to be under carefully controlled border checks. Or that one supply or other was being unfairly kept out. People had to accuse Israel of running a “concentration camp” in Gaza. Once again it was noticeable that a considerable amount of “projection” was going on, as well as a deliberate attempt to wound Jews as deeply as possible with this claim.