Yossi Schwartz, ISL the RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 20.06.2022
On 19.6.2022, Nabil Ahmed Ghanem 53 was killed as he tried to cross Israel’s separation wall in Qalqilya city in the 1967 occupied West Bank. He was shot dead while he tried to cross the separation wall seeking super exploited employment. He was among the tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians who regularly seek work in Israel mostly in construction where the capitalist do not provide safety and many die while the criminal capitalists are not punished.
“An Israeli army spokesperson said forces had shot at “a suspect who vandalized the security fence”, which the Palestinians and many rights organizations have dubbed an “apartheid wall” [i]
“At the same time Three Palestinians have been killed and 10 wounded as Israeli forces raided Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry has said. About 30 Israeli military vehicles raided Jenin in the early hours of Friday and surrounded a car in al-Marah area in the east of the city, firing shots at four men sitting inside. Three of them were killed and a fourth seriously injured” [ii]
Not only Gaza is a ghetto where 80%t of the children suffer from depression but so is the West Bank. Even the daily Haaretz understands it.
“Right-wing politician Naftali Bennett’s plan to annex Israeli-controlled parts of the West Bank is just the logical next step in Israel’s historic effort to ghettoize the Palestinians” [iii]
“The 16th of November 1940 was a decisive day for the Jews of Warsaw. The community of 400,000 was closed in the prison walls of the ghetto, which cut the people off everything which could make living possible.
The wall divided Warsaw in two. Even though three districts were established, the wall became the main division line. It cut natural communication routes, and destroyed the topography of the city. Streets have turned into a complex ‘labyrinth’. Thousands of people were forced to leave their homes. The change had affected all areas of human life – organization, customs, psychology, language and many others
On 16 November 1940 the Jews were cut off from the streets of Warsaw, from information, beloved ones who have stayed on the ‘Aryan side’, food, nature, trees, the view of sky reaching the horizon. The Nazis had increased propaganda in order to justify closing the walls, they also imposed the term Jewish living district instead of Jewish ghetto. The walls themselves were seen as a civilizational regression, a return to medieval times. The ghetto was even compared to a concentration camp, with the only difference being that in the ghetto people have to make a living on their own.
Between 22 and 29 March, anti-Jewish violence inspired by the Germans took place in Warsaw – shops and apartments were plundered, people on the streets were attacked.
On 6 October, Jews were banned to leave houses between 7 PM and 8 AM
Eventually, the ghetto was closed on 16 November 1940. 400,000 people lived in 1483 houses. Even though the order was clear, people still didn’t believe in the closing of the ghetto.
On 15 November, at night, closing of the ghetto became a fact and nobody dared questioning it. The German gendarmerie was controlling passages between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Christian’ streets. When the people of Warsaw were going to work at 5 AM, they were surprised: the Jewish district was cut off from the rest of the world.
Poles were allowed to go freely into the ghetto until 26 November. There were 22 gates to the ghetto (wachy). The Germans would systematically decrease their number – in February 1942 there will be 8, in June 1942, before the Great Deportation, they would remove further two.
There were several types of guards of the walls and exits, and their number kept increasing. The walls were guarded by gendarmerie with the blue police, a double line of gendarmerie were placed at the gate of the ghetto, along with Jewish Order Service. Sonderdienst, called ‘junaks’ in the ghetto, were patrolling and looking for smugglers’ carriages. The Gestapo was arriving often at the ghetto gates, and the SS were guarding the exits along with the Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Latvians during deportations.
The first and the most serious consequence of closing the ghetto was an increase in prices of food and hunger which affected the poor, refugees, the sick, children, and the elderly.
People quickly began to organize smuggling. Smuggling was organized through 1) walls, 2) exit gates, 3) underground tunnels, 4) canals and 5) border houses. [36] Various methods of getting through walls or killing the smugglers were described in many documents from the Archive, such as the Diary by Daniel Fligelman, or by Abraham Lewin, who was living by the wall dividing the ghetto from Przejazd and regularly described the fate of smugglers and their work.” [iv]
Down with the murderous Zionist apartheid state!
For a Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/19/palestinian-killed-by-israeli-forces-near-qalqilya
[ii] www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/17/palestinians-killed-by-israeli-forces-in-jenin-raid
[iii] https://www.haaretz.com/2013-01-20/ty-article/.premium/palestinian-ghettos-the-plan-all-along/0000017f-f82b-d044-adff-fbfbb0e80000
[iv] “They want to bury us alive”. The closing of the Warsaw Ghetto Written by: Anna Majchrowska https://www.jhi.pl/en/articles/the-closing-of-the-warsaw-ghetto,544