How Gazan suffering is described influences how the conflict is interpreted—and where the blame lies. Hyperbolic and inaccurate labels fail to describe a far more complex reality.
This was a brave piece. Not a waste of time. Not a deflection. Not semantics. Not propaganda. What I hear is the voice of a Palestinian who is brave enough to reject binary thinking and rhetoric. It’s the binary thinking that props up this endless cycle of violence.
This entire piece was essentially a debate over semantics and a complete waste of time. Gaza has been under military blockade for almost 20 years now (which is an act of war under international law) and in the past 2 years, Israeli forces have intentionally murdered tens of thousands of women and children while denying food and medicine to the entire enclave. It is hard to come up with a single phrase or word that accurately captures the depths of Israel’s crimes but I don’t think concentration camp is as far off as the author would like to believe. However, here are a few more that might apply: genocide, ethnic cleansing, slaughter, and massacre. The semantics are irrelevant. What matters here is substance and substantively, Israel is guilty of serious war crimes of the sort that have no statute of limitations. It must be held to account one day. It’s long list of crimes prove there will never be peace in the Middle East until it is wiped off the map. Instead of wasting our time with silly debates over vocabulary, we would all be better served using our energy to try and formulate a plan to deal with the existential threat posed by the baby killing sociopaths who rule Israel and their arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The idea of the piece was to answer if these terms applied to Gaza or not. The fact that they don't apply doesn't make the life in Gaza so easy. Yes it can be under military siege and not be a concentration camp or the world's largest prison.
Words do indeed have meanings, but in his anti-Palestinian propaganda Hamza Howidy distorts the meanings and effects of concentration camps and open-air prisons to the degree where such things would barely exist throughout history in order to blame Palestine as usual and absolve the apartheid genocidal "Israel" from any responsibility whatsoever.
“Concentration camp” is not a formal legal classification in IHL the way “occupation,” “blockade,” or “siege” are. It’s a historical/political descriptor. Trying to “win” by imposing one rigid dictionary definition is a definitional fallacy (changing the debate from material conditions to word-policing). Hamza Howidy then picks a definition that smuggles in “total physical custody” and “guard inside the camp” as necessary conditions. But that is not how modern control works (remote surveillance, permit regimes, control of borders/registry/utilities).
Hamza Howidy's claim that Gaza can’t be like a concentration camp because Hamas governs internally is a false dichotomy (“either Hamas governs or Israel controls”). You can have internal administration by a local authority and external effective control over core life systems (movement, population registry, air/sea access, imports/exports, utilities, currency flows). This is exactly why many legal and humanitarian actors describe Israel as retaining effective control despite the 2005 “disengagement.” The ICRC casebook explicitly notes Israel’s border powers enabling it to “determine the conditions of life” in Gaza. Human rights and legal analyses (e.g., ECCHR) summarize the mainstream view: continued effective control via borders, airspace, territorial waters, infrastructure (water/electricity), and population registry. Gisha’s “scale of control” documentation is also widely used on this point.
Hamza Howidy also treats occupation as “boots on the ground running city hall.” But occupation in IHL turns on ‘effective control/actual authority’, which can exist without administering every municipal function, especially when an occupying power controls the territory’s entries/exits, registry, air/sea space, and crucial civilian infrastructure. (That’s precisely the argument many states, organizations, and scholars make in the Gaza context.) Also: the ICJ’s July 19, 2024 advisory opinion summary explicitly notes the Court did not take a position on whether Gaza remained occupied after 2005 in that opinion. So Hamza Howidy's confident “this stretches occupation beyond its intended bounds” is not a settled legal conclusion—it’s a partisan one.
Hamza Howidy's claim that "one cannot logically be a “camp guard” if one does not stand inside the camp" is based on anachronistic logic. Modern coercive control often operates from outside through remote control of borders, air/sea denial, permit systems and “category” eligibility, control of population registry and IDs (affecting family unification, residency, travel) and control over what goods enter/exit and in what amounts. The ICRC casebook and OCHA reporting make clear Gaza movement is governed by a restrictive permit/eligibility regime, not normal “border bureaucracy.”
Hamza Howidy's claim that the Rafah border exists and that therefore Gaza is not a concentration camp or an open-air prison is again based on a false dichotomy. The ICRC casebook also notes Israel’s control of crossings and significant influence over conditions of entry/exit. Real-world confinement can be multi-actor. Adding Egypt doesn’t dissolve confinement or absolve "Israel" of its responsibility; it just means multiple states contribute to it. moreover, Egypt controls its own border with the Gaza Strip. It does not blockade the Gaza Strip by air and sea. Only "Israel" does that, and therefore the vast majority of the blame lands on "Israel" for the Gaza Strip being an open-air prison and a concentration camp.
A permit process for tourism or edcuation does not prove freedom of movement; it can prove the opposite. If most people are ineligible by category (not by individualized risk) and movement depends on discretionary permits, that’s consistent with an enclosure/closure regime, not ordinary travel. OCHA’s descriptions are explicit about categorical exclusion.
The existence of a private sector or banks or a stock exchange to claim that the Gaza Strip is not an open-air prison or a concentration camp is a classic rhetorical trick. Markets can exist inside coercive enclosures. That’s historically true across many kinds of controlled spaces (including besieged areas, sanctioned economies, and heavily restricted territories). Having businesses doesn’t refute confinement; it onkly shows Palestinian people's resilience and trying to survive under constraints.
International law distinguishes between blockade (naval/land/air denial with IHL limits), siege, and occupation (if effective control exists), but none of these categories depends on whether the local authority has a police force or whether pristine beaches, sparkling restaurants along Al-Rasheed Street, or upscale malls of the Rimal district exist. OCHA’s “humanitarian impact of the blockade” reporting documents a long-term closure regime with severe effects on livelihoods and movement. Selecting the most photogenic streets to counter “open-air prison” is cherry-picking (equivalent to filming a nice block in a poor city to deny poverty). Inequality does not negate coercive control; it’s common in restricted environments. The legal question is whether actions comply with IHL/IHRL obligations, not whether you can find a restaurant video.
The claim that "Hamas elite" are "worth between $1 and $5 billion" is not based on "multiple investigations", but on mere baseless assertions by rightist "Israeli" media. Not a single financial statement was ever produced to prove the ludicrous accusations of billions personally owned by the so-called "Hamas elite". "Israeli" political leaders, oligarchs, arms exporters, tech executives, and real-estate magnates are millionaires and billionaires, while tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors, arguably the most morally symbolically protected group in Israeli society, have for years lived below the poverty line, relying on food assistance, charity, or inadequate stipends. "Israeli" state comptroller reports, civil society organizations, and "Israeli" media have repeatedly documented this disparity.
Critics do not claim suffering is solved by simply "opening the gates". They argue for, lifting unlawful restrictions, ensuring humanitarian access, ending collective punishment, addressing security through lawful, proportionate means and political resolution. Hamza Howidy here invents a simplistic opponent and a strawman to make his own position look “reasonable.”
A good-faith discussion would separate metaphors (“open-air prison,” “largest concentration camp”) used to descroibe realities on the ground, and legal categories (occupation, blockade, siege, collective punishment, starvation prohibition, humanitarian access duties). It would then address what reputable bodies report about control and movement such as OCHA’s documentation of restricted movement/permit regimes, ICRC descriptions of Israel’s border powers determining conditions of life, and legal summaries noting the mainstream “effective control” position.
But like all pro-"Israel" activists, Hamza Howidy was never a good-faith actor.
Words do indeed have meanings, but in his anti-Palestinian propaganda Hamza Howidy distorts the meanings and effects of concentration camps and open-air prisons to the degree where such things would barely exist throughout history in order to blame Palestine as usual and absolve the apartheid genocidal "Israel" from any responsibility whatsoever.
“Concentration camp” is not a formal legal classification in IHL the way “occupation,” “blockade,” or “siege” are. It’s a historical/political descriptor. Trying to “win” by imposing one rigid dictionary definition is a definitional fallacy (changing the debate from material conditions to word-policing). Hamza Howidy then picks a definition that smuggles in “total physical custody” and “guard inside the camp” as necessary conditions. But that is not how modern control works (remote surveillance, permit regimes, control of borders/registry/utilities).
Hamza Howidy's claim that Gaza can’t be like a concentration camp because Hamas governs internally is a false dichotomy (“either Hamas governs or Israel controls”). You can have internal administration by a local authority and external effective control over core life systems (movement, population registry, air/sea access, imports/exports, utilities, currency flows). This is exactly why many legal and humanitarian actors describe Israel as retaining effective control despite the 2005 “disengagement.” The ICRC casebook explicitly notes Israel’s border powers enabling it to “determine the conditions of life” in Gaza. Human rights and legal analyses (e.g., ECCHR) summarize the mainstream view: continued effective control via borders, airspace, territorial waters, infrastructure (water/electricity), and population registry. Gisha’s “scale of control” documentation is also widely used on this point.
Hamza Howidy also treats occupation as “boots on the ground running city hall.” But occupation in IHL turns on ‘effective control/actual authority’, which can exist without administering every municipal function, especially when an occupying power controls the territory’s entries/exits, registry, air/sea space, and crucial civilian infrastructure. (That’s precisely the argument many states, organizations, and scholars make in the Gaza context.) Also: the ICJ’s July 19, 2024 advisory opinion summary explicitly notes the Court did not take a position on whether Gaza remained occupied after 2005 in that opinion. So Hamza Howidy's confident “this stretches occupation beyond its intended bounds” is not a settled legal conclusion—it’s a partisan one.
Hamza Howidy's claim that "one cannot logically be a “camp guard” if one does not stand inside the camp" is based on anachronistic logic. Modern coercive control often operates from outside through remote control of borders, air/sea denial, permit systems and “category” eligibility, control of population registry and IDs (affecting family unification, residency, travel) and control over what goods enter/exit and in what amounts. The ICRC casebook and OCHA reporting make clear Gaza movement is governed by a restrictive permit/eligibility regime, not normal “border bureaucracy.”
Hamza Howidy's claim that the Rafah border exists and that therefore Gaza is not a concentration camp or an open-air prison is again based on a false dichotomy. The ICRC casebook also notes Israel’s control of crossings and significant influence over conditions of entry/exit. Real-world confinement can be multi-actor. Adding Egypt doesn’t dissolve confinement or absolve "Israel" of its responsibility; it just means multiple states contribute to it. moreover, Egypt controls its own border with the Gaza Strip. It does not blockade the Gaza Strip by air and sea. Only "Israel" does that, and therefore the vast majority of the blame lands on "Israel" for the Gaza Strip being an open-air prison and a concentration camp.
A permit process for tourism or edcuation does not prove freedom of movement; it can prove the opposite. If most people are ineligible by category (not by individualized risk) and movement depends on discretionary permits, that’s consistent with an enclosure/closure regime, not ordinary travel. OCHA’s descriptions are explicit about categorical exclusion.
The existence of a private sector or banks or a stock exchange to claim that the Gaza Strip is not an open-air prison or a concentration camp is a classic rhetorical trick. Markets can exist inside coercive enclosures. That’s historically true across many kinds of controlled spaces (including besieged areas, sanctioned economies, and heavily restricted territories). Having businesses doesn’t refute confinement; it onkly shows Palestinian people's resilience and trying to survive under constraints.
International law distinguishes between blockade (naval/land/air denial with IHL limits), siege, and occupation (if effective control exists), but none of these categories depends on whether the local authority has a police force or whether pristine beaches, sparkling restaurants along Al-Rasheed Street, or upscale malls of the Rimal district exist. OCHA’s “humanitarian impact of the blockade” reporting documents a long-term closure regime with severe effects on livelihoods and movement. Selecting the most photogenic streets to counter “open-air prison” is cherry-picking (equivalent to filming a nice block in a poor city to deny poverty). Inequality does not negate coercive control; it’s common in restricted environments. The legal question is whether actions comply with IHL/IHRL obligations, not whether you can find a restaurant video.
The claim that "Hamas elite" are "worth between $1 and $5 billion" is not based on "multiple investigations", but on mere baseless assertions by rightist "Israeli" media. Not a single financial statement was ever produced to prove the ludicrous accusations of billions personally owned by the so-called "Hamas elite". "Israeli" political leaders, oligarchs, arms exporters, tech executives, and real-estate magnates are millionaires and billionaires, while tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors, arguably the most morally symbolically protected group in Israeli society, have for years lived below the poverty line, relying on food assistance, charity, or inadequate stipends. "Israeli" state comptroller reports, civil society organizations, and "Israeli" media have repeatedly documented this disparity.
Critics do not claim suffering is solved by simply "opening the gates". They argue for, lifting unlawful restrictions, ensuring humanitarian access, ending collective punishment, addressing security through lawful, proportionate means and political resolution. Hamza Howidy here invents a simplistic opponent and a strawman to make his own position look “reasonable.”
A good-faith discussion would separate metaphors (“open-air prison,” “largest concentration camp”) used to descroibe realities on the ground, and legal categories (occupation, blockade, siege, collective punishment, starvation prohibition, humanitarian access duties). It would then address what reputable bodies report about control and movement such as OCHA’s documentation of restricted movement/permit regimes, ICRC descriptions of Israel’s border powers determining conditions of life, and legal summaries noting the mainstream “effective control” position.
But like all pro-"Israel" activists, Hamza Howidy was never a good-faith actor.
Hilarious. Look at you. Wanting to kill or displace 10 million people because you care so much about people. LOL. You are a low IQ psychopath @Mirrors for the Prince.
Tell me -- how many Palestinians are you willing to see killed to "free Palestine from the river to the sea" all while you sit safely over the horizon doing your part by masturbating furiously to the slaughter you desire? Some of the Palestinians dead? Most of the Palestinians dead? All the Palestinians dead? You got a number in your head?
Hamas already tried it your way you fucking moron. How'd that work out for them? But hey, at least it gave you a hobby, amirite?
It's point and laugh at you time. Nothing funnier than a loudmouth ignorant Western poseur moron like you.
“Israeli forces have intentionally murdered tens of thousands of women and children while denying food and medicine to the entire enclave.” This is just a total lie from start to finish. Israel has allowed more aid to an enemy adversary than any party in armed conflict in human history (go ahead, give me any other example!). And deaths under 18 are heavily skewed towards males, who Hamas quite openly uses in its military ranks. And yes, the blockade is an act of war that occurred in lieu of military action after Hamas violently took power after Israel’s evacuation and beginning lobbing rockets. You are clearly both ignorant and incapable of independent thought.
I understand. I just didn’t see the point in broaching the subject given the ongoing genocide. There are already enough pro-apartheid voices out there trying to deflect from Israel’s crimes or minimize them and your piece struck me as falling into that category.
Gaza today is undeniably a concentration camp, applying the strictest and most objective definition of the term as practiced in history.
It is common in popular jargon to confuse two very different things — concentration camps and death camps, and to only think of Nazi Germany. That is inaccurate on both counts.
In fact it was the Spanish who invented the term “concentration camp” from “Campo de reconconcentración.”
In 1896, the infamous criminal, Spanish General Valeriano Weyler, known as “The Butcher,” seeking to crush the Cuban independence movement, ordered the rural population of Cuba to move into fortified towns within eight days. Those who did not obey were considered rebels and shot.
These civilian "reconcentrados" were forced into “campos de reconcentración.” The purported goal was to separate the rebels from the rural populace that fed and sheltered them. Sound familiar?
The camps were heavily overcrowded and lacked proper food, shelter, and sanitation. As a result, hundreds of thousands of civilians died of starvation and disease, with estimates of deaths ranging from over 170,000 to as high as 500,000.
The United States then copied the Spanish and set up similar concentration camps in the Philippines (1899-1902).
The British then copied the Spanish “method” with Boer and African civilians, allowing tens of thousands to die of hunger, disease and exposure (1903-), and then the Germans in German South West Africa (1904-1908).
And the US government detained over 100,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, euphemistically named “internment camps,” during World War II.
And then the U.S. applied a similar strategy in Vietnam with the so-called “Strategic Hamlets,” albeit with greater flexibility and in a village scale.
In many of those cases there was no internal “control” system by the military or guards. Often it wasn't like in the movies. There were no barracks and internal controls, just barbed wire and machine guns. It was simply an enclosure.
That was also the case with many German concentration camps, especially with hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners. The concentration camps were to hold prisoners of war, political prisoners, and as labor camps.
The Nazi had some 40,000+ camps. The vast majority were concentration camps. Those were not the same thing as the death or extermination camps, which had the explicit purpose of killing people by industrial means.
The death camps were for example: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Treblinka II, Belzec, Chełmno, etc. Their only purpose was to kill people, and thus they are justly infamous.
…..
Therefore, it is entirely accurate to refer to Gaza as an Israeli Concentration Camp holding civilian prisoners who are not free to leave and who are intentionally subjected to inhuman conditions intentionally causing death, and where the guards regularly kill the Palestinian prisoners.
….
That said, I want to make clear that I utterly oppose Hamas, which if it had any shred of concern for the Palestinian people would disarm and surrender. Hamas’s refusal to surrender its weapons is not to purportedly fight the IDF, which is a cruel lie, but to repress and keep control over the Palestinian people. Hamas is allowing Israel the pretext to continue killing Palestinian civilians.
It is precisely for that purpose that Israel created Hamas as a tool against the Palestinian people. Israel has promoted, protected and indirectly financed Hamas for forty years, as Netanyahu has bragged.
The Hamas reactionary bourgeois Islamists are traitors to the Palestinian people and objectively serve Israeli interests.
Hilarious. Would you allow your beautiful daughter to live in Hamastan being subjected to Islamist religio-fascist rules by rapey rapey Hamas? Doubt it. Why the double standard? Gazans not white enough you?
I bet that you are for a Palestine "from the River to the Sea" no matter how many hundred of thousands of Palestinians have to die to achieve your bloodthirsty fantasy of 10 million dead or displaced Israelis -- while you sit safely in the US of course.
I bet you happily condemn Gazans to living in Hamastan under Hamas religio-fascist rules while you and your lovely daughter would never agree to live in Hamastan under Hamas rules for even a second? Why the double standard? Do you hate other Palestinians that much (daughter and husband excluded)? Or are you just another Western poseur moron? Or maybe both?
You are hilariously ignorant and in denial. I bet you even think you are a good person. LOL. Whyever would you think that?
You’re playing semantics, easily played back atya. So it’s not a Nazi Concentration Camp per se. Good onya!
Seventy percent of the population relies on food aid? Maybe more.
Can they control where their food comes from, what quality it is? Do they have choices? Nah.
Hamas -in your description - feels like the Warden’s Group of snitches, a gang of privileged bullies, who are lording it over the others daily.
Egypt feels like a wall in this prison, kinda like a partner in crime with Israel. Do the 70% CARE about these details brother?
Does the world seeing this tragic life/non life essentially see that that large population has no control in their open air prison? Yes. Yes we do.
Your point Is taken but here’s my advice: Write an article now that really focuses on the terms you like to use and describe life for a huge number of innocent humans living daily tragedies.
You’re welcome in advance!
A mother to Palestinian/American children and an aunt to Falasteeneeyeen.
Hilarious. Free Palestine from Hamas and Islamism and ignorant racist pro-Islamist anti-Palestinian Western poseur morons like you whose lives are so empty they have become eager to fight to the last Palestinian and Israeli from safely over the horizon.
I ridicule your use of personal insults and boomerang them back onto you.
A dignified, educated, wise mother to Beautiful Muslim Palestinian American men, and a gorgeous, educated, talented Humanist Palestinian/American daughter.
Hilarious. And you would never allow your daughters and sons or you to live under Hamas or under Sharia law as Hamas has imposed in Gaza. Those are for Gazans, not you or yours, amirite. And let other Palestinians die to "free Palestine" (to the last Palestinian and Israeli if necessary) while you sit safely over the horizon with your wonderful family.
You having a wonderful Palestinian family does not prevent you from being a racist, a hypocrite, and a fool.
Hilarious. Look at a map and find Egypt. And it is Hamas that murders Palestinians every day. Google "Oday Nasser Al Rabay" and see what the "resistance" does to the Palestinian people you pretend to care about who only seek freedom from Hamas and eternal conflict.
Are you quite sure you are not a hypocritical racist fool? Because all the indicators are there.
This was a brave piece. Not a waste of time. Not a deflection. Not semantics. Not propaganda. What I hear is the voice of a Palestinian who is brave enough to reject binary thinking and rhetoric. It’s the binary thinking that props up this endless cycle of violence.
This entire piece was essentially a debate over semantics and a complete waste of time. Gaza has been under military blockade for almost 20 years now (which is an act of war under international law) and in the past 2 years, Israeli forces have intentionally murdered tens of thousands of women and children while denying food and medicine to the entire enclave. It is hard to come up with a single phrase or word that accurately captures the depths of Israel’s crimes but I don’t think concentration camp is as far off as the author would like to believe. However, here are a few more that might apply: genocide, ethnic cleansing, slaughter, and massacre. The semantics are irrelevant. What matters here is substance and substantively, Israel is guilty of serious war crimes of the sort that have no statute of limitations. It must be held to account one day. It’s long list of crimes prove there will never be peace in the Middle East until it is wiped off the map. Instead of wasting our time with silly debates over vocabulary, we would all be better served using our energy to try and formulate a plan to deal with the existential threat posed by the baby killing sociopaths who rule Israel and their arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The idea of the piece was to answer if these terms applied to Gaza or not. The fact that they don't apply doesn't make the life in Gaza so easy. Yes it can be under military siege and not be a concentration camp or the world's largest prison.
They do apply to Gaza. You just committed an etymological fallacy.
Sorry, words and their meanings are important. Emotions, exaggerations, and distortions don't help us address any problem effectively.
Words do indeed have meanings, but in his anti-Palestinian propaganda Hamza Howidy distorts the meanings and effects of concentration camps and open-air prisons to the degree where such things would barely exist throughout history in order to blame Palestine as usual and absolve the apartheid genocidal "Israel" from any responsibility whatsoever.
“Concentration camp” is not a formal legal classification in IHL the way “occupation,” “blockade,” or “siege” are. It’s a historical/political descriptor. Trying to “win” by imposing one rigid dictionary definition is a definitional fallacy (changing the debate from material conditions to word-policing). Hamza Howidy then picks a definition that smuggles in “total physical custody” and “guard inside the camp” as necessary conditions. But that is not how modern control works (remote surveillance, permit regimes, control of borders/registry/utilities).
Hamza Howidy's claim that Gaza can’t be like a concentration camp because Hamas governs internally is a false dichotomy (“either Hamas governs or Israel controls”). You can have internal administration by a local authority and external effective control over core life systems (movement, population registry, air/sea access, imports/exports, utilities, currency flows). This is exactly why many legal and humanitarian actors describe Israel as retaining effective control despite the 2005 “disengagement.” The ICRC casebook explicitly notes Israel’s border powers enabling it to “determine the conditions of life” in Gaza. Human rights and legal analyses (e.g., ECCHR) summarize the mainstream view: continued effective control via borders, airspace, territorial waters, infrastructure (water/electricity), and population registry. Gisha’s “scale of control” documentation is also widely used on this point.
Hamza Howidy also treats occupation as “boots on the ground running city hall.” But occupation in IHL turns on ‘effective control/actual authority’, which can exist without administering every municipal function, especially when an occupying power controls the territory’s entries/exits, registry, air/sea space, and crucial civilian infrastructure. (That’s precisely the argument many states, organizations, and scholars make in the Gaza context.) Also: the ICJ’s July 19, 2024 advisory opinion summary explicitly notes the Court did not take a position on whether Gaza remained occupied after 2005 in that opinion. So Hamza Howidy's confident “this stretches occupation beyond its intended bounds” is not a settled legal conclusion—it’s a partisan one.
Hamza Howidy's claim that "one cannot logically be a “camp guard” if one does not stand inside the camp" is based on anachronistic logic. Modern coercive control often operates from outside through remote control of borders, air/sea denial, permit systems and “category” eligibility, control of population registry and IDs (affecting family unification, residency, travel) and control over what goods enter/exit and in what amounts. The ICRC casebook and OCHA reporting make clear Gaza movement is governed by a restrictive permit/eligibility regime, not normal “border bureaucracy.”
Hamza Howidy's claim that the Rafah border exists and that therefore Gaza is not a concentration camp or an open-air prison is again based on a false dichotomy. The ICRC casebook also notes Israel’s control of crossings and significant influence over conditions of entry/exit. Real-world confinement can be multi-actor. Adding Egypt doesn’t dissolve confinement or absolve "Israel" of its responsibility; it just means multiple states contribute to it. moreover, Egypt controls its own border with the Gaza Strip. It does not blockade the Gaza Strip by air and sea. Only "Israel" does that, and therefore the vast majority of the blame lands on "Israel" for the Gaza Strip being an open-air prison and a concentration camp.
A permit process for tourism or edcuation does not prove freedom of movement; it can prove the opposite. If most people are ineligible by category (not by individualized risk) and movement depends on discretionary permits, that’s consistent with an enclosure/closure regime, not ordinary travel. OCHA’s descriptions are explicit about categorical exclusion.
The existence of a private sector or banks or a stock exchange to claim that the Gaza Strip is not an open-air prison or a concentration camp is a classic rhetorical trick. Markets can exist inside coercive enclosures. That’s historically true across many kinds of controlled spaces (including besieged areas, sanctioned economies, and heavily restricted territories). Having businesses doesn’t refute confinement; it onkly shows Palestinian people's resilience and trying to survive under constraints.
International law distinguishes between blockade (naval/land/air denial with IHL limits), siege, and occupation (if effective control exists), but none of these categories depends on whether the local authority has a police force or whether pristine beaches, sparkling restaurants along Al-Rasheed Street, or upscale malls of the Rimal district exist. OCHA’s “humanitarian impact of the blockade” reporting documents a long-term closure regime with severe effects on livelihoods and movement. Selecting the most photogenic streets to counter “open-air prison” is cherry-picking (equivalent to filming a nice block in a poor city to deny poverty). Inequality does not negate coercive control; it’s common in restricted environments. The legal question is whether actions comply with IHL/IHRL obligations, not whether you can find a restaurant video.
The claim that "Hamas elite" are "worth between $1 and $5 billion" is not based on "multiple investigations", but on mere baseless assertions by rightist "Israeli" media. Not a single financial statement was ever produced to prove the ludicrous accusations of billions personally owned by the so-called "Hamas elite". "Israeli" political leaders, oligarchs, arms exporters, tech executives, and real-estate magnates are millionaires and billionaires, while tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors, arguably the most morally symbolically protected group in Israeli society, have for years lived below the poverty line, relying on food assistance, charity, or inadequate stipends. "Israeli" state comptroller reports, civil society organizations, and "Israeli" media have repeatedly documented this disparity.
Critics do not claim suffering is solved by simply "opening the gates". They argue for, lifting unlawful restrictions, ensuring humanitarian access, ending collective punishment, addressing security through lawful, proportionate means and political resolution. Hamza Howidy here invents a simplistic opponent and a strawman to make his own position look “reasonable.”
A good-faith discussion would separate metaphors (“open-air prison,” “largest concentration camp”) used to descroibe realities on the ground, and legal categories (occupation, blockade, siege, collective punishment, starvation prohibition, humanitarian access duties). It would then address what reputable bodies report about control and movement such as OCHA’s documentation of restricted movement/permit regimes, ICRC descriptions of Israel’s border powers determining conditions of life, and legal summaries noting the mainstream “effective control” position.
But like all pro-"Israel" activists, Hamza Howidy was never a good-faith actor.
Agreed.
Words do indeed have meanings, but in his anti-Palestinian propaganda Hamza Howidy distorts the meanings and effects of concentration camps and open-air prisons to the degree where such things would barely exist throughout history in order to blame Palestine as usual and absolve the apartheid genocidal "Israel" from any responsibility whatsoever.
“Concentration camp” is not a formal legal classification in IHL the way “occupation,” “blockade,” or “siege” are. It’s a historical/political descriptor. Trying to “win” by imposing one rigid dictionary definition is a definitional fallacy (changing the debate from material conditions to word-policing). Hamza Howidy then picks a definition that smuggles in “total physical custody” and “guard inside the camp” as necessary conditions. But that is not how modern control works (remote surveillance, permit regimes, control of borders/registry/utilities).
Hamza Howidy's claim that Gaza can’t be like a concentration camp because Hamas governs internally is a false dichotomy (“either Hamas governs or Israel controls”). You can have internal administration by a local authority and external effective control over core life systems (movement, population registry, air/sea access, imports/exports, utilities, currency flows). This is exactly why many legal and humanitarian actors describe Israel as retaining effective control despite the 2005 “disengagement.” The ICRC casebook explicitly notes Israel’s border powers enabling it to “determine the conditions of life” in Gaza. Human rights and legal analyses (e.g., ECCHR) summarize the mainstream view: continued effective control via borders, airspace, territorial waters, infrastructure (water/electricity), and population registry. Gisha’s “scale of control” documentation is also widely used on this point.
Hamza Howidy also treats occupation as “boots on the ground running city hall.” But occupation in IHL turns on ‘effective control/actual authority’, which can exist without administering every municipal function, especially when an occupying power controls the territory’s entries/exits, registry, air/sea space, and crucial civilian infrastructure. (That’s precisely the argument many states, organizations, and scholars make in the Gaza context.) Also: the ICJ’s July 19, 2024 advisory opinion summary explicitly notes the Court did not take a position on whether Gaza remained occupied after 2005 in that opinion. So Hamza Howidy's confident “this stretches occupation beyond its intended bounds” is not a settled legal conclusion—it’s a partisan one.
Hamza Howidy's claim that "one cannot logically be a “camp guard” if one does not stand inside the camp" is based on anachronistic logic. Modern coercive control often operates from outside through remote control of borders, air/sea denial, permit systems and “category” eligibility, control of population registry and IDs (affecting family unification, residency, travel) and control over what goods enter/exit and in what amounts. The ICRC casebook and OCHA reporting make clear Gaza movement is governed by a restrictive permit/eligibility regime, not normal “border bureaucracy.”
Hamza Howidy's claim that the Rafah border exists and that therefore Gaza is not a concentration camp or an open-air prison is again based on a false dichotomy. The ICRC casebook also notes Israel’s control of crossings and significant influence over conditions of entry/exit. Real-world confinement can be multi-actor. Adding Egypt doesn’t dissolve confinement or absolve "Israel" of its responsibility; it just means multiple states contribute to it. moreover, Egypt controls its own border with the Gaza Strip. It does not blockade the Gaza Strip by air and sea. Only "Israel" does that, and therefore the vast majority of the blame lands on "Israel" for the Gaza Strip being an open-air prison and a concentration camp.
A permit process for tourism or edcuation does not prove freedom of movement; it can prove the opposite. If most people are ineligible by category (not by individualized risk) and movement depends on discretionary permits, that’s consistent with an enclosure/closure regime, not ordinary travel. OCHA’s descriptions are explicit about categorical exclusion.
The existence of a private sector or banks or a stock exchange to claim that the Gaza Strip is not an open-air prison or a concentration camp is a classic rhetorical trick. Markets can exist inside coercive enclosures. That’s historically true across many kinds of controlled spaces (including besieged areas, sanctioned economies, and heavily restricted territories). Having businesses doesn’t refute confinement; it onkly shows Palestinian people's resilience and trying to survive under constraints.
International law distinguishes between blockade (naval/land/air denial with IHL limits), siege, and occupation (if effective control exists), but none of these categories depends on whether the local authority has a police force or whether pristine beaches, sparkling restaurants along Al-Rasheed Street, or upscale malls of the Rimal district exist. OCHA’s “humanitarian impact of the blockade” reporting documents a long-term closure regime with severe effects on livelihoods and movement. Selecting the most photogenic streets to counter “open-air prison” is cherry-picking (equivalent to filming a nice block in a poor city to deny poverty). Inequality does not negate coercive control; it’s common in restricted environments. The legal question is whether actions comply with IHL/IHRL obligations, not whether you can find a restaurant video.
The claim that "Hamas elite" are "worth between $1 and $5 billion" is not based on "multiple investigations", but on mere baseless assertions by rightist "Israeli" media. Not a single financial statement was ever produced to prove the ludicrous accusations of billions personally owned by the so-called "Hamas elite". "Israeli" political leaders, oligarchs, arms exporters, tech executives, and real-estate magnates are millionaires and billionaires, while tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors, arguably the most morally symbolically protected group in Israeli society, have for years lived below the poverty line, relying on food assistance, charity, or inadequate stipends. "Israeli" state comptroller reports, civil society organizations, and "Israeli" media have repeatedly documented this disparity.
Critics do not claim suffering is solved by simply "opening the gates". They argue for, lifting unlawful restrictions, ensuring humanitarian access, ending collective punishment, addressing security through lawful, proportionate means and political resolution. Hamza Howidy here invents a simplistic opponent and a strawman to make his own position look “reasonable.”
A good-faith discussion would separate metaphors (“open-air prison,” “largest concentration camp”) used to descroibe realities on the ground, and legal categories (occupation, blockade, siege, collective punishment, starvation prohibition, humanitarian access duties). It would then address what reputable bodies report about control and movement such as OCHA’s documentation of restricted movement/permit regimes, ICRC descriptions of Israel’s border powers determining conditions of life, and legal summaries noting the mainstream “effective control” position.
But like all pro-"Israel" activists, Hamza Howidy was never a good-faith actor.
Hilarious. Look at you. Wanting to kill or displace 10 million people because you care so much about people. LOL. You are a low IQ psychopath @Mirrors for the Prince.
Tell me -- how many Palestinians are you willing to see killed to "free Palestine from the river to the sea" all while you sit safely over the horizon doing your part by masturbating furiously to the slaughter you desire? Some of the Palestinians dead? Most of the Palestinians dead? All the Palestinians dead? You got a number in your head?
Hamas already tried it your way you fucking moron. How'd that work out for them? But hey, at least it gave you a hobby, amirite?
It's point and laugh at you time. Nothing funnier than a loudmouth ignorant Western poseur moron like you.
“Israeli forces have intentionally murdered tens of thousands of women and children while denying food and medicine to the entire enclave.” This is just a total lie from start to finish. Israel has allowed more aid to an enemy adversary than any party in armed conflict in human history (go ahead, give me any other example!). And deaths under 18 are heavily skewed towards males, who Hamas quite openly uses in its military ranks. And yes, the blockade is an act of war that occurred in lieu of military action after Hamas violently took power after Israel’s evacuation and beginning lobbing rockets. You are clearly both ignorant and incapable of independent thought.
The facts are obvious and speak for themselves. Only a delusional nazi would deny them.
You didn’t contest a word of what I said. Not surprising. Just a parrot.
You have the reading comprehension of a 1st grader. Fucking moron.
You didn’t name any facts doofus. Get fucked.
I understand. I just didn’t see the point in broaching the subject given the ongoing genocide. There are already enough pro-apartheid voices out there trying to deflect from Israel’s crimes or minimize them and your piece struck me as falling into that category.
The intention of his piece is to minimize the crimes of "Israel" against Palestine.
Gaza today is undeniably a concentration camp, applying the strictest and most objective definition of the term as practiced in history.
It is common in popular jargon to confuse two very different things — concentration camps and death camps, and to only think of Nazi Germany. That is inaccurate on both counts.
In fact it was the Spanish who invented the term “concentration camp” from “Campo de reconconcentración.”
In 1896, the infamous criminal, Spanish General Valeriano Weyler, known as “The Butcher,” seeking to crush the Cuban independence movement, ordered the rural population of Cuba to move into fortified towns within eight days. Those who did not obey were considered rebels and shot.
These civilian "reconcentrados" were forced into “campos de reconcentración.” The purported goal was to separate the rebels from the rural populace that fed and sheltered them. Sound familiar?
The camps were heavily overcrowded and lacked proper food, shelter, and sanitation. As a result, hundreds of thousands of civilians died of starvation and disease, with estimates of deaths ranging from over 170,000 to as high as 500,000.
The United States then copied the Spanish and set up similar concentration camps in the Philippines (1899-1902).
The British then copied the Spanish “method” with Boer and African civilians, allowing tens of thousands to die of hunger, disease and exposure (1903-), and then the Germans in German South West Africa (1904-1908).
And the US government detained over 100,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, euphemistically named “internment camps,” during World War II.
And then the U.S. applied a similar strategy in Vietnam with the so-called “Strategic Hamlets,” albeit with greater flexibility and in a village scale.
In many of those cases there was no internal “control” system by the military or guards. Often it wasn't like in the movies. There were no barracks and internal controls, just barbed wire and machine guns. It was simply an enclosure.
That was also the case with many German concentration camps, especially with hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners. The concentration camps were to hold prisoners of war, political prisoners, and as labor camps.
The Nazi had some 40,000+ camps. The vast majority were concentration camps. Those were not the same thing as the death or extermination camps, which had the explicit purpose of killing people by industrial means.
The death camps were for example: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Treblinka II, Belzec, Chełmno, etc. Their only purpose was to kill people, and thus they are justly infamous.
…..
Therefore, it is entirely accurate to refer to Gaza as an Israeli Concentration Camp holding civilian prisoners who are not free to leave and who are intentionally subjected to inhuman conditions intentionally causing death, and where the guards regularly kill the Palestinian prisoners.
….
That said, I want to make clear that I utterly oppose Hamas, which if it had any shred of concern for the Palestinian people would disarm and surrender. Hamas’s refusal to surrender its weapons is not to purportedly fight the IDF, which is a cruel lie, but to repress and keep control over the Palestinian people. Hamas is allowing Israel the pretext to continue killing Palestinian civilians.
It is precisely for that purpose that Israel created Hamas as a tool against the Palestinian people. Israel has promoted, protected and indirectly financed Hamas for forty years, as Netanyahu has bragged.
The Hamas reactionary bourgeois Islamists are traitors to the Palestinian people and objectively serve Israeli interests.
Hilarious. Would you allow your beautiful daughter to live in Hamastan being subjected to Islamist religio-fascist rules by rapey rapey Hamas? Doubt it. Why the double standard? Gazans not white enough you?
Hilarious. Not very self-aware are you?
I bet that you are for a Palestine "from the River to the Sea" no matter how many hundred of thousands of Palestinians have to die to achieve your bloodthirsty fantasy of 10 million dead or displaced Israelis -- while you sit safely in the US of course.
I bet you happily condemn Gazans to living in Hamastan under Hamas religio-fascist rules while you and your lovely daughter would never agree to live in Hamastan under Hamas rules for even a second? Why the double standard? Do you hate other Palestinians that much (daughter and husband excluded)? Or are you just another Western poseur moron? Or maybe both?
You are hilariously ignorant and in denial. I bet you even think you are a good person. LOL. Whyever would you think that?
You’re playing semantics, easily played back atya. So it’s not a Nazi Concentration Camp per se. Good onya!
Seventy percent of the population relies on food aid? Maybe more.
Can they control where their food comes from, what quality it is? Do they have choices? Nah.
Hamas -in your description - feels like the Warden’s Group of snitches, a gang of privileged bullies, who are lording it over the others daily.
Egypt feels like a wall in this prison, kinda like a partner in crime with Israel. Do the 70% CARE about these details brother?
Does the world seeing this tragic life/non life essentially see that that large population has no control in their open air prison? Yes. Yes we do.
Your point Is taken but here’s my advice: Write an article now that really focuses on the terms you like to use and describe life for a huge number of innocent humans living daily tragedies.
You’re welcome in advance!
A mother to Palestinian/American children and an aunt to Falasteeneeyeen.
Hilarious. Free Palestine from Hamas and Islamism and ignorant racist pro-Islamist anti-Palestinian Western poseur morons like you whose lives are so empty they have become eager to fight to the last Palestinian and Israeli from safely over the horizon.
Wretchedness wreaks with these partially true words. What’s caused this atmosphere of abuse, greed, lies and power grabs?
The Israeli occupation which encourages sleazy humans desperate for power to rule others, just like the Zionists in Israel itself.
I ridicule your use of personal insults and boomerang them back onto you.
A dignified, educated, wise mother to Beautiful Muslim Palestinian American men, and a gorgeous, educated, talented Humanist Palestinian/American daughter.
Hilarious. And you would never allow your daughters and sons or you to live under Hamas or under Sharia law as Hamas has imposed in Gaza. Those are for Gazans, not you or yours, amirite. And let other Palestinians die to "free Palestine" (to the last Palestinian and Israeli if necessary) while you sit safely over the horizon with your wonderful family.
You having a wonderful Palestinian family does not prevent you from being a racist, a hypocrite, and a fool.
Except that I’m not those things - what are you besides someone who insults people with silly attacks.
Gaza is an open air prison. Zionists are stealing land, murdering people every day.
Hilarious. Look at a map and find Egypt. And it is Hamas that murders Palestinians every day. Google "Oday Nasser Al Rabay" and see what the "resistance" does to the Palestinian people you pretend to care about who only seek freedom from Hamas and eternal conflict.
Are you quite sure you are not a hypocritical racist fool? Because all the indicators are there.
I’m sure.
Zionist Israel have been committing thousands of murders since 1948.
Your ignorance speaks for itself. Study history more diligently.
Watch many different sources and opinions on the news.