"My suffering, though severe, was never compounded by denial. The world around me was structured to keep me alive. That distinction matters. Because elsewhere, at this very moment, there are people whose hunger is not the byproduct of illness—but the result of policy. Of decision. Of design. In Gaza, and within the walls of Israeli prisons, hunger is not incidental. It is imposed..." Hunger, By Design By Mike Odetalla

Mike Hanini Odetalla

Hunger, By Design
By Mike Odetalla

At the height of my cancer treatment, I lost 60 pounds in less than two months.
Not by choice. Not by neglect. But because I simply could not eat.

Every swallow felt like fire. Every attempt at nourishment became a negotiation with pain. My body, once familiar, began to disappear before my own eyes—reduced not by lack of food, but by my inability to take it in. I didn't recognize the person looking back at me in the mirror.

And yet, even in that darkest stretch, one truth remained constant:

Food was there.

It sat within reach. Prepared. Available. Waiting for me, even when I could not accept it. Doctors urged me. Nurses monitored me. My suffering, though severe, was never compounded by denial. The world around me was structured to keep me alive.

That distinction matters.

Because elsewhere, at this very moment, there are people whose hunger is not the byproduct of illness—but the result of policy. Of decision. Of design.

In Gaza, and within the walls of Israeli prisons, hunger is not incidental. It is imposed.

There, food is not something a patient struggles to swallow—it is something withheld. Rations are restricted. Access is controlled. Malnutrition spreads not because bodies fail, but because systems ensure they do.

I know what it feels like to weaken. To feel your strength slip quietly away. To measure your days not in hours, but in ounces lost and energy drained.

But I also know this: My suffering existed within a system trying—however imperfectly—to save me.

Theirs exists within a system that does not. 

That is the difference between illness and injustice.

Between misfortune and intention.

Between hunger… and hunger used as a weapon.

And once you understand that distinction, you cannot unsee it.

 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10165923688376977&set=a.10150390714236977

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"All they will find is sand" Eyal Weizman on the demolition of Gaza in The London Review of Books April 2026

Vol. 48 No. 7 · 23 April 2026

 Eyal Weizman   

The​ UN Genocide Convention of 1948 lists five acts that constitute genocide when committed with the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. The first two concern mass killing and serious bodily or mental harm. The fourth and fifth are concerned with interrupting the biological continuity of a group. The third prohibition, framed in Article II(c), forbids ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction’. This refers to indirect forms of killing, those that don’t target human bodies but the environment that sustains them. Sufficient ‘conditions of life’ require buildings, hospitals, social infrastructure, sewage and water systems, power grids, agriculture. The intentional destruction or degradation of such structures undermines a people’s ability to survive, leading to a slower and more tortuous form of annihilation.

The idea that the built environment determines a group’s conditions of life recalls the modernist conception of architecture, prevalent when the word ‘genocide’ was first conceived and defined by the Polish Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Modern architecture offered to calculate and improve the conditions of life. Cities were to be laid out in accordance with public health principles, and homes, in Le Corbusier’s famous definition, were to be ‘machines for living in’, calibrated to maximise the supply of biological necessities – heat, hygiene, air circulation, food and even sexual reproduction.

Architects’ Data (1936) by the German modernist architect Ernst Neufert is still used by architects looking for the most efficient dimensions for kitchens, bedrooms or even park benches. In the 1920s Neufert was an assistant to Walter Gropius, director of the Bauhaus. Later, on behalf of the Nazi Party, he oversaw the standardisation of Germany’s building industry, which was largely powered by enslaved labour. Several Bauhaus graduates designed concentration camps. The deliberate degradation of living conditions inverted the task of modern architecture from the enhancement of life to the production of death.

Lemkin defined genocide as being aimed at ‘the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups’. He was thinking about the way the Nazis saw the Jewish ghettos and enslaved labour camps as means of slow, indirect extermination. But he was also aware of the colonial origins of this mode of destruction. Though direct acts of massacre took place in colonised territories everywhere, slow, indirect killings have more often been the means of annihilating Indigenous peoples. Dispossessed of their ancestral habitats, separated from the land on which they depended for sustenance and ritual, forced into reservations, Indigenous populations were destroyed to free up the best land for European settlement.

Two and a half years after 7 October 2023, most of the Gaza Strip – cities, refugee camps, schools, universities, mosques, the health infrastructure, agriculture, wells and the soil itself – has been destroyed and made toxic by bombs, artillery, tank shells and sappers. The most systematic destruction was caused by D9 bulldozers made by the US company Caterpillar. These giant armoured machines stabbed their blades into the ground, churning up fields, felling orchards, flattening homes, tearing through roads and ploughing through cemeteries. The tide of destruction... READ MORE 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n07/eyal-weizman/all-they-will-find-is-sand 

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https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/776402/ungrounding-by-eyal-weizman/

Eyal Weizman’s new book, Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide, will be published next month. 

Fr. Gabriel Romanelli, parish priest of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza, says the ongoing border closures have pushed civilians “to the limit of their strength.” With no electricity, scarce water, unaffordable food, and medical evacuations blocked, he warns: “We cannot go on like this. It is not humane.”

Fr. Gabriel Romanelli, parish priest of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza

Ihab Hassan

@IhabHassane

 

Fr. Gabriel Romanelli, parish priest of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza, says the ongoing border closures have pushed civilians “to the limit of their strength.” 

 

With no electricity, scarce water, unaffordable food, and medical evacuations blocked, he warns: “We cannot go on like this. It is not humane.”

 

https://x.com/IhabHassane/status/2030000690618069181 

 

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There are officially no more hostages in captivity in Gaza: Apart from the two million people who actually live there...

Palestinian Refugees once again for the umpteenth time enduring Forced Displacements and concentration camp conditions due to Israeli State Sponsored Terrorism 

Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026 "The genocide did not begin with concentration camps and gas chambers; it started with apathy and silence in the face of injustice, and with the corrosive dehumanization of the other. Today, and always, we need to remember this." Volker Turk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

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https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2026/01/high-commissioner-turk-international-holocaust-remembrance-day-we 

International Holocaust Remembrance Day invites us not only to look at our past, but to reflect on our present, and to safeguard our future.

To some, 1945 may seem like distant history. It is difficult to fathom that within living memory, a group of deluded killers inflicted unspeakable atrocities on millions of Jews and members of other minorities. The Nazi regime persecuted them, stripped them of dignity, and ultimately murdered them with the horrific efficiency of an assembly line. Systematically, openly, and without consequences.

The history of the Holocaust offers striking lessons.

This appalling cruelty was not born in medieval darkness, but in the broad daylight of a supposedly modern society. The genocide did not begin with concentration camps and gas chambers; it started with apathy and silence in the face of injustice, and with the corrosive dehumanization of the other.

Today, and always, we need to remember this.

In a disturbing trend, threats and assaults against Jews have risen sharply in recent years. The heinous attacks in Sydney and Manchester made headlines around the world. But countless daily abuses that don’t make the news leave lasting scars on people and communities.

Hatred and dehumanization are creeping into our daily lives, including through our social media feeds.

But here is reason for hope: Today, we are far better equipped to resist these patterns.

We are equipped with the memory of how exclusion can turn into annihilation, if we look away.

We are equipped with education and unprecedented access to information to seek truth and to understand our differences.

And we are equipped with human rights, backed by international law – forged from the ashes of war to protect humanity from repeating its darkest chapters.

We need to use these tools at all times against the plague of racism, antisemitism, and dehumanization.

We need laws that prohibit discrimination in all its forms. We need politicians who do not polarize by calling out difference, but unite by calling out injustice.

We need education about the Holocaust and human rights for all ages. And we need robust, inclusive systems to moderate digital content, so that people can express their concerns without fear.

Above all, we must stand up for our shared humanity – each and every day.

The history of the Holocaust abounds with stories of rescue and selflessness that illuminate the immense power of reason and compassion.

Year after year, the last survivors are leaving us – most recently Eva Schloss, a tireless advocate of tolerance and Holocaust education. But their stories live on. They guide and inspire us.

Together, we must challenge exceptionalism, supremacy, and bigotry wherever we encounter them: at the dinner table; at our workplaces; on social media. Each of us can be an architect of a world free from discrimination and intolerance.

As Eva’s stepsister Anne Frank taught us, nobody needs to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. 

Promoting and protecting human rights for all 

On Tuesday's #HolocaustRemembrance Day, we honour the memory of all those who perished in the Holocaust & the enduring legacy of those who survived. Today & every day, we must counter antisemitism, Holocaust denial & distortion and all forms of hatred.

 On Tuesday's #HolocaustRemembrance Day, we honour the memory of all those who perished in the Holocaust & the enduring legacy of those who survived.

Today & every day, we must counter antisemitism, Holocaust denial & distortion and all forms of hatred. https://un.org/en/observances 

https://x.com/UN/status/2016013548137181231  

 

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https://www.un.org/en/observances/commemoration-holocaust-victims-day

A warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice."

  - United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/76/250 on Holocaust Denial

Holocaust Remembrance for Dignity and Human Rights

The United Nations was established in response to the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The Holocaust has had a profound impact on International Human Rights Law, resulting in the United Nations’ adoption of foundational documents in 1948: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 in 2005 designated 27 January as the annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and established the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme. This date was chosen as it marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp on 27 January 1945.

The International Day is a global reminder of the dangers of hatred, bigotry and antisemitism. The Day is a call to remember, reflect and take action to ensure such atrocities never happen again. The International Day is observed with commemorative events and activities at United Nations Headquarters in New York and the United Nations offices around the world.

"The Holocaust, like all genocides, was not inevitable. Warning signs abounded long before the mass killing, and began with the process of “othering”. The Holocaust cautions us to heed these warning signs and to challenge hatred, bigotry, racism, and prejudice. We can draw on our knowledge of the past to counter the fear and suspicion spread today through the manipulation of information, hate speech and the distortion of history."

From 1933 to 1945, the Nazi regime and its allies created approximately 44,000 sites to confine Jews, political prisoners, POWs, Roma and Sinti, and many others. 

Over 1,100 ghettos existed across Europe, with the largest in Poland. Most ghettos were situated on rail lines that facilitated later mass deportations to killing centers...

A reminder of our common humanity

To remember the victims of the Holocaust is to remember their humanity, and to defend the rights of all to live in peace and with dignity.

To remember is everyone’s responsibility.

Rounding up the children from the Lodz ghetto, Poland, for deportation to the Chelmno death camp, Poland, September 1942. None of the children survived.

Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #50328. Courtesy of Instytut Pamieci Narodowej. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

https://www.un.org/en/exhibits/exhibit/holocaust-remembrance 

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The Global Impact of the Holocaust

A warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism, and prejudice."

- United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/76/250

The United Nations was established in response to the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The Holocaust has had a profound impact on International Human Rights Law, resulting in the United Nations’ adoption of foundational documents in 1948: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights represents the universal recognition that basic rights and fundamental freedoms are inherent to all human beings, inalienable and equally applicable to everyone, and that every one of us is born free and equal in dignity and rights. Whatever our nationality, place of residence, gender, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status, the international community on 10 December 1948 made a commitment to upholding dignity and justice for all of us. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, or Genocide Convention, is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to enforce its prohibition. It was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1948.

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."   https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

"It was not Hitler or Himmler who abducted me, beat me, and shot my family... It was the shoemaker, the milkman, the neighbor- who recieved uniform and then believed they were the master race." Karl Stojka, Auschwitz survivor

Painting by Karl Stojka's sister Ceija Stojka Arrest and Deportation,​ 1995. Courtesy of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.  https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-rm-g-dragon-8-k-pop-boy-band-idols-collect-art

Art as Memory – the Documentary Canvases of Karl Stojka, a Roma in Auschwitz-Birkenau

https://www.sarahmatthias.co.uk/articles/art-as-memory-the-documentary-canvases-of-karl-stojka-a-roma-in-auschwitz-birkenau/ 

 

Fear at Auschwitz-Birkenau, June-July 1943

 

Buchenwald: ‘Half people, half faces.’

"Birkenau", oil on canvas, approx. 60 x 70 cm, signed, dated 1990

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/id-card/karl-stojka

#ProtectTheFacts

 

Karl Stojka was 12 when the Nazis initiated mass deportations of thousands of Austrian Sinti and Roma to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. He was arrested at his school right in the middle of a lesson and sent to the concentration camp with his family. There, he was known as “Z-5742”, a serial number tattooed on his left forearm. Z stood for “Zigeuner”, or “Gypsy” in German. Karl was assigned to work in the canteen, which allowed him to occasionally sneak some leftovers off the table to his family – a huge relief amidst starvation. When the news about the Soviet army approaching started to spread in the summer of 1944, Karl, his mother, brother and sisters – those deemed fit for continuous labour to exhaustion – were deported to other camps.

We know the story of Karl and his family because, on 2 August 1944, they were fortunate to escape death. That was the day the so-called “Gypsy family camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau ceased to exist – and not because it had been liberated. That night, thousands of its Roma and Sinti prisoners never were able to experience freedom again because they were killed in the camp’s gas chambers. Karl’s uncle Lulo, his wife, and three children were among these victims.

Some 500,000 Roma people were systematically persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime, its allies and collaborators during the Second World War. Many more were subjected to criminal medical experiments, forced labour and torture. The Roma genocide is still under-researched and widely unknown by the general public, often leading to denial and distortion of facts about this dark chapter of history.  For decades following the war, the Roma were not recognized as victims of Nazi persecution and the crimes committed against them remained unacknowledged.

After the liberation, Karl Stojka and his sister Ceija both became famous artists. They used their visibility to actively campaign for the importance of learning and acknowledging the facts about the crimes perpetrated against Roma and Sinti communities during World War II. Along with other activists, they also reminded that the Roma genocide didn’t spring out of nowhere: a centuries-long history of anti-Roma racism and discrimination could have laid the grounds for these atrocities... READ MORE  https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/shedding-light-roma-genocide-take-part-protectthefacts-campaign

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