Stop it! Don’t compare the restrictions of the world with Gaza – those people live under a permanent Zionist siege!

I’m seeing all over social media people writing and posting memes saying that the rest of the world now knows how Palestinians in Gaza live.

Please stop! This is rubbish!

The rest of the world doesn’t watch their children getting shot while in quarantine; the rest of the world is not prevented from being able to get basic goods from outside, the rest of the world does not see its homes being bulldozed and bombed from the sky, the rest of the world is not prevented from rebuilding those homes after they are destroyed, the rest of the world is not prevented from acquiring basic medicines for themselves and even their hospitals, the rest of the world does not have a poverty rate of around 70-80%, the rest of the world has not been declared ‘unliveable’ by the UN.

Please stop repeating this. It’s not true. We, in ‘the rest of the world,’ do NOT know how it feels to live as a Palestinian in Gaza – even with our quarantines and empty supermarket shelves.

Even people in Wuhan, probably the most quarantined, cannot compare their lives to those of the people in Gaza. Such analogies minimise the suffering of the people living under siege in Gaza – for 13 years!

Na’eem Jeenah