Holocaust Tourism

 

Jeffrey St. Clair >>

+ Peter Matthiessen’s final novel, In Paradise, was a searing critique of “Holocaust tourism,” which seems to be Trump’s plan for Gaza, once the bodies are extracted from the rubble and the remaining Palestinians rounded up and shipped off to desert encampments in the Sinai in a new Trail of Tears, just like his hero Old Hickory. He wants to turn the Strip into the Monte Carlo of the Middle East, with sparkingly coastal pleasure palaces and casinos for international jet set–but scrubbed of any troubling reference to the genocide that just took place there.

Reporter: “Would Palestinians have the right to return to Gaza, if they left during the rebuilding?”

Trump: “It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return, the place has been hell.”

A reporter yells: “It’s their home, sir!”

Trump: “We can build a really good quality town, like someplace where they could live and not die because Gaza is a guarantee that they’re gonna die, the same thing is gonna happen again. Who would wanna go back? They’ve experienced nothing but death and destruction.”