A New Cloyingly Disgusting Euphemism: Humanitarian Transit Areas
"Riviera of the Middle East?" Not!
“A proposal seen by Reuters and bearing the name of a controversial U.S.-backed aid group described a plan to build large-scale camps called ‘Humanitarian Transit Areas’ inside - and possibly outside - Gaza to house the Palestinian population, outlining a vision of ‘replacing Hamas control over the population in Gaza.’" (1)
“The plan, reviewed by Reuters, describes the camps as ‘large-scale’ and ‘voluntary’ places where the Gazan population could ‘temporarily reside, deradicalize, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so.’” (1)
“It calls for using the sprawling facilities to ‘gain trust with the local population’ and to facilitate U.S. President Donald Trump’s ‘vision for Gaza.’" (1)
“On February 4 Trump first publicly said that the U.S. should ‘take over’ the war-battered enclave and rebuild it as ‘the Riviera of the Middle East’ after resettling the population of 2.3 million Palestinians elsewhere.” (1)
We’ve long had them, I suppose – glib terms to describe and justify confinement and abuse and expulsion of displaced, marginalized, and reviled populations. They connote a galaxy of monstrous evils: forced labor, genocide, starvation, disease, deprivation, torture, sexual abuse, euthanasia, and execution.
Let’s consider a few hall-of-famers:
Reservations: the system adopted by the United States and Canada for forced relocations of indigenous people. https://www.history.com/articles/indian-reservations
Ghettos: recall the Warsaw uprising of 1943. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ghettos
Concentration camps for wholesale extermination and genocide, World War II: "‘Arbeit macht frei’ – work will set you free.’” https://www.britannica.com/topic/concentration-camp
Homelands: a function of apartheid South Africa. https://southafrica-info.com/infographics/provinces-homelands-south-africa-1996/
Plantations: slavery in the western hemisphere. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/plantation-system/
“Vocational Training” for China’s Uigher populations. https://www.state.gov/forced-labor-in-chinas-xinjiang-region/
Re-education camps: Viet Nam, 1975. https://www.thevietnamese.org/2024/05/post-1975-tragedy-the-grim-reality-of-life-in-vietnams-re-education-camps/
Gulags: Grotesque Stalin-era treatments of dissidents and perceived state enemies. https://allthatsinteresting.com/gulag
Ah. Humanitarian Transit Areas. So soothing a term. So uplifting. So sensitive. So accommodating. So thoughtful. So charitable. So………...Orwellian!
A snide aside: dogs seemingly get better treatment than some human beings, courtesy of another euphemism now common at airports: Pet Relief Areas. (2)
Sources:
(2) https://www.dogsonplanes.com/airports/mia/pet-relief-areas/