That Israeli ‘Internment Camp’ to Be Built in Rafah

[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]

Much of the world’s media has chosen to report on Israel’s intention to enlarge the city of Rafah so that it can accommodate another 600,000 Gazans (the total population of Gaza is 2.2 million), as if what was being planned by those endlessly wicked Israelis was an internment camp or, worse still, a “concentration camp.” That is not what is planned, but everyone seems determined to mislead, in order to blacken Israel’s image in the world even more than has already been accomplished. More on this latest example of misreporting can be found here: “Media’s Grotesque Holocaust Dog Whistle: ‘Internment Camp’ Lie Built on Retracted Reuters Claim,” by Rachel O’Donoghue, HonestReporting, July 10, 2025:

The Guardian described Israel as having drawn up “plans for an internment camp on ruins of Rafah,” in an analysis piece by Emma Graham-Harrison, the paper’s newly appointed Jerusalem-based Middle East correspondent.

Emma Graham-Harrison, in the far-left and determinedly anti-Israel Guardian, gets the Israeli plan exactly wrong. The Israelis are not building “an internment camp on the ruins of Rafah,” but instead plan to clean the rubble from Rafah, and to build not a camp, but an addition to the city that will be able to accommodate 600,000 more people. Those people will be moving to safer quarters from their current tent cities in Al-Muwasi. There will be no forced “internment.” Anyone who wants to leave will be able to do so. But the Israelis are betting that few will want to turn down the “new and improved and enlarged” city of Rafah, and the humanitarian aid that can more easily and more safely be distributed there, that they are hoping to build.

The BBC reported “plans to move Gaza’s population to camp in Rafah.”

ABC Australia ran a headline referring to the construction of a “large-scale camp,” citing so-called “human rights lawyers” who had denounced the proposal.

How can those “human rights lawyers” denounce a proposal that they clearly do not understand? Israel is not going to construct a “large scale camp,” but will merely be enlarging, after cleaning the rubble from, the city of Rafah. Why not explain that, instead of scaring people with the use of the terms “camps,” “internment camps,” and “ghettos”?

Germany’s DW News presented it as a foregone conclusion: “Israel to confine Gazans in camp near border.”

And the Irish Times went even further, dropping the pretense. A recent op-ed accused Israel of creating “ghettos” for Gazans.

The implication is chillingly clear. The Jewish state, they suggest, is now echoing the crimes once committed against its own people. Israel, the inheritor of Holocaust memory, has become a Nazi regime. The grotesque irony is not lost on the editors who chose these headlines. It is intentional.

And it is also clearly a lie.

The claim that Israel is planning “internment camps” or “ghettos” is not grounded in fact. It stems from a statement by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, who said he had instructed the IDF to prepare a plan to establish a “humanitarian city” in the southern Gaza Strip. At no point – in English or Hebrew – did Katz use the word “camp,” nor did he imply mass internment or forced confinement.

According to Katz, the plan involves relocating approximately 600,000 Palestinians, primarily from the al-Muwasi area, into a new protected zone where humanitarian aid could be safely delivered. Individuals would undergo security screening to prevent Hamas terrorists from embedding themselves among civilians.

Even Haaretz, hardly a defender of the Israeli government, reportedthat the plan is unlikely to move forward due to concerns over its feasibility. There is no finalized proposal. No construction has begun. No orders have been given. It remains a theoretical contingency in a war where Hamas deliberately uses civilians as shields, and aid delivery is perilously complicated….

The media’s casual flirtation with Holocaust inversion is not just offensive. It is factually wrong and morally repugnant. And in an era of rising global antisemitism, it must be called out for what it is – incitement against Jews.

What kind of concentration camp must Gaza be, if 100,000 people have been allowed to leave the Strip, without the slightest hindrance, since the war Hamas started began on October 7, 2023? What kind of “camp” — internment or concentration — provides new housing for its inhabitants? What kind of internment camp has no guards, no barbed wire, no searchlights, no menacing German shepherds, and exists only to provide its inhabitants with safer quarters and easier access to humanitarian aid? The Israelis call what they are intending to construct a “humanitarian city,” yet not a single account in the media has made clear that that is Israel’s intention. Why not?