Leningrad Appalled At Use Of Word ‘Siege’ To Describe Gaza

“Are bakeries in Gaza using a mixture of half flour and half sawdust?”

Leningrad, Soviet Russia, July 20 – Residents of this city on the Baltic besieged by the Wehrmacht voiced outrage today upon being informed that Palestinian advocates would be employing the term “siege” in talking about the military blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip by Israel.

Soviet citizens assembled in a bunker in the cellar of a building on Nevsky Prospekt told reporters the word “siege” was being cheapened, and their harrowing experiences minimized, by twenty-first-century propagandists attempting to portray Israel in the most negative light possible.

“Tell me, are bakeries in Gaza using a mixture of half flour and half sawdust, and providing people with only 125 grams per day of the resulting bread as their only food?” hissed a furious Yevgeny Petrov, 55. “I used to weigh seventy kilos before the Nazis and Finns cut us off from the rest of Russia. Now I’m down to barely fifty. We have people eating the paste from wallpaper to get some trace of nutrition. Something tells me not a single person in Gaza will starve because of this so-called Israeli siege. If I had the energy to move I’d bash someone’s face in.”

Leningrad experienced the longest and deadliest siege in history, lasting 842 days from September 1941 to January 1944. Starvation, disease, Wehrmacht shelling, and Luftwaffe bombing and strafing claimed as many as 2 million lives. By contrast, the number of conflict-related deaths in Gaza since the Israeli blockade began in 2007, a much longer period, has yet to reach 10,000. Leningrad was forced to rely on dangerous convoys across frozen lake Ladoga in winter, and a narrow, nearly impassable land bridge with no roads under constant threat of shelling and air attack, whereas Gaza is free to import in unlimited quantities any food, medicine, clothing, and consumer goods without any military purpose. The supposed comparison between the two situations has Leningraders fuming.

“Who’s the idiot who first thought to use such a word for Gaza?” demanded Sasha Vronsky, 49. “Funny, I don’t see Palestinians too weak to bury their dead. Maybe that’s only because malnutrition has all but deprived me of my eyesight. What’s that? Palestinians in Gaza can apply for advanced medical treatment in Israel, and about three fourths of applications are approved? Yes, their situation sounds positively horrific. I’ll be sure to let the Nazis know they’re slacking.”

Palestinian representatives were unmoved by the Leningrad residents’ reactions. “That’s just their narrative,” said activist Rafeef Ziadah. “In our eyes, we are the ultimate victims, and the cheapening of language is just collateral damage, which is fine when we cause it, but a war crime when Israel does.”

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