[Blog] Targeting Gaza's children

Since the murderous Israeli onslaught on Gaza as from October 2023, some 18,000 Palestinian children have been annihilated and several thousand others have been wounded. According to WHO, Gaza has the highest ratio of child amputees in the world. The UN estimates that, following the resumption of the Israeli aggression after the breach of the temporary truce, around a hundred children are killed or injured every day.

One could argue that the children are collateral victims of a ruthless war, fallen in indiscriminate bombings of residential buildings, buried under the rubble of their homes or incinerated in makeshift tents. However, testimonies from doctors, journalists and eyewitnesses reveal that, far from being accidental, many of the killings were deliberate and carried out in cold blood. In many cases, children have been intentionally targeted. For its documentary, "Kids under Fire", Al Jazeera interviewed 20 American doctors who have served as volunteers in Gaza. All of them have observed a horrifying pattern of gunshots from snipers and quadcopters. Dr Tammy Abughnaim, an American emergency physician from Chicago working at Al Shifa Hospital, testified the following: "More and more I started to see children with penetrating injuries like gunshot wounds. After five, six, seven, eight, I came to the conclusion that somebody is shooting children... At first I didn't want to believe that children were being shot at... nobody wants to believe that other humans are capable of annihilating children in that way."

The reality dawned upon her when she treated the wounds that could only be the work of "snipers, foot soldiers with rifles and quadcopters armed with guns". Her colleague, Dr Mark Perlmutter, orthopedic hand surgeon from North Carolina who worked as a volunteer in Nasser Hospital, added: "The target at the end of the scope is unmistakable. When that trigger gets pulled on that target, it is not by accident. At all. Ever."

Drop Site News relates the poignant story of ten-year-old Mira Al Darim. She lived in a makeshift tent in Khan Younis. On August 24, she woke up early as it was the birthday of her elder sister Rafat. "Wake up Mom," she told her mother. "We have to prepare a cake for Rafat." While her mother was waking up, she took a sandwich from the kitchen, if it could be called one, and started eating. As she opened her mouth, a bullet hit her in the head and blew up her skull. She fell down in a pool of blood, an innocent victim of a ruthless Israeli sniper, lurking in the rubble of Gaza and maliciously aiming at children. Imagine she was your child. Imagine seeing her skull blown up in front of your eyes. How would you feel? How devastated would you be? Indeed, there are no words to describe the excruciating pain of a parent in the face of such horrors.

Not only the living are targeted but even the unborn are prevented from seeing the light of day. On 2nd March, Israel cut off all supplies of food, fuel and medicine. Thousands of pregnant women began facing starvation, malnutrition and inability to procure life-saving medicines. The situation is further exacerbated with the systematic targeting of medical facilities and forced mass displacements. The result of all this has been an exponential increase of miscarriages, which have risen by a staggering 300%. A case in point is that of 27-year-old Lojain Abu Shanab, as related by Drop Site News. On 15th March, following the orders of the Israeli army, she had to flee her home. As no transportation was available, she had to flee on foot. After walking for about 3 kms, she felt severe pain and cramps which intensified until she had a miscarriage. "I didn't only lose my baby. I lost my dream too," she lamented. Women like her, many of whom had waited for years to become pregnant, just lost their fetuses in similar circumstances. According to UNFPA, some 60,000 pregnant women are suffering from acute malnutrition and their fetuses are hanging between life and death. 

The unimaginably dire condition is illustrated by the case of Khaleda, pregnant since four months. She relates that she has nothing to eat except some bread and often she goes to sleep with an empty stomach. In such conditions, is there any hope of successfully giving birth to her expected child? This is the life to which Israel has condemned the women and children of Gaza in utter disregard of humanity and humanitarian law.

We cannot but ask: what kind of a world are we living in? Children, the priceless gifts of God, the supreme joys of our life, the raison d'être of our existence, the creatures we cherish with all our hearts, the embodiment of our hopes and future, the very symbol of innocence and vulnerability, are being butchered, murdered, bombed, massacred, their bodies converted into mere body parts often with heads missing, decapitated and decimated while the world is looking the other way. During World War 2, when 6 million Jews were exterminated, the world had a pretext. Hitler was carrying the genocide in secret. This genocide is being done openly, livestreamed on social media on a 24 hr basis, yet the world is not lifting a finger to stop it. Some countries are even abetting it by supplying arms and weaponry and sharing of intelligence. It is a shame on humanity. All these talks about human rights, international laws and UN conventions are futile and meaningless in the face of the open and avowed genocide being committed by Israel.

“Silence, on tue”. This is the answer of the world, especially the so-called civilized West.

Azize Bankur