most of the people in gaza are children
why aren't more parents trying to save them?
I usually wait until I have solutions before I write to you, but today I come to you with more questions, than answers. As a writer, words are my job, but lately, I can’t find any. The carnage between Israel and Hamas has captured our collective attention, and like you, I’m struggling to process it.
I don’t know how to describe the dystopian feeling of watching a video of a wounded child fight for his life, on a device that I just used to order pizza. I don’t know how to look at a little girl whose refugee camp was just carpet-bombed, stare back at me in shock through a screen that’s being held by an adult who is traumatized, and yet so impotent, that making a video is the most useful thing he can do. I’m astounded by how much war content is being recorded by victims who are using my language, not theirs. When Palestinian children make their videos in broken english, it’s not for them, it’s for us.
I don’t know how to go about my little life when entire families are being wiped out with weapons that were bought with my money. I don’t know how to respect a government that claims it can’t pay for children’s insulin, but spends billions on rockets being fired at them.
But even the members of said government, are beginning to be confused too.
Senator Bernie Sanders released a statement this weekend demanding an end to the violence. “Israel has a right to defend itself. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that,” he said. “But what they are doing now in an indiscriminate way – bombing refugee camps, bombing ambulances, killing thousands of innocent men, women and children in violation of international law – is simply not acceptable. It has got to stop.”
According to the United Nations, “there is already clear evidence that war crimes may have been committed.” UN experts came together a few days ago to sound the alarm expressing “deepening horror” at what’s unfolding in Gaza. “The Israeli airstrike on a residential complex in the Jabalia refugee camp is a brazen violation of international law – and a war crime,” the UN experts wrote in an emergency press release. “Attacking a camp sheltering civilians including women and children is a complete breach of the rules of proportionality and distinction between combatants and civilians,” the UN experts said. “We remain convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide.”
“We remain convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide.”
-The United Nations
And while the Israeli government admitted that it intentionally targeted a refugee camp because a senior Hamas member was in the area, this violates international law. According to UNICEF, “refugee camps, settlements for the internally displaced, and the civilians inhabiting them are all protected under international humanitarian law.” In other words, if a terrorist hides under a woman’s shelter, a foreign or domestic government does not have the right to bomb it. And if they do, it violates the Geneva Convention and constitutes a war crime.
Most of the people in Gaza are children, which means that they have been disproportionately eliminated. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), 70% of those killed in the past three weeks have been children and women. Thousands have died and more than 7000 Palestian children have also been injured or have been left with “life-changing problems.” Israel has been so relentless in its shelling, that Save The Children estimates a child is killed by an Israeli airstrike every ten minutes. According to the NGO, more children have died in Gaza in three weeks, than have died in combined global conflicts in the past four years.
70% of those killed in the past three weeks have been children and women.
-UNRWA
Cemeteries have become so full that some of these children’s bodies are being stored in ice cream trucks. “Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” said James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF in a press briefing on October 31st. “It’s a curse to be a parent in Gaza,” Ahmed Modawikh told the AP, after his 8-year-old daughter was killed. Yasmine Jouda, who lost 68 family members when Israeli forces blew up two tall buildings on October 22nd, says that the only survivor was her niece, whose pregnant mother was found dead under the wreckage with the heads of her twin newborn babies coming out of her birth canal. “What did this tiny baby do to deserve a life without any family?” Jouda told the AP.
“1 child dies in Gaza every 10 minutes.”
-Save the Children
Even more perturbing, is the fact that 80% of children living in Gaza were already suffering from depression. According to a report from Save The Children released in 2022, more than half of children in Gaza were suicidal and showed demonstrable signs of trauma from witnessing the deaths of other children. “Caregivers described concerning behavior in children and young people, with 79% reporting an increase in bedwetting [and an] increase in children experiencing difficulties in speech, language and communication, including temporary reactive mutism, which is a symptom of trauma or abuse,” the report found. Indiscriminately bombing a group of already emotionally fragile children has unfathomable long-term consequences on their development and constitutes grave human rights abuses.
“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children."
-James Elder, Spokesperson for UNICEF
As for the children who are still alive, their most basic fundamental rights are being grossly denied. In addition to being cut off from food, water and electricity, Palestian children have also lost their right and access to education. According to UNICEF, Israeli strikes have damaged 221 schools which amounts to 40% of schools. 1 in 3 hospitals in Gaza are no longer operating, and have become shelters for displaced families and two-thirds of clinics can’t operate due to damage. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRAW) says that shelters are at four times their capacity. Even the UN agency itself, has lost a devastating 70 staff members (including a man alongside his wife and eight children) making this “the highest number of UN aid workers killed in a conflict in such a short time." Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the agency told The Associated Press that "UNRWA will never be the same without these colleagues."
More than half of children in Gaza are suicidal.
-Save The Children Report 2022
Even the adults reporting on the killing of children, aren’t safe. The last three weeks has been the deadliest war for journalists in the last 30 years. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 35 journalists and media workers have been killed, most of them living in Gaza. “We cannot ignore the level of deaths of journalists in Gaza,” Christophe Deloire, RSF’s secretary-general, told TIME. “These figures are worse than those killed during the Russia-Ukraine war and show that what’s happening is incredibly shocking.” One veteran Palestinian journalist, Wael Al-Dahdouh, learned that his wife and children had been killed by an Israeli airstrike while he was reporting from besieged territory. He visited the morgue to see his son’s body while he was still on live broadcast.
And these acts of terror are impacting all children on all sides of this war. Israeli children have been brutally murdered and victimized too, and more warfare only brings more instability. "Children in both Israel and the State of Palestine are experiencing terrible trauma — the consequences of which could last a lifetime," said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. Too many Israeli children were were part of the 1400 who were killed on October 7th by Hamas, and an estimated 30 children are still being held. Palestinian and Israeli teachers alike, are struggling to help their students feel safe during times of such distress. And these continued military attacks impact children globally, as antisemitism and islamophobia have surged in the past few weeks in several countries, exposing children to violent slurs, physical aggression and even hate crimes. No child is safe when the adults in charge decide that war is the answer.
The last three weeks has been the deadliest war for journalists in the last 30 years.
-Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
That’s why UNICEF has joined more than 120 other countries in demanding an immediate ceasefire, as well as humanitarian access and the release of all the abducted children. "On behalf of all the children caught in this nightmare, we call on the world to do better," Russell told the Security Council. "Whether they are young people attending a music festival, or children going about their daily lives in Gaza, they all deserve peace,” she said. “Children do not start conflicts, and they are powerless to stop them. They need all of us … to put their safety and security at the forefront of our efforts, and to imagine a future where children are healthy, safe, and educated. No child deserves any less."
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Perhaps the fact that this war is disparately killing children, is why young people seem so uniquely opposed to it. Only 27% of Americans aged 18-34 believe that Israel’s airstrikes and ground offensive were fully justified, compared with 58% for those aged 50 and older. The majority of young people also believe that the U.S funding Israel’s military makes the region more dangerous. This sharp generational divide is reminiscent of the Vietnam and Iraq War. Millennials are especially bruised, given that they watched their government exploit 9/11 to spend 3 trillion dollars on an unnecessary war, leaving most of them living at home, instead of buying homes. “There is overwhelming support amongst young voters in particular for a ceasefire.” Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America told Rolling Stone. “Polling has shown — and we’ve seen out in the field — that this is an issue that young people are very passionate about.”
Children should never be harmed in the name of peace. Young people seem to know that, so why don’t their parents?
Like you, I have more questions than answers. But this is one of the most horrific things I've witnessed in my lifetime. To everyone saying "What about....", yes. I know. Outrage has to be selective by nature or we would be in a perpetual state of outrage. We can't function that way. But this is such a horrific situation that it's clearly gotten the attention of the world. And the fact that we seem to be standing by just watching makes me feel helpless.
I will keep leaving voicemails and writing letters and hitting the streets. (It’s the only way I can sleep at night.) but I’ve deactivated my FB and deleted my Twitter because I physically can’t handle the gore auto playing in my feed, and because I am heartbroken by how many genocide apologists are among the people I thought I shared values with. Thank you for writing this ❤️ Keep going ✊🏼