Gaza’s Children

According to Save the Children, over twenty thousand children have been killed, buried under rubble or in mass graves, detained, lost, or disappeared amid Israel’s ongoing genocidal war in Gaza.

Child survivors hardly fare much better. One heartrending video, taken by Palestinian journalist Mohammad Magadli, shows a displaced orphan girl in Gaza walking barefoot for miles while carrying her wounded sister on her back. “I’m tired,” she tells the reporter. “I have been carrying her for an hour and I can’t now.”

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that children in Gaza are dying in excruciating pain due to Israel’s deadly and intensifying blockade. UNICEF spokesman James Elder said,

After more than a year of attempting to shed light on the atrocities being committed against children in Gaza, perhaps THIS is the most damning reality: Children — deeply unwell children — are being denied the medical care that could save them in Gaza, and then prevented from leaving to places where help awaits.

In northern Gaza, Al Jazeera reports that the Israeli army has raided and occupied Kamal Adwan Hospital, where hundreds of medics, wounded patients, and displaced families are seeking shelter. Footage shows the hospital director, Dr Hossam Abu Safiyeh, and other doctors in their white coats raising their hands, pleading for safety.

As other videos and testimonies show, Israeli forces have rounded up dozens of civilians from the hospital, forcing them to remove their clothes — their fate remains unknown. Dr Abu Safiyeh himself appears to be among the kidnapped. On Saturday, after Dr Abu Safiyeh refused to evacuate the hospital, Israel soldiers killed his son Ibrahim. In a video shared by journalist Anas al-Sharif, Dr Abu Safiyeh, still in his medical coat, leads a heartbreaking farewell prayer for his son. Another video shows Ibrahim’s mother bidding her son farewell and weeping over his body.

Human Shields and Forced Displacement

On social media, some Israeli soldiers have posted photos of Palestinian civilians used as human shields. One IDF soldier, interviewed by CNN, shared that he can no longer eat meat, having bulldozed and run over hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, dead and alive, until their bodies “squirted out.” (The CNN report, which portrays IDF war criminals as traumatized victims, marks a new nadir for US mainstream media and its shameless effort to whitewash Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.)

Meanwhile, violent rhetoric in Israel continues to escalate. “I just think we need to kill them, every one of them . . . and that’s it,” a young Israeli settler recently told Sky News on air. In a deranged eulogy in Israel this week, the brother of an Israeli soldier killed in south Lebanon, said proudly: “You entered Gaza to take revenge. As many as possible, women, children, everyone you saw — this is what you wanted.”

The horrors continue unabated, with women and children separated from one another, the forcible displacement of thousands of civilians, the relentless assault on Gaza’s last working hospital, and the continued blocking of aid. Thousands of civilians have fled Jabalia, leaving bodies lying in the streets. Videos taken in northern Gaza show Israeli soldiers driving out families at gunpoint.

Volker Türk, the United Nations human rights chief, has warned that the “darkest moment” is unfolding in northern Gaza: “As we speak, the Israeli military is subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege, and risk of starvation. Unimaginably, the situation is getting worse by the day.” He stated further that

the Israeli government’s policies and practices in northern Gaza risk emptying the area of all Palestinians. We are facing what could amount to atrocity crimes, including potentially extending to crimes against humanity. These are universally accepted and binding norms developed to preserve the very bare minimum of humanity.

This is ethnic cleansing, carried out in broad daylight. Jewish Voice for Peace has issued a statement comparing Israel’s crimes in Gaza to the Holocaust, while Israel-based rights group B’Tselem published a statement condemning “Israel’s ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza.”

“Conquer, Kick Out, Resettle”

Israel is making no secret of its plans in Gaza. According to Israeli troops, the IDF has launched a “Generals’ Plan” in northern Gaza — a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians there. Israeli leaders are holding policy conferences under the slogan: “Conquer, Kick Out, Resettle.” In one event attended by several Knesset members from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, along with Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss declared that “Gaza Arabs have lost the right to be here.” While Israeli officials are not denying their policy of deliberate starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, Antony Blinken, playing Netanyahu’s advocate, insists that Israel is not implementing the Generals’ Plan.

These actions, committed during Blinken’s visit to Israel, are carried out with bipartisan US blessing. While the Joe Biden administration has warned that Israel is implementing a “policy of starvation” in Gaza — projected to “nearly triple” starvation levels that are already killing children — it has done nothing to rein in its genocidal partner. Instead, the US government has lavished tens of billions of tax dollars in military aid on Israel, support that has reached an unprecedented record since last year.

In a tragic irony, President Biden gave a speech this week in which he issued a historic apology to Native Americans for past injustices. Meanwhile, Biden continues to arm and fund the genocide of the century. During the event, a woman in the crowd asked Biden: “How can you apologize for a genocide while committing a genocide in Gaza?”

The oppressed find little comfort in the prospect of historical justice — the notion that future historians or leaders will perhaps look more kindly on their plight. Palestinians, like Native Americans before them, want justice now, on this earth, in their lifetime, while they are still alive and have the power to witness it.