(C) Tennessee Lookout
This story was originally published by Tennessee Lookout and is unaltered.
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The most tragic victims in the Israel-Hamas war are those who have no say in it. – Tennessee Lookout [1]
['More From Author', 'February', 'Ren Brabenec']
Date: 2024-02-20
Humankind finds no higher aspiration as deeply entrenched within our species as the need to protect children. That’s why the United States must be a leading advocate for peace in Israel-Palestine, not a belligerent entrenched in the conflict.
Palestinian children are killed by the thousands in Israel’s bombing campaign
The Israel Defense Force’s (IDF’s) latest bombing campaign in Gaza began with Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari’s comments following the October 7 Hamas attack. “Between accuracy and the scale of damage, right now we are busy with what generates maximum damage,” he said. Since then, the IDF has dropped over 29,000 bombs on Gaza, including hundreds of 2,000-pound munitions that can maim and kill people within a quarter of a mile. The result? About 12,000 Palestinian children have been killed, another 32,800 injured, and at least 25,000 have lost one or both parents.
The bombs fall, and Palestinian children have nowhere safe to go. In at least three instances between October 7 and December 21, the IDF bombed locations it had told civilians to flee to, not only bombing “safe zones” but also bombing the “safe corridors” it told civilians to travel on.
It is a war crime for belligerents to fail to distinguish between combatants and civilians, yet this illegal strategy is no secret and is openly encouraged by Israeli lawmakers. “Wipe Gaza off the face of the earth. Gaza must be burned. There are no innocents there,” said Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) Nissim Vaturi on January 10.
Palestinian children who survive the bombs are being starved
It is a war crime to deprive a population in an occupied territory of food, water, and electricity, and it is a war crime to use starvation as a weapon of war and a method of collective punishment. According to the United Nations, 80% of the starving people in the world right now are located in Gaza. All 2.4 million residents are hungry, and one-quarter of the population is starving, half of whom are children.
Like the bombing campaign, the starvation has been intentional and broadly publicized. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on October 9.
Gallant meant it. Israel has destroyed 70% of Gazan fishing boats and 22% of Gaza’s agricultural land, including greenhouses and orchards. A staggering 86% of Gazans have been displaced from their homes, which also means they’ve been displaced from their fields, farms, and granaries. Critical infrastructure for processing and distributing food has been destroyed by bombs that have leveled 175,000 buildings in Gaza, or 60% of its structures.
As parents can no longer feed their children with local resources, Gaza’s reliance on foreign aid has skyrocketed. In response, Israel has blocked critical aid from reaching the besieged population under the skeptical pretext that international relief trucks might be carrying weapons for Hamas. These claims belie the fact that Israel could step up and provide aid to Palestinians, ensuring in doing so that no weapons are smuggled in. Israel has refused to do this, a decision that will have lethal consequences as famine knocks at the door of the besieged population.
Palestinian children are made responsible for events they cannot control
If Palestinian parents had nails and coffins to bury their children instead of the mass graves they must resort to, they might consider the bitter condemnations of Israeli leaders as the metaphorical final nails in those coffins. For whether Palestinian children die from the bombs or from the injuries, disease, and starvation that follow, their deaths are explained away by cruel rhetoric and brazen refutations of international law. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” said Israeli President Isaac Herzog on October 14. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime [Hamas].”
By Herzog’s “civilian complicity” rationale, American civilians who supported President George W. Bush would be legitimate targets for Iraqi and Afghan militants following the Bush Administration’s invasions of those countries. Putting aside the insane idea that it’s justified to slaughter civilians because of the actions of their leaders, Herzog’s lunacy-logic also makes no exception for Gaza’s children who cannot vote for anyone, who were not alive when Hamas took power, and who do not possess the means to overthrow Hamas. Yet the burden of everything Israeli leaders hate about Gaza is laid at the feet of its children. “The children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves,” said Knesset member Meirav Ben-Ari on October 18.
The U.S. should prevent atrocities, not fund them
Israel is a nation of just nine million people, but its military ranks 17th out of 145 for sheer strength, and it’s one of the most advanced in the world in terms of high-tech equipment, surveillance abilities, and intelligence-gathering assets, thanks to U.S. funding and support. The IDF frequently carries out highly strategic missions to assassinate Hamas militants, even performing lethal, targeted strikes on Hamas leaders in foreign countries.
Those abilities mean that when the IDF uses indiscriminate bombing to kill thousands of children in Gaza, it is doing so in an intentional, calculated manner. Israel could take a different approach to the conflict if it wanted to, or if it was made to.
Palestinian children are enduring a horror that has no contemporary in modern history, but they are not the only victims. Thirty-six Israeli children were killed during the October 7 Hamas attack, and the loss of an Israeli child is equally tragic as the loss of a Palestinian child. For the sake of the children who suffer at the hands of the adults who’ve failed them, the Biden Administration must demand Israel follow international humanitarian law, obey the rules of war, and pursue a ceasefire and a Two-State Solution so that those who survive this conflict can grow up in a far better world than that which currently torments them.
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