Today, 20 November, marks World Children’s Day. This year, as we see continue to see Israel perpetrating daily horrors and massacres in Palestine, we are reminded of how far we still are from protecting the youngest and most vulnerable among us.
In Gaza, Israel’s violence against children far predates last October. In fact, today a child born in 2008 would have lived through sixteen years of a complete air, sea and land blockade of the Gaza Strip, as well as three major Israeli military offensives. A life of fear, uncertainty, poverty and loss led Save the Children to report in 2022, over a year before Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, that four in five children in Gaza suffered from depression, with over half having contemplating suicide and three in five self-harming.
This already dire situation has only worsened since October 2023, when Israel launched its full genocidal war, with the seeming unconditional support of the UK and its other allies. Earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Office reported “unprecedented” levels of international law violations by Israel, finding that 44% of the deaths it was able to verify between November 2023 and April 2024 were children. The same report found that the most represented age group among the dead were those between five and nine years old. Today, the death toll nears 44,000, of whom 17,492 (40%) are children. Additionally, another 167 children have also been killed in the West Bank since last October.
These numbers, as staggering as they are, are likely to be a severe underestimate. In June, Save the Children estimated that up to 21,000 were missing in Gaza – either trapped beneath the rubble, detained, buried in unmarked graves or lost. Those that have managed to survive are trapped in a vicious cycle of displacement, hunger and fear. The UN has warned that 50,000 children below the age of five need urgent treatment for malnutrition by the end of the year, while at least 37 have already died from malnutrition or dehydration.
Gaza has become the most dangerous place in the world for children and, after a year of Israeli genocide, it is home to the most amputee children in modern history. The horrors of the past year are perhaps most disturbingly illustrated by the coinage of a new acronym in Gaza: WCSNF – wounded child, no surviving family.
Israel’s war on Gaza is not a war against Hamas, as it and its allies claims, but a war on the Palestinian people. The alarming death rate of children and the imposition of inhumane conditions through restrictions on humanitarian aid, targeting of civilian infrastructure and ethnic cleansing policies all suggest that Israel is fighting a war to destroy the very existence of Palestine and any prospect of a future.
Speaking on the occasion, Ismail Patel, Chair of Friends of Al-Aqsa, commented, “This World Children’s Day comes during one of the darkest episodes in human history. Israel’s genocide, now in its second year, has been devastating on the children in Gaza. Children are not collateral damage; they are our greatest investment in a better future. If we continue to let them fall victim to Israeli attacks, we perpetuate cycles of violence, poverty, and despair that will haunt us for generations. If we cannot save the children of Gaza from the horrors of Israeli Genocide, what hope do we have for justice and peace?”
