Yusuf Dhia-Allah
The death toll in Gaza since October 7, 2023 has surpassed 39,200, among them at least 18,000 children. Another 21,000 children are missing, presumed dead. If this is the kill rate when Israel has taken ‘precautions’, one wonders what the casualty figures would be if it didn’t.
Three days after Netanyahu rattled off a litany of lies, Israeli planes fired three missiles at the Khadija Girls School in Deir al-Balah in Central Gaza. The missile strike killed 31 people, mostly children; more than 100 were injured. The school also has a hospital where some 4,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
It could be argued that Netanyahu did not know about the missile strike at Khadija Girls’ School when he addressed the fawning members of US Congress. Fair enough.
He could not, however, be oblivious of the letter the Israeli military’s top legal officer Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi sent on February 21, 2024. In it, she wrote that the conduct of some Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip has “crossed the criminal threshold”.
She cited examples of criminal conduct that included “inappropriate statements that encourage unacceptable actions and operationally unjustifiable use of force, including against detainees.” So much of Netanyahu’s “most moral” army.
Dr Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish-American doctor who visited Gaza last month gave gripping testimony in an interview with CBS television. He said, “I’ve seen more incinerated children than I’ve ever seen in my entire life combined. I’ve seen more shredded children in just the first week.” His interview on CBS provided a shocking account of the suffering endured by Gaza’s children due to Israeli aggression. Not surprisingly, the interview went viral.
An orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Perlmutter recounted seeing children with severe injuries, including sniper wounds and described the dire medical and humanitarian crisis gripping Gaza. Almost every hospital and medical facility in Gaza has been destroyed. Children face extreme trauma without adequate care.
He also provided a chilling account of children being targeted by snipers. “I have seen children that were shot twice,” he said. When asked if children in Gaza were being shot by snipers, he responded: “Definitively. I have two children that I have photographs of that were shot so perfectly in the chest I couldn’t put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately and directly on the side of the head in the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world’s best sniper and they’re dead centre shots.”
A Palestinian lawyer residing in Canada told Crescent International that he has lost 13 members of his family in Gaza. Two of his nephews who survived Israeli bombings, have lost their eyesight completely. A third nephew lost both his legs while a fourth has severe injuries to his eyes. He needs urgent surgery to save at least one of them.
Such medical treatment is simply not available in Gaza. His elderly mother is a heart patient whose condition has been exacerbated by Israel’s constant demands for people to move from one locality t another before Israel starts bombing it. The Palestinian lawyer’s family has had to move eight times. No safety is assured even in the Israeli designated “safe zones”.
He must get his mother and nephew to Cairo where some Egyptian doctors have agreed to provide free treatment. With the Rafah Crossing to Egypt closed by Israel in May, it is becoming an impossible task.
Repeated calls by the United Nations to reopen the Rafah Crossing have gone unheeded. On July 26, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Palestine, Muhannad Hadi once again called for reopening the crossing to evacuate patients from Gaza. He was speaking at a briefing session held by the Security Council at the request of Algeria, China and Russia to discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
He said that tens of thousands of patients in Gaza needed “immediate medical evacuation” and urged not to impose any restrictions on humanitarian aid entering Gaza.
In addition to Israel killing thousands of children, around 34,000 have been injured. Another 21,000 are missing and 17,000 have been orphaned. The number of children who have lost either limbs, eyes or suffered permanent disabilities due to Israeli attacks stands at more than 1,500. Most of the children had their limbs amputated without anesthesia.
Gaza’s children are being killed and maimed in unprecedented numbers in the most horrific ways possible, says Alexandra Saieh of Save the Children International. In June, the UN added Israeli army to the child harm list.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), described the Israeli offensive as “a war on children … a war on their childhood and their future.” These sentiments were echoed by UN chief Antonio Guterres, who said in his address to the General Assembly in May: “If there is a hell on earth, it is the lives of children in Gaza.”
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, as of April 2024, there were 1,067,986 children in the Gaza Strip. This accounted for approximately 47 per cent of its total population.
In its onslaught on Gaza, the number of children Israel had killed in Gaza in the first four months was higher than the total number of children killed worldwide in four years, according to Lazzarini.
Israel’s policy is clear: wipe out not only the current generation but also the next generation of Palestinians. In pursuit of this demonic policy, the zionists have resorted to crude dehumanizing rhetoric against Palestinians as well as quoted distorted passages from the Bible.
The zionist war criminals be warned: Hamas has compiled a list of more than 2,000 Israeli soldiers who have been involved in horrific crimes. They are on its revenge list for killing children in Gaza.
No comments:
Post a Comment