A child signs a memorial cross at a vigil for the victims of a mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, where two people were killed and 17 injured by a shooter on August 27. Right: A Palestinian child cries in agony at a charity kitchen in the Gaza Strip on August 27. AFP
Condemnations poured in following Wednesday’s shooting in Minneapolis, USA. Two children, aged 8 and 10, were killed when a 22-year-old individual opened fire through the windows of a church located on the grounds of the Annunciation Catholic School.
Gun violence remains a perennial problem in the United States, and no administration has yet succeeded in addressing it—owing in part to constitutional protections under the Second Amendment and the formidable influence of the gun lobby.
In condemning the incident, former US President Joe Biden said, “No parent should ever have to bury their child. Jill and I are heartbroken, and there are simply no words to adequately mark such a horrific and painful moment. With all our hearts, we are praying for the victims, their families, and the community of Minneapolis.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said, “These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church. These are kids that should be learning with their friends; they should be playing on the playground. They should be able to go to school or church in peace without the fear or risk of violence, and their parents should have the same kind of assurance. This kind of act of evil should never happen, and it happens far too often.”
We couldn’t agree more. Children have an inherent right to life, as affirmed by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. States that are signatories to the convention must make every effort to ensure the survival of every child. Except for the United States, all UN member states have ratified the treaty. Hailed as history’s most widely ratified human rights instrument, the convention calls upon states to uphold the rights of every child—regardless of who they are, where they live, what language they speak, what religion they follow, what they believe, how they look, whether they are a boy or girl, have a disability, are rich or poor, or whatever their parents or families may believe or do. In other words, whether they live in the US or the Gaza Strip.
The convention insists that children must be protected in armed conflicts and that no child should be detained, tortured, or subjected to cruel treatment.
Despite the United States’ non-ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, it was heartening to witness the condemnations issued by the Trump administration and others following the Minneapolis shooting.
Now transpose the Minneapolis tragedy to a location 10,100 km away—to the Gaza Strip, where nearly 20,000 children have been mercilessly massacred over the past 22 months of war. Some were blown to smithereens by 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs supplied by the United States. Others were killed in missile and drone attacks, and some were shot dead—just as the Minneapolis children were—at the so-called food centres jointly run by Israel and the US. Many children have died, and continue to die, due to acute malnutrition caused by Israel’s deliberate weaponisation of hunger.
The UN Convention declares that children have the right to the best possible healthcare, clean drinking water, nutritious food, and a safe, clean environment. But in Gaza, clean water and nutritious food are tragically scarce, while a safe environment is a myth. Children are losing weight and wasting away.
Given former President Biden’s failure to protect the children of Gaza, his words—“No parent should ever have to bury their child” smack of hypocrisy.
Just as the child victims in Minneapolis, Gaza’s children should be learning in school with their friends. They should be playing freely, attending school, mosque, or church in peace—without fear or risk of violence.
Alas, Gaza’s children are deprived of their right to childhood. Forced into the role of breadwinners, some scramble for a morsel at food centres that have become death traps or at soup kitchens where they squeeze through the crowd to reach the front and receive a ladle or two of porridge. Some are ‘floor-ridden’—not bedridden—crippled by injuries sustained in Israel’s bombardments. Some are in Israeli prisons. Others are dying of acute malnutrition, with their mothers, siblings, or family elders offering comfort not by feeding them, but by stroking their skin-and-bone bodies until they breathe their last.
“Jojo, my baby, do not cry; Jojo, my baby, hush and die” was a lullaby during the tenth-century European famine. Gaza mothers, silently suffering the slow death of their children, may be singing to their pearls (Lu’lu in Arabic), “Lu’lu, my baby, do not cry; Lu’lu, my baby, hush and die.” That is, if these children are fortunate enough to have a mother—or someone—to sing them into their long, never-to-be-woken sleep. Since Israel’s military assault on Gaza began on October 7, 2023, following a Hamas raid on a nearby Israeli town that was once part of historic Palestine, 39,000 Palestinian children have been orphaned in what is widely termed the biggest orphan crisis in modern history. Some of these children are identified as WCNSF—“wounded child, no surviving family”—a new term that has entered the medical lexicon. These orphaned and traumatised children have buried mothers who nursed and cradled them, and fathers who carried and comforted them.
Among the newly orphaned children is the son of 32-year-old Maryam Abu Daqqa, one of five journalists killed this week in Israel’s double strike on Al Nasser Hospital. She worked for the Associated Press. A year and a half before her death, she managed to send her only son to his father to live in the safety of the United Arab Emirates. She used to introduce her son to her friends by saying, “He is my man, and he will protect me when he grows up.” But when she realised her survival as a journalist was no guarantee with Israeli blatantly flouting international law, she wrote her last will and included in it a deeply personal message to her son, urging him to live with dignity and to name his future daughter Maryam in her honour.
As Israel moves ahead with plans to occupy Gaza City and the rest of the Gaza Strip, the ironclad support the US is extending to the Zionist state’s crimes against children is appalling. At the UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, while 14 of the council’s 15 members endorsed the UN’s Food Security Agency’s declaration of man-made famine in Gaza and called on Israel to lift the siege and let the food trucks move in, the US shamelessly dismissed the UN report as biased and whitewashed Israel.
As the Trump administration endorses Israel’s murder of children by starvation, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child appears not to be worth the paper it’s printed on. Will someone tell ‘God-fearing’ Donald Trump—the genocide enabler—that when Jesus Christ said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these,” he did not mean Jewish children, white-skinned children, or children from Minneapolis. For him, children are children—a heritage from the Lord.
For children’s sake, let there be peace in Palestine. But the cries of Palestinian children do not move sociopaths in world leaders’ garb.
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