Israelisoccer matches were suspended during the assault on Gaza. When thegames resumed last week, the fans had come up with a new chant: “Whyhave the schools in Gaza been shut down?” sang the crowd. “Because allthe children were gunned down!” came the answer.
Asidefrom its sheer barbarism, this chant reflects the widespread beliefamong Israeli Jews that Israel scored an impressive victory in Gaza – avictory measured, not least, by the death toll.
Israelipilots and tank commanders could not really discriminate between theadults and the children who hid in their homes or huddled in the UNRWAshelters, and yet they chose to press the trigger. Therefore, it is notat all surprising that the lethal onslaught left 1,314 Palestiniansdead, of which 412 – or nearly one third of all of the casualties –were children.
This latest assault underscores that Israel, not unlike Hamas, readily resorts to violence and does not distinguish between civilians and combatants (only the weapons at Israel’s disposal are much more lethal). No matter how many times the Israeli government tries to blame Hamas for the latest Palestinian civilian deaths it simply cannot explain away the body count, especially that of the children. In addition to the dead, 1,855 Palestinian children were wounded, and tens of thousands of others have likely been traumatised, many of them for life.
Every child has a story. A Bedouin friend recently called to tell us about his relatives in Gaza. One cousin allowed her five-year-old daughter to walk to the adjacent house to see whether the neighbours had something left to eat. The girl had been crying from hunger. The moment she began crossing the street a missile exploded nearby and the flying shrapnel killed her. The mother has since been bedridden, weeping and screaming, “I have let my girl die hungry”.