Children of Gaza: Death and destruction at “unprecedented levels”

Children of Gaza: Death and destruction at “unprecedented levels”

Almost three months have passed since February 10, the day on which Netanyahu’s announcement froze half the world: the order given to the IDF to prepare for the invasion of Rafah. Since then, the million and a half Palestinians trapped in the last city left standing in the entire Strip have lived in terror and anguish, 24 hours a day. Subjected to a daily martyrdom of bombing. Forced to live face to face with death. Every day at least 30/40 innocent and unarmed civilians are murdered. Most are women and children. Mothers and fathers who lose children, grandparents who mourn the death of children and grandchildren, entire families wiped out in one fell swoop. Newborns who don’t have time to see the light, and if they don’t die under the bombs are destined for consumption and, like many other children, die of hunger. Also this morning the Israeli army bombed a civilian house in the center of Rafah and killed six people, four of them were small children.

There are more than 30,000 children who, in addition to famine, have to face the worst trauma: that of being orphaned, of losing their father, mother and siblings in one fell swoop. Tens of thousands of children are left alone in the world. But which world? What they know is in pieces, reduced to rubble, among which they wander like drifting wrecks. They float in a sea of ​​hatred, destruction, inhuman violence. They know they may be the next targets. They live waiting to be sunk and swallowed up by death. This is the reality of the children of Gaza. A hell from which, even if you emerge alive, you can no longer shake off the memory. The head of UNICEF Catherine Russell stated that among the million and a half Palestinian refugees crammed in Rafah “there are at least 600,000 children, including thousands of malnourished newborns. An Israeli land invasion would bring catastrophe upon catastrophe.” And the head of UNICEF always warns that “the lack of food does not allow children who are not strong enough to heal adequately”. Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner General, declared that in Gaza the numbers are “unprecedented and disconcerting: in 6 months more children have died than in all the world’s conflicts in the last 4 years”.

According to a United Nations official, the level of destruction in Gaza has surpassed anything seen since the Second World War. It is estimated that post-war reconstruction could cost up to $50 billion. “We haven’t seen anything like this since 1945,” Abdallah al-Dardari, director of the regional office for Arab states at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), said during an online press conference last night. “The intensity and massive scale of the destruction in Gaza is unprecedented, and the rebuilding effort will take at least 80 years.” It has been estimated that the incessant Israeli bombings in just under seven months have destroyed 80% of the buildings in the Strip. More than half the population has lost everything, including their homes. In these seven months, on the orders of Netanyahu’s Government and War Cabinet, the most moral army in the world has murdered more than 35 thousand unarmed civilians, 14,500 of whom were children and approximately 10 thousand women, mothers and girls. It destroyed all civilian infrastructure, obliterated the entire health system, surgically demolished 36 hospitals, destroyed the school system, razing 56 schools and all 12 universities in the Strip to the ground. It tortured and killed 496 doctors and health workers and injured 1,500 others. He kidnapped, tortured and deported 309 doctors and paramedics to Israeli prisons, for no reason other than racial hatred. Many of them were executed in prison.

The latest tragic case discovered yesterday is that of the Palestinian surgeon Adnan al-Bursh, 50 years old, head of the orthopedics department of the al-Shifa hospital, one of the most qualified doctors in the entire Strip. According to the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Rights Group, the doctor was murdered on April 19 in section 23 of the Israeli Ofer prison, a few kilometers from Ramallah, in the West Bank. Many of the Palestinians kidnapped in the months spent in Gaza by Israeli soldiers were deported to that prison. In the last few hours, the young Ismail Abdul Bari Khader was also killed in the same prison. The joint note issued by the two organizations states that “The two victims died as a result of torture and crimes committed against detainees in Gaza.” His body was handed over yesterday, along with 64 other prisoners. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, said yesterday that she was “extremely alarmed” by the killing of the eminent doctor.

New satellite analyzes also confirm the “ecocide” caused by Israeli war operations in these seven months: more than 50% of the forest cover and cultivated lands of the Strip have been devastated; entire expanses of olive groves and orchards destroyed, polluted water. NGOs report that “Agriculture and wildlife have been completely destroyed.” A man-made cataclysm on a scale never seen before in history. It is now clear that Netanyahu’s obsession with Rafah has nothing to do with the elimination of the last four Hamas battalions. Wanting us to believe this at all costs is an offense to the intelligence of each of us. Anyone at this point has understood that it is a pretext. The obsession of Netanyahu and his Nazi and extremist government, who for months have been raising the fear of anti-Semitism to divert attention from their immoral war and their illegal policies, has a one and only purpose: to erase from the “promised land” every “gentile” trace that does not belong to the “chosen people”. If this is not ethnic cleansing, someone explain to us what it is.