Person of the Year 2024: Hind Rajab and the Children of Gaza
“Gaza is the real-world embodiment of hell on earth for its one million children, and it’s getting worse day by day,” UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder said in October.
The terrorist Israeli apartheid regime with total support from the United States government has murdered one Palestinian child every ten minutes for the past year, making Gaza the least safe place for children in the world.
UNICEF stated recently that US-backed Israeli forces have turned Gaza into a “graveyard for thousands of children,” leaving the children of Gaza “trapped in a cycle of pain.”
“Gaza is the real-world embodiment of Hell on Earth for its one million children, and it’s getting worse day by day,” UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder said in October.
The Gaza-based Community Training Center for Crisis Management, supported by War Child Alliance, found recently that 96% of children in Gaza fear imminent death, and 49% want to die.
The joint needs assessment also concluded that 92% of children in Gaza are not accepting of reality, 79% suffer from nightmares, 77% avoid discussing traumatic events, 73% display signs of aggression, and many more "show signs of withdrawal and severe anxiety, alongside a pervasive sense of hopelessness."
Perhaps most infamously, in January, US-backed Israeli forces fired from a tank 335 bullets at the car in which 5-year-old Palestinian child Hind Rajab was hiding alone, eventually murdering her as she pleaded for help from rescuers. Before murdering Hind, Israeli forces murdered her family as she watched, and later murdered the medics who were sent to save her.
From the Holler: “We Want to Live as the Other Children Live”
More than a year ago, a group of children in the Gaza Strip—speaking in English—stood in front of Al-Shifa Hospital warning the world of Israel’s evident attempts to “exterminate the people of Gaza, their dreams and their future.”
“Since the 7th of October, we have faced extermination, killing, bombing falling over our heads—all of this in front of the world,” one of the children said. “They lie to the world that they kill the fighters, but they kill the people of Gaza, their dreams and their future. Kids of Gaza run out of their hopes and wants… The occupation is starving us. We don’t find water [and] food. We drink from the unusable water. We come now to shout and invite you to protect us. We want to live. We want peace. We want to judge the killers of children. We want medicine, food and education. We want to live as the other children live.”
Since that day, Israel has gone on to murder tens of thousands more children in Palestine.
From the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: A Genocide of Children
The age group most killed by US-backed Israeli forces in Gaza is 5-9 year-old children. Second is 10-14 year-olds. Third is 0-4 year-olds.
Due to US-Israeli forced starvation policies, more than two million people in Palestine, mostly children, now are at great risk of starving to death should they be so fortunate as to survive the constant bombardment and targeted drone assassinations. According to UNRWA, the average wait time at Israeli-controlled crossing points for humanitarian aid trucks to enter Gaza is 74 days.
From UNICEF spokesperson James Elder: A Stain on Our Collective Conscience
“Nothing could prepare me for my recently concluded mission into the Gaza Strip, where children face catastrophic conditions. In my twenty years with UNICEF, traveling from one humanitarian crisis to the next – from famines to floods and war zones to refugee camps – I’ve simply never seen such devastation and despair as is happening in Gaza.
The intensity of the attacks, the massive number of child casualties, the desperation and panic of the people on the move – people who already have nothing – is palpable. It is humanitarian disaster on top of humanitarian disaster…
As one of my UNICEF colleagues noted just a couple of weeks into the war, the killing and maiming of children, abduction of children, attacks on hospitals and schools, and the denial of humanitarian access are a stain on our collective conscience. It was true then, it remains true now…
Children in Gaza are now in danger from the sky, disease on the ground, and death from hunger and thirst. Nowhere is safe.
The children of Gaza have suffered enough. We need a humanitarian ceasefire, and peace, now.”
From Rosalia Bollen, UNICEF: The Situation in Gaza is Apocalyptic For All Children
“The situation in Gaza is really apocalyptic for all children. It’s not just the bombs and the bullets that kill them, but it also has to do with the living conditions, or rather the lack thereof, the lack of access to health care, the lack of proper shelter as winter hits. Shelters are like makeshift tents made out of whatever people can get their hands on, so they don’t protect families.
Families go hungry. You’ll have seen a famine alert that was issued for northern Gaza, but in the south and center too, severe hunger is increasing. Diseases are rampant. I’ve been to many shelters where there’s chickenpox and hepatitis A. Nearly all children have diarrhea. So, the conditions are really, really bad.”
From American doctor Irfan Galaria: What I saw in Gaza wasn’t war—it was annihilation.”
“I stopped keeping track of how many new orphans I had operated on. After surgery they would be filed somewhere in the hospital, I’m unsure of who will take care of them or how they will survive. On one occasion, a handful of children, all about ages 5 to 8, were carried to the emergency room by their parents. All had single sniper shots to the head. These families were returning to their homes in Khan Yunis, about 2.5 miles away from the hospital, after Israeli tanks had withdrawn. But the snipers apparently stayed behind. None of these children survived.”
From US surgeon Mark Perlmutter: Israeli Snipers Deliberately Target Palestinian Children
“I’ve seen more incinerated children [in Gaza] than I’ve ever seen in my entire life combined. I've seen more shredded children [in Gaza] in just the first week than I've ever seen in my entire life combined. All the disaster zones combined don’t equal the level of carnage I saw in Gaza,” Perlmutter said. “I’ve seen children shot twice by snipers. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world’s best sniper.”
From British surgeon Nizam Mamode: Israeli Quad-Copters Target Children after Bombings
“The drones would come down and pick off civilians—children. We had description after description. This was not an occasional thing. This was day after day, operating on children who would say, ‘I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped, and this quad-copter came down and hovered over me and shot me.’ And that was clearly a deliberate act, a persistent targeting of children day after day. We had one or two mass casualty incidents every day.”
From Haaretz: I Felt Like a Nazi and Palestinians Were the Jews
“A new commander came to us. We went out with him on the first patrol at six in the morning. He stops. There’s not a soul in the streets, just a little 4-year-old boy playing in the sand in his yard. The commander suddenly starts running, grabs the boy, and breaks his arm at the elbow and his leg here. Stepped on his stomach three times and left. We all stood there with out mouths open. Looking at him in shock… I asked the commander: ‘What’s your story?’ He told me: ‘These kids need to be killed from the day they are born. When a commander does that, it becomes legit.’”
“A large group of followers consisted of soldiers with no prior inclination to violence. Their behavior was most influenced by junior officers’ modeling and the company’s norms. Some followers who committed atrocities reported moral injuries: ‘I felt like, like, like a Nazi… It looked exactly like we were actually the Nazis and [Palestinians] were the Jews.’”
From The New York Times, CNN: Dozens of Palestinian Children are Amputated Daily Without Anesthesia
Because of the constant bombardments, Gaza now is home to the largest number in history of children with amputated limbs. Because Israel blocks all importations into Gaza of anesthetics, dozens of children are amputated daily without anesthesia. More than 50,000 Palestinian children have lost one or more limbs since October 2023. Many are left to suffer with no help at all due to the complete destruction of nearly all medical facilities in Gaza. CNN recently reported that the items most frequently rejected by the Israelis are anesthetics, anesthesia machines, oxygen cylinders, ventilators and water filtration systems.
From Nourhan Shadi Alhelou: We Are Forced to Study in the Cemeteries
“My name is Nourhan Shadi Alhelou. I am 11 years old. I came here to learn because there are no schools. There is no place for us to study. We only found this place to learn and study in. I am afraid because the graves are open. We have never come here before. We have never come to the cemeteries to study before. Before the war, we were comfortable and were going to school. We were studying, and we had a future. Now, we have no future, no peace, and we are forced to study in the cemeteries. We hope to return to our places in Gaza, our homes, our schools, our government. Isn’t it a human’s right to be born and live in peace?”
From Al-Jazeera: Six Babies Frozen to Death
“Cold weather in Gaza has claimed the life of a baby, the sixth to die in a week, according to medical sources, as Israel continues its relentless attacks on hospitals across the strip.
One-month-old Ali al-Batran died on Monday at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported, quoting medical sources who attributed his death to plummeting temperatures.”
From Eye on Palestine: My Siblings Died From Hunger
“My siblings died from hunger. Look, I got burned while I was filling up. For this little thing we suffer? For this little thing? We haven’t eaten since yesterday. We’ve been without food since yesterday.”
From Dr. Ezzideen: How to Tell a Child His Mother is Gone
“The child in the photo is Adli Al-Asali, a one-year-and-three-month-old boy. His aunt brought him to the clinic, deeply concerned about his severe malnutrition, refusal to drink milk, and rapidly declining weight. I asked if he had been breastfed or fed formula, and her answer shattered me. She explained that the problem began a few days ago when his mother, who had been nursing him, was killed. Since then, he has refused to take any milk. They came to the clinic seeking guidance—desperately asking how they could save this child, whose health is visibly deteriorating before their eyes. Some cases we encounter in Gaza go beyond the scope of medical textbooks, offering no solutions even to the world’s most skilled doctors. How do we explain to this innocent child that his mother is gone? How do we tell him that he must now face the cruelty of this world without her milk, her care, her love, or her protection?”
From Quds News: Children Bid Farewell to Infants
“Children bid farewell to infants died from the severe cold in the Gaza Strip.”
From Dr. Mustafa Elmasri, Gaza Great Minds Foundation: Gaza Child’s Story in Their Drawings
“We’ve seen worse than this, to be honest. When they first arrive at our tents, they create some of the most haunting and disturbing drawings imaginable. On average, it takes about six weeks before they can begin producing ‘normal’ childhood drawings.”
From Al-Jazeera: The Names of Slaughtered Children
In February, Al-Jazeera published a video scrolling through the names of all the Palestinian children killed in US-Israeli attacks in Gaza up to that point. The video is more than seven minutes long. The first thirty seconds display only the names of children who were murdered by the US and Israel before their first birthday.
From Electronic Intifada: Genocide Against the Unborn
“‘What is happening is an organized genocide against the Palestinian people targeting even generations who have not yet been born.’
Dr. Muhammad Ajour, director of the embryo lab at the Basma fertility center, said the destruction of fertilization centers ‘was part of an Israeli strategy to cut off the Palestinian lineage as one of the methods of genocide against the Palestinian people.’
Salah Abdel Ati of the International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights said that Article 23 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966 confirms that ‘the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state, and emphasizes the freedom of men and women to form a family.’
He also referred to Article 7 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which stipulates the child’s right to be born and to know and be cared for by his or her parents.”
From Defense for Children International, Save the Children, Al-Jazeera: Thousands of Child Prisoners
“Israel is one of few nations remaining in the world which still regularly imprisons children. For decades, according to Defense for Children International, each year approximately 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years old, have been detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. The most common charge is stone throwing.
Palestinian children are the only children in the world who are systematically prosecuted in military courts, with an estimated 10,000 Palestinian children held in the Israeli military detention system over the past 20 years. Denying children access to legal representation and to see their family are both longstanding measures imposed by Israeli authorities.”
From Chris Hedges: Letter to the Children of Gaza
“I hope one day we will meet. You will be an adult. I will be an old man, although to you I am already very old. In my dream for you I will find you free and safe and happy. No one will be trying to kill you. You will fly in airplanes filled with people, not bombs. You will not be trapped in a concentration camp. You will see the world. You will grow up and have children. You will become old. You will remember this suffering, but you will know it means you must help others who suffer. This is my hope. My prayer.
We have failed you. This is the awful guilt we carry. We tried. But we did not try hard enough. We will go to Rafah. Many of us. Reporters. We will stand outside the border with Gaza in protest. We will write and film. This is what we do. It is not much. But it is something. We will tell your story again.
Maybe it will be enough to earn the right to ask for your forgiveness.”