Children in Gaza can tell an F-16 from an F-35 from a drone. They know a whole litany of things that are beyond their years. Things that they shouldn’t have to know.
Over 10,000 children have been killed in Gaza.
The children who have survived have seen their families, friends and neighbors killed by the Israeli army. They have seen near-death by starvation and death by suffocation, under the rubble and by explosion.
Children in Gaza do not have the luxury of death being a mystery. It is a daily presence.
If a child in Gaza is hungry, they know not to throw a tantrum. They have become used to feeling hunger. The same is true of the cold. Every child in Gaza now knows what it is to be unhoused, to sleep in a tent or on the streets in winter.
It’s so sad that in order to get people to care about Palestine, we completely ignore the thousands of innocent men who have been killed in this genocide. We have to say “children”, or “women and children”, with slightly lower numbers, because the full death count is somehow seen as less tragic when we include men.
My heart aches for the innocent men of Palestine who have been slaughtered. You mattered just as much as anyone else. And for the men who are doing everything in their power to help their fellow Palestinians, we love and respect you. Thank you for all that you do.