Palestinian Children: The Horror of Not Seeing the Next Day

Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip will temporarily cease starting this Friday, but hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children remain at risk of not waking up the next day.

Just by reading these lines a chill runs through the body, what it will be like then with the parents of those beings - if they are alive - and, above all, with the children themselves.

It’ likely that many of these minors, especially the youngest ones, do not clearly understand the uncertainty of their future, but they are constantly feeling that they are missing what’s essential.

They do not have food, drinking water, medical care, not even a roof that would allow them to receive some protection and shelter, even if there’s this temporary truce and the release of the hostages agreed upon by Israel and Hamas.

It’s estimated that 40% of those killed in Gaza are children, and so that this dazzling figure does not continue to grow, the executive director of the NGO Save the Children, Inger Ashing, has released a statement calling for a ceasefire to be reached lasting for the good of all children.

"Children are denied their right to life and health (...) Protecting hospitals and delivering life-saving medical supplies is a duty under the laws of war," Adele Khodr, director of Unicef for the Middle East and North Africa, had already warned.

And while part of the world cries out for common sense, peace, and sanity, others are ashamed of their poor human condition. This is the case of a former US State Department official, Stuart Seldowitz, who among the insults he gave to an Arab street vendor in New York, stated that "If we have killed 4,000 Palestinian children, you know what? Is not enough".

Xenophobia, racism, and unreason reach such extremes that even the Oscar-winner American actress Susan Sarandon was sanctioned by the agency that represented her, United Talent Agency, with the suspension of her contract as a result of her statements in favor of the Palestinians during a rally in New York.

A similar fate has befallen actress Melissa Barrera, whom the American film company Spyglass Media Group surprisingly removed from the cast of the horror franchise Scream, due to the comment the artist made on social media about Israel and calling for a ceasefire.

As the worst and best feelings and reasons emerge around the conflict, Ashing reiterates in his statement: "A pause of a few days in the fighting will not keep children safe, we cannot allow an entire generation to bear the brunt of this conflict while the world watches…”

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff