The Humanitarian Nightmare in Gaza

This is the result of deliberate policy choices that the Israeli government made and that the U.S. government has supported.

The UNICEF spokesman once again condemned the war in Gaza:

A top U.N. agency says the Gaza Strip is "the most dangerous place in the world to be a child" as Israel's military bombardment of the territory kills and injures thousands of children and thousands more suffer from infectious disease and a lack of food, water and medicine in overcrowded, unsanitary hospitals and shelters.

"I am furious that those with power shrug as this humanitarian nightmare is unleashed on a million children," James Elder, UNICEF spokesman, told journalists Tuesday in Geneva. Elder, who recently returned from a two-week mission in Gaza, said, "I am furious that children recovering from amputations are bombed and killed in Nasser hospital. I am furious that more children, hiding somewhere, have limbs blown off every day.

"I am furious that so many children I met cannot grieve for their killed mother, father and family," he said.

According to UNICEF, 10,000 children were killed or maimed in Gaza as of two months ago. Now there have been at least 28,000 children killed and injured with more than 10,000 killed. Every day that the bombing has continued, more innocent civilians have needlessly been slain. Every day without a ceasefire is a day in which more Palestinian children are slaughtered. It has rightly been called a war on children, and children have borne the brunt of it. This is the war that our government fully backs and helps make possible with its ready supply of weapons and ammunition. Through our government’s actions, American citizens are helping to fund and enable the devastation of Gaza and the killing of many thousands of innocent people.

Almost half of Gaza’s population is made up of children, and along with the women of Gaza they make up nearly 70% of the victims of the war. Even when compared to some of the most brutal and inhumane wars of the last thirty years, this war stands out as one of the worst. In addition to the tens of thousands killed, more than 50,000 have been injured. The health care system is collapsing under the strain of the number of wounded, the spread of disease, and the systematic attacks on hospitals by Israeli forces. As the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) medical team leader in Gaza has said, “Doctors are stepping over bodies of dead children to treat other children who will die anyway.”

Many of the wounded are at grave risk of succumbing to their wounds because of a lack of proper facilities, medicine, and sanitary conditions. The risk of infection is obviously high. Because of the ongoing siege, proper treatment for the injured is often not possible. The MSF report goes on to say, “In Gaza, Israel’s complete siege makes it impossible to access essential drugs, including pain management drugs, which are critical in surgical interventions, and the medical tools needed to repair shattered and burned bodies.”

We need to remember that the humanitarian nightmare in Gaza is man-made. It is not some unforeseen accident that has befallen two million people. It is the result of deliberate policy choices that the Israeli government made and that the U.S. government has supported. It can be halted and reversed.

Because our government is the chief enabler of this horror, American citizens have a special responsibility to rein in our government and to demand that it also puts the Israeli government in check. We have an obligation to hold our leaders accountable for their outrageous and destructive behavior, and if we don’t do it no one else is in a position to bring them into line.

There is a remedy available, but it requires our government to use its influence to demand an end to the war and the lifting of the siege that created these nightmarish conditions. Washington’s lockstep support for the collective punishment of the people of Gaza is vile and unjust, and it has to end. Americans must oppose the administration’s policy and seek to reverse it right now before it is too late.