GAZA, (PIC)
Ears that delight in the screams of children, eyes that delight in seeing the remains of infants, pictures of soldiers taken next to the bodies of victims who have seen little of life, politicians and media professionals who boast of their ecstasy when the number of young dead increases. All these models have only come together in Israel that is waging a mad war on all manifestations of innocence in the Gaza Strip, and at its heart are women and children.
You can compare these cases with what happened on Wednesday morning, September 18, in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood east of Gaza City, where 8 citizens were martyred, including 5 children and 2 women, in an Israeli bombardment that targeted Ibn Al-Haytham School, which shelters displaced people, in a scene that has become routine, and not a day goes by without it being repeated.
A whole year that the modern era has not witnessed in terms of the extent of the destruction that befell the Gaza Strip, and in terms of the number of child martyrs that the occupation army does not hide its intention to target, claiming that they are a project to be terrorists; as children were the primary target of the Israeli aggression, as they represent – according to what the leaders and elite of Israel see – a plant for the continuation of the tree of resistance extending throughout all parts of Palestine.
Nearly 17,000 children were martyred in the hundreds of massacres committed by the Israeli occupation army daily in the Gaza Strip, including 2,100 infants under the age of two, since the occupation army launched its aggression on Gaza on October 7.
Brutal killing
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor says that the number of Palestinian children, whether infants or children in general, killed by the Israeli army is horrifying and unprecedented in the modern history of wars, and reflects a dangerous pattern based on dehumanization of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by targeting them and their children in a deliberate, systematic and widespread manner without stopping for ten months, and in the most brutal and horrific ways.
The Monitor confirmed – in a statement – that many children had their heads and body parts severed as a result of the highly destructive Israeli bombing of civilian gatherings, especially homes, buildings, residential neighborhoods, shelters and tents for the forcibly displaced, which constitutes a flagrant violation of the rules of distinction, proportionality, military necessity and taking the necessary precautions.
The human rights Monitor highlighted that the Israeli army possesses advanced technology, and it knows every time it targets a home or shelter that there are civilians inside it, including children and women, and yet it bombs them with missiles and bombs with great destructive power, deliberately causing the greatest possible loss of civilian lives and severe injuries, as evidenced by the repeated, systematic and widespread pattern of Israeli targeting of civilians in the Gaza Strip, and the highly destructive and indiscriminate weapons, especially against areas with dense civilian populations.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor demonstrated the brutality of the occupation with the martyrdom of the two infants, Aser and Aysal Muhammad Abu Al-Qumsan, last month, who were twins who were not more than four days old; they were killed on the morning of August 13, 2024, along with their mother Juman and their grandmother, in an Israeli bombardment that targeted a residential apartment in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. It pointed out that the father of the two children had gone out to obtain a birth certificate for his two newborn children, and returned to the apartment to find it destroyed and all of his family members, in addition to the grandmother, killed in a direct Israeli targeting of the house.
The oppression of parents
The Monitor reported that two other infants, Wissam and Naeem Abu Anza, aged six months, were also killed along with their father and 11 family members in an Israeli airstrike on the Al-Salam neighborhood in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, on March 3.
Rania Abu Anza, the mother of the two children, said that she gave birth to the two infants after ten years of trying to fertilize and implant them inside the womb, to fulfil her dream of becoming a mother, saying, “They implanted three embryos in me, two of them remained, and now they are gone. Ten days after their deaths, they would have been six months old. They bombed the house, my husband, my children and the family were killed in the massacre.”
The most prominent testimony was given by Abdul Hafez Al-Najjar (42 years old), the father of the child “Ahmed” who was beheaded and killed with three of his brothers, their mother and a large number of victims in an Israeli massacre that targeted displaced people in tents in the Barksat area west of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 26. He told the Euro-Med team, “My child Ahmed looked very beautiful. He was a year and a half old. His head was cut off in the Israeli bombing. His head was separated from his body. When I saw him, I felt oppressed. He was buried without his head.”
The Euro-Med team also mentioned the case of Mrs. Shaimaa Al-Ghoul, who was nine months pregnant when her house in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip was bombed on February 12, killing her husband and her two sons, Mohammed and Janan. She was also injured by shrapnel in her abdomen that reached the fetus. Al-Ghoul reported that her husband, Abdullah Abu Jazar, had prepared for her “dates, sweets, and a Christmas bag in celebration of his expected newborn before he was killed with his two children.” She said that she gave birth to a child whom she named Abdullah, after his father, but he only lived one day, as he died from his shrapnel wound, they all died, leaving her alone.
Denial of medical care
Euro-Med confirmed that dozens of unborn children were killed in hospitals as a result of the lack of oxygen and electricity, the absence of care, and the targeting of hospitals over the past eleven months.
He pointed out that deaths are recorded daily among infants as a direct result of crimes that fall within the acts of genocide committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, especially starvation, thirst, preventing and obstructing the entry of basic aid, such as milk, and deprivation of health care. Most of these are not recorded in the numbers of victims announced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, due to the lack of a specific mechanism to recognize this type of victim.
Systematic management
The human rights Monitor said that Israel continues to kill thousands of Palestinian men and women in the Gaza Strip, most of them in their reproductive years, including pregnant women, and thousands of children, including infants. There is no doubt that the systematic and widespread killings committed by Israel against Palestinian civilians, who accounted for at least 92% of the total number of deaths due to the crime of genocide, amounting to about 50,000 Palestinians, including thousands under the rubble, in addition to wounding and injuring about 88,000 others, will have negative repercussions on the population growth rates and reproductive capacity of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and for generations to come, and will leave serious consequences for the Palestinians as a national and ethnic group for several generations, according to the meaning contained in relation to acts of genocide under Article (2) of the Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide.
As a result of the widespread destruction of civilian objects in the Gaza Strip, including homes, private property, livelihoods, production, and the economic and commercial system that the Israeli army deliberately created and subjected the population to living conditions intended to destroy and impoverish them, most children in the Gaza Strip have lost their homes, their own economic security and that of their families, in addition to being deprived of education, which will have serious repercussions on their future and their ability to enjoy their other rights, and will make them more vulnerable to poverty, unemployment and exploitation, and less able to contribute to rebuilding Palestinian society in the Strip after the end of the Israeli military attack, thus forcing Palestinians to migrate directly and indirectly.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the effects of these crimes will not end with the end of the war, and will remain with them throughout their lives, and this is one of the most prominent goals of the Israeli crime of genocide. There are thousands of children who have lost their fathers and/or mothers, thousands of children who have had limbs amputated and have suffered severe burns and other serious injuries, and the vast majority of children have suffered psychological trauma that may be difficult to treat, while the majority of children suffer from hunger, malnutrition and dehydration, which will negatively affect their future growth and their physical, mental and educational abilities.
Legalization of murder
With the rise of the extreme right within the Israeli entity, targeting children has been accompanied by edicts from Jewish rabbis requiring the killing of Palestinian children, which (edicts) began to be made public during this war, and with the extreme right taking over the decision-making circle.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, head of a Jewish institute and one of the most important Jewish authorities on religious edicts, as saying that he had previously issued an edict on March 26, 2007, stating that “the ‘giant’s judgment’ must be applied to the Palestinians, since God then tasked the children of Israel with waging an uncompromising war against the Amalekites.” Rosen recited the ruling, which says: “Eliminate a giant from beginning to end, kill them and strip them of their possessions, do not show mercy to them, let the killing be continuous, one person after another, do not leave a child, do not leave a crop or a tree, kill their livestock from camels to donkeys.”
Sadism of soldiers
This elite approach in the occupation entity, whether on the part of military leaders, politicians, academics, or rabbis who issue edicts requiring the killing of children, has pushed the occupation soldiers to search for children to abuse them by killing, raping, or torturing them. It seems that this behavior among the occupation soldiers has become a source of pride and boasting and showing off the imaginary achievement in the quest to eliminate the Palestinian generations.
Several video clips have been shown of soldiers announcing that they have killed children and searched for others to kill, and they deliberately voice their behavior amidst mocking laughter and indifference to the crimes they are committing against children, and to the violations of international law or even humanitarian norms.
