I have seen many atrocities in my career as a journalist, and listened at inquests to appalling details of cruelty inflicted upon innocent children. All of this has been man-made and many cases have been impossible to ignore because the suffering has produced headline news and resulted in the great and the good ordering investigations to ensure that such a thing never happens again.
The crime of child abuse is considered probably the most heinous and “impossible to forgive” by nearly nine out 10 British adults — more than murder and rape — according to a poll conducted by ComRes in 2019. So, try as I might, I simply cannot understand why the killing of at least 11,000 children is not headline news anywhere in the so-called civilized world with calls for investigations and criminal trials on every news bulletin. Or does the fact that countless babies have been shredded and beheaded by Israel’s rogue “defense” forces using American and British-made bombs not count as child abuse?
According to a report by the organization Every Casualty Counts, more than 11,000 children were killed across the first two and a half years of the civil war in Syria, an average of over 4,700 a year. However, according to UN Children and Armed Conflict reports, over the past 18 years no other conflicts have killed a higher number of children in just one year than Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Indeed, it is a fact that more women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades, new Oxfam analysis has found.
So where is the Western outrage?
Yes, we’ve seen it on the streets with ordinary citizens who protest regularly in their millions, but where is the anger from our politicians and, in particular, the media? The Western media loves nothing more than headlining the killing of a child by an abuser, proving the quote, often attributed to Russian leader Joseph Stalin that: “One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.”
As the tragic loss of life spreads into Lebanon and the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, the regional escalation underscores the urgent need for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, says the charity Oxfam International.
Perhaps we, the general public, are as much to blame because of our silence over the slaughter of children in Gaza. Unfortunately, because civil society has broken down in that part of occupied Palestine, the chances of getting full inquests on the deaths of Palestine’s children are virtually zero. Sometimes, though, a case like the killing of little Hind Rajab, threatens to break through the apathy in the so-called developed countries of the Global North.
However, as journalist Owen Jones pointed out in August, little Hind’s cruel murder — for that is what it was — has almost been forgotten. Whichever way you look at it, the fact that she has become one of the many who are nameless and out of sight, out of mind, is at odds with a BBC local radio poll which asked how willing people would be to forgive someone for actions ranging from swearing to child abuse. More women than men — 89 per cent and 80 per cent respectively — in the ComRes poll said that they found child abuse impossible to forgive.
And yet more than 11,000 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed; hundreds, if not thousands more, are missing, presumed dead, under the rubble of their homes destroyed by Israel. Outside of their immediate families, few know that they are missing because not a single school with a daily roll call now exists in Gaza thanks to Israel and its Zionist accomplices in the West.
Why are these children forgotten?
If I was writing about a baby boy known simply as ‘P’, there would be a flicker of recognition and a sigh if you live in the UK. Baby P was let down by everyone who should have cared about his welfare from police to social workers and lawyers. Their failures led to Baby P’s brutal death on 3 August, 2007, despite 60 visits from officials over the last eight months of his tragically short life. A catalogue of errors by social workers, doctors and police led to the toddler’s death at the hands of his vile mother and her sadistic boyfriend.
More than 50 injuries on his small body were described in court and there was an unprecedented public outcry which eventually led to the resignations and sackings of several high-ranking officials. Even today, 17 years later, the very mention of Baby P is guaranteed to make headlines.
The UK Children’s Secretary at the time was Ed Balls, now a breakfast TV presenter, who is married to the present Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper. He was accused of rushing through the sacking of the head of social services over the council’s failings of 17-month old Baby P who was later identified as Peter Connelly. In May 2011, the Appeal Court concluded that Sharon Shoesmith had been sacked unfairly because Balls and Haringey Council did not give her a proper chance to put her case before her removal. She is said to have been awarded a £600,000 settlement with legal costs and was declared to be the victim of “a flagrant breach of natural justice” fueled by a media witch-hunt.
Ed Balls was also accused of a “knee-jerk response” by scapegoating Ms Shoesmith, the former head of Haringey Council’s children services, and by sacking her so quickly he failed to look into broader problems, such as NHS failings. In other words, the UK government swept the whole matter under the carpet.
In America, the sadistic torture and death of teenager Sylvia Likens in 1965 brought about changes in the law which makes it incumbent upon witnesses of suspected child abuse to report their suspicions to the police. Her shocking case and death made headline news and even gave way to a Hollywood film. Such is the power of the media.
And that is where the blame lies for the silence about the killing of so many Palestinian children; our journalists in the mainstream media are not doing their job. We have a British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary who are incapable of telling any of us their definition of genocide, and the former is an experienced lawyer, but journalists are not holding them to account for their complicity in the killing of 11,000 Palestinian children and 40,000 Palestinian men and, mainly, women.
The child killers in the Israeli military are, in my view, no less evil than those who tormented and killed Baby P or Sylvia Likens, whether they dropped bombs, piloted drones or took aim with their sniper rifles from a safe distance. How do any of them sleep at night? They have no excuses, and “just obeying orders” will not wash. If a pilot does not understand that dropping a 2,000lb bomb on a refugee camp is going to kill many innocent people, then he or she shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near an aircraft of any kind. Drone jockeys must have the mentality of spotty-faced teens playing computer games if they can’t comprehend what their day’s “work” does to innocent people. And snipers taking deliberate aim at and killing children are beyond contempt. I hope that there is a special place in Hell reserved for them.
The psychopaths who order these narcissists to do this murderous work, and their friends in the West, including Keir Starmer, can’t think beyond “self-defense” and “7 October” when trying to justify the mass murder of innocent civilians, especially children. The refuse to consider for one moment that what they are doing is illegal; it’s child abuse; it’s every bad thing imaginable, and more. Israel, we are told repeatedly, insists that it does not break international law. Although the facts demonstrate otherwise — the law is clear, and the crimes have in many cases been broadcast by the criminals on social media — the twisted Zionist narrative is more often than not simply swallowed whole and regurgitated by the Western media.
Allegations of anti-Semitism and the obscenity of the Holocaust have both been weaponized.
And politicians in Washington, Westminster and the West in general bought and paid for by Tel Aviv nod their heads shamelessly as they turn the victims of Zionist terrorism into the villains, and the Zionist villains into victims. We are being conned, big time.
An unprecedented number of Israelis face mental trauma, but until they atone for the child abuse committed by their rogue state they will never have peace of mind. The presidents and prime ministers empowering the psychopaths running Israel today face a similar struggle to salve their consciences, if they ever rediscover them. Journalists can help the process by stepping up to the mark and doing their job properly without fear or favor.
-British journalist and author Yvonne Ridley provides political analysis on affairs related to the Middle East, Asia and the Global War on Terror. Her work has appeared in numerous publications around the world from East to West from titles as diverse as The Washington Post to the Tehran Times and the Tripoli Post earning recognition and awards in the USA and UK. Ten years working for major titles on Fleet Street she expanded her brief into the electronic and broadcast media producing a number of documentary films on Palestinian and other international issues from Guantanamo to Libya and the Arab Spring. Her article appeared in MEMO.
