The suffering that Israel has imposed on the children of Gaza: 14,000 dead and sniper shots in the skull. international

Of the children killed by Israeli snipers who were visited by Dr. Fozia Alvi’s team during their last stay in Gaza, only two survived. It would be more accurate to say that his heart was still beating. He was shot in the brain, he recalled over the phone from Canada. They lay “like vegetables” in the European hospital in the south of the Palestinian territory, connected to a respirator. “They must have been 11 or 12 years old,” says the health worker, who spent two weeks working on the Strip in February. Only those two children survived because a sniper shot into a child’s small body is almost always a death sentence, the doctor explains. It is almost impossible to avoid “such wounds”. Most of the injured minors in Gaza “do not reach hospital. They die immediately and their families bury them immediately.”

The death of children in possible extrajudicial executions by snipers is not one of the main causes of death of the 14,000 minors who, according to UNICEF, have been killed in the seven months of the Gaza war, more than a third of the approximately 35,000 in the territory ruled by Hamas. Conflict deaths calculated by the Ministry of Health. According to the United Nations and NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders (MSF), most of these children have been killed by bombings and explosions. Due to Israel’s severe restrictions on food entry into the area, there are also victims of destroyed buildings, severe trauma, shrapnel wounds, burns, infections, and pure hunger. In early April health officials in the Strip reported 32 cases of deaths due to malnutrition, 28 of whom were minors. Nearly half of the 2.3 million Gazans are under the age of 18. For UNICEF in Gaza, there is a “war against children”.

Children being hunted by snipers is a “new trend”, explains MSF emergency coordinator Marie-Auré Perreaut on the phone from France. A horrific development that, if confirmed, would be yet another war crime to add to the long list of crimes Israel is already suspected of committing and which has led the UN International Court of Justice to declare that country “impeachable”. “Inspired to believe. Genocide is being committed in Gaza. Children symbolize the essence of a citizen. This is what the Geneva Conventions contemplate, providing them with general protection by virtue of their status as citizens, and reinforced protection because they are part of a vulnerable group.

In official Israeli discourse, those killed in the enclave are either “terrorists” or included in the euphemism of “collateral damage” without considering their age. Both the Israeli military and that country’s government have stated on frequent occasions that they are making “every possible” effort to minimize civilian deaths in Gaza and have systematically denied attacks against them. However, in mid-February, a group of UN experts accused that country’s forces of attacking Palestinian civilians, including minors, while they tried to flee the war zone while waving white flags. On 14 October, Israel’s head of state, President Isaac Herzog, said in a press conference that “there were no innocent civilians in Gaza.”

There is abundant evidence that Israeli forces are deliberately shooting at children in Gaza – or at least into crowds of children. First of all, from the Palestinians themselves, but also from the doctors who treated these children. Like Dr. Alvi, who believes that “the most likely hypothesis” is that while on his mission in Gaza he deliberately shot two children who were wounded by snipers. For starters, he explains, due to the accuracy of some of the shots that entered and exited the skulls of small children in a “clean” way. Also because both the minors had brain injuries. “To shoot a person and hit the heart or the head, you have to have very good aim,” he says.

Another element that suggests that these shots may have been extrajudicial executions is that children injured by snipers, when they reach hospital alive, do so in groups. This includes not just one minor, but several people who have been shot at the same place and often killed by the same bullet. American plastic and reconstructive surgeon Irfan Galaria, who also worked at Gaza’s European Hospital, told the newspaper Los Angeles Times How a group of parents rushed their children to the emergency room with gunshot wounds. He was small, about 5 years old. Their families were trying to return to their homes in the southern city of Khan Yunis when they were injured. The doctor says that without exception they were all shot in the head. No one survived.

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“Some of the best shooters (Israelis) in the world don’t accidentally shoot a kid twice in the head and once in the stomach,” he told the media briefly in April. democracy now, American surgeon Mark Perlmutter, shortly after returning from Gaza. The doctor pointed to his “strong belief” that Israel is committing “genocide” in the Palestinian territories. If this cruel hanging of children is proved-There are cases even in months old infants.– The dehumanization of Palestinians by Israel will be confirmed, the ultimate demonstration of which for humanitarian organizations is approximately 35,000 deaths in the enclave.

pain and death

In a war in which Israel has killed at least 14,000 children, in addition to wounding 12,000 others, according to UNICEF, the brutal but painless death of these little victims of snipers seems almost merciful; A lesser evil compared to the suffering that children often suffer when they die in bombings; The explosions, shrapnel, dismemberment and burns that doctors consulted for this report described it as “unimaginable”. Some of these minors die after surviving for some time due to the impact of missiles and unguided bombs weighing up to 900 kg. And they do it without morphine and painkillers. The virtual destruction of the Gazan health system and Israel’s restrictions on the entry of anesthetics, painkillers and other drugs sometimes exhaust them without being able to alleviate their pain.

Tanja Haj-Hassan is a pediatrician who in March took part in a medical mission for Palestinians by the NGO Medical Aid to one of the few hospitals of the Martyrs of Al Aqsa in Deir al-Balah, in the center of the Strip. Area. The pediatrician believes that minors “are, in some way, targets in this war,” and not just because of the dead children, or those who suffer physical consequences. Even minors who have turned out to be physically safe so far have witnessed what he calls “horror”. Especially those who survived the bombings.

“All the cases were horrific,” recalls the pediatrician. “We found a child with part of his face blown off. His sister was in the next bed but he kept asking ‘Where is my sister?’ 96% of her body was burnt and she was so disfigured that the child could not recognize her. His parents and all his other siblings died in the same attack. That sister died two days later. When I saw him the next day he told me that he felt that I had not told him that his entire family had been murdered: ‘I wish I were dead too,’ he said. When you’re a kid, it’s impossible to absorb that everyone you love is dead,” says this pediatrician.

The mental health impact this doctor is pointing to is the invisible wound that will mark Gaza’s young generation in a conflict that is breaking records in terms of crimes against children.

One is that of mutilated minors. According to UNICEF, by January alone, a thousand children had suffered amputation of one or more limbs. Sometimes “without anesthesia,” Gazan intensivist Mohammad Al Najjar confirms via WhatsApp from Gaza. In January, Mexican surgeon Aldo Rodríguez, in a testimony released by MSF, described cases of one-year-old children having part of their waists amputated. Other children have been left blind and disfigured by shrapnel and burns.

Doctors working in Gaza are witnesses of this pain. Gazan health workers also suffer this firsthand. Like Dr. Najjar. This doctor tells how one of his seven-year-old patients, “with third-degree burns”, woke up at night crying: “He said, ‘Help me!’ “Help me!” he remembers. The doctor did not have any painkiller. The worst experience this specialist ever had was when one day, while he was on call, his 14-month-old daughter was admitted with a severe skull injury. Israel bombed his house.

Children in Gaza do not die just like that. Sometimes they even do it without a name, There are children who arrive dying in hospitals after their entire families and neighbors have been killed in a bomb explosion; To everyone who knew his identity. They were later buried in common graves.

There are people in Gaza who think that those children lying in unmarked graves are among the lucky ones: they no longer suffer. Many minor survivors of the attacks are left alone. Like a seven-month-old baby who was taken to the emergency room of Al Aqsa Hospital, “wrapped in a blanket covered in blood, urine and feces, burned and with a piece of her skull torn off,” Mary -Auré Perreaut remembers. 30 members of his family were killed in Israeli bombing. According to UNICEF estimates, 17,000 children in the strip have been separated from their families, some of them orphaned. Some of these minors survived Israeli attacks but with serious consequences. MSF surgeon Aldo Rodriguez remembered seeing these disabled children “alone and destitute”, staying in hospitals even after being discharged because “they have no place to go.”

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