• Almost all of Gaza’s children are in need of physco -social support
• At least 17,000 children in Gaza are separated from their families
After nearly four months since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, nearly all children in Gaza require mental health support, according to an estimate by the United Nations Children’s Agency. That’s more than 1 million children. Before the genocide began on October 7, the number was estimated at 500,000 by UNICEF. Israel’s crippling bombardment, followed by a devastating land invasion in which families have been separated by the IDF, both heavily play into the crisis.
Children are visualised as the cream of innocence, but with the ongoing blind eye both turned and propagated by the western world of the atrocities that are taking place, it becomes apparent that the rights of the Palestinian children are not anywhere near the same as the rights of Israeli children to western perception.
According to UNICEF’s chief of communication, Johnathon Crickz, children in Gaza “present symptoms like extremely high levels of persistent anxiety, loss of appetite, they can’t sleep, they have emotional outbursts or panic every time they hear the bombings,” he explained. The pain and anguish that this young generation of children will have to feel may affect them for the rest of their lives and spill over to others. With the entirety of the 2.3 million population of the Gaza Strip now said to be starving, the development and growth of these young children will be hampered both mentally and physically. This is a problem that UNICEF and other charities have tried to address but have fallen to deaf ears in the western world. Only today, the dire and deteriorating situation in Gaza has not been met with the due attention it deserves from the mainstream western media. The BBC, Sky News, and CNN have chosen not to put the situation in Gaza on their front pages. The complicity in hiding or de-amplifying the genocide taking place in the world’s most populated area will be remembered throughout history, just as the whitewashing of the Iraq war was remembered and has shaped opinions in the world today.
17,000 children are unaccompanied in Gaza
The UN estimates that 17,000 children have been separated from their parents as a result of the genocide taking place. Many parents and families have been killed, and the surviving distant relatives of some of these individuals are struggling to serve themselves or their immediate families. Only today, Al Jazeera reported that children are searching the street and ‘looking for scraps of food’. When an entire population is starving, disorder and violence spread amongst the population. Any food found is a valuable resource and one that is worth fighting for. Children, on the other hand, do not have the strength to fight for the scarce food available in the area. This will create distrust, and the children will have to suffer as they get older. Even if the genocide were to stop tomorrow, these children will not forget what Israel has done to them or their people.
The genocide Israel is committing, which the western world is continually backing, will lead to children leaning towards supporting resistance groups far more than before. Israel, which has forced these children to be orphaned, will only make it easier for Hamas or other resistance groups to suck up the vacuum of care and cultivation for these young children.
