Six­teen years before UN Res­o­lu­tion 181 divid­ed Pales­tine into sep­a­rate Jew­ish and Arab states, Mahat­ma Gand­hi not­ed: “If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to car­ry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”
What is hap­pen­ing to the chil­dren of Gaza nine­ty-two years lat­er is stu­pe­fy­ing proof of how heed­less hatred, venal cru­el­ty and short-sight­ed­ness dis­place gen­tle wisdom.

UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Anto­nio Guter­res labelling the enclave “a grave­yard for chil­dren” is unfair only in that it under­states the case.
Call­ing it counter-intu­itive to the U.S. (and Israeli) fan­ta­sy that when the fight­ing ends “… Hamas can­not con­trol Gaza and Israel must be secure”, is damn­ing with­out even faint praise.
Every Jew­ish per­son I know is jus­ti­fi­ably imbued with the mem­o­ry of the Holo­caust and the spec­tre of ongo­ing — and dis­grace­ful­ly now grow­ing —  anti-Semitism.
The equiv­a­lent for Pales­tin­ian chil­dren is the Nak­ba, Ara­bic for “cat­a­stro­phe”, the forced exo­dus of their grand­par­ents when the state of Israel was cre­at­ed, and its legacy.
To pro­tect that state, the Israeli mil­i­tary says it is wag­ing a war “force­ful­ly to dis­man­tle Hamas mil­i­tary and admin­is­tra­tive capabilities.”
How does lev­el­ling entire neigh­bour­hoods accom­plish that, espe­cial­ly in the long-term?
By any mea­sure, Hamas’ acts of wan­ton slaugh­ter, hostage-tak­ing and sex­u­al vio­lence on Octo­ber 7 show it ful­ly deserves the des­ig­na­tion “ter­ror­ist organisation”.
How far off from a form of ter­ror­ism is mil­i­tary action that makes Gaza, in the words of Cather­ine Rus­sell, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Unit­ed Nations Children’s Fund; “the most dan­ger­ous place in the world to be a child.”?
Accord­ing to the aid group Med­G­lob­al, which works in Gaza: “Almost one out of every 150 Pales­tin­ian chil­dren in Gaza have been killed in just two months…the equiv­a­lent of half a mil­lion Amer­i­can children.”
The ear­li­est, seared-in mem­o­ry of those Gaza chil­dren who sur­vive the war will be see­ing peo­ple dig­ging with their bare hands in a fran­tic search for sur­vivors in still smok­ing rubble.
They’ll wake scream­ing from night­mares that include 2,000 pound bombs, designed to col­lapse an entire apart­ment build­ing, dropped in an air assault that has been described as one of the most intense of the 21st century.

               UNSEEMLY CONNECTIONS

Mark Regev, a senior advis­er to Mr. Netanyahu, char­ac­terised Israel’s actions as a “spe­cial sit­u­a­tion on the ground which lim­its the abil­i­ty of peo­ple to enter Israel to kill our people.”
Fair enough as a con­cept, but it does sound a lot like Putin call­ing his inva­sion of Ukraine a “Spe­cial Mil­i­tary Operation”.
Accord­ing to UN fig­ures, more than twice as many women and chil­dren have already been report­ed killed in Gaza than have been con­firmed killed in Ukraine, after almost two years of Russ­ian attacks.
The euphemism “spe­cial sit­u­a­tion” is only bare­ly more craven than Wash­ing­ton offer­ing “point­ed calls” for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) to take “more care” to avoid civil­ian casu­al­ties, while accept­ing Israel’s asser­tion that it is doing so by drop­ping leaflets into a place where they’ve cut off or knocked out elec­tric­i­ty  and cell phone ser­vice is spo­radic at best, telling peo­ple to go to grid ref­er­ences they can­not read­i­ly iden­ti­fy, by walk­ing or cling­ing per­ilous­ly to over­loaded, rick­ety trucks and don­key carts, des­per­ate­ly clutch­ing a few belong­ings and chil­dren with their names scrawled onto their skin in case they are lost, orphaned or killed and need to be identified.
And yes, Hamas bears respon­si­bil­i­ty for that too, a crime made all the worse by the fact that it was all part of their plan. Build­ing resent­ment, hatred and hope­less­ness is a core recruit­ment tool for ongo­ing resis­tance, be it called jihad, intifa­da or any­thing else.
The only effec­tive coun­ter­mea­sure is build­ing the vision and then real­i­ty of a real future for both sides.
Instead, three-quar­ters of the 240 pris­on­ers and detainees released by Israerl in exchange for hostages held by Hamas had not been con­vict­ed of a crime. Almost all of them were women or youths under the age of 18 caught, or sus­pect­ed, of throw­ing stones at armed Israeli troops oper­at­ing in Pales­tin­ian areas in the West Bank, which is not only not offi­cial­ly at war with Israel, it is ille­gal­ly occu­pied in terms of UN res­o­lu­tions and signed agreements.
In apartheid-era South Africa, I spent sev­er­al years report­ing on black youths throw­ing stones at armed, bru­tal White police in the streets of squalid town­ships, being beat­en, arrest­ed and some­times killed.
The world laud­ed them as pro­tes­tors and free­dom fight­ers and damned the author­i­ties for brutality.
It was, in terms those engaged in Gaza can relate to, a “David and Goliath” confrontation.
It’s worth not­ing which side his­to­ry records won both that face-off and its name­sake. Not, how­ev­er, that it will make much difference.
As the philoso­pher Aldous Hux­ley observed; “That men do not learn much from the lessons of his­to­ry is the most impor­tant of all the lessons that his­to­ry has to teach.”
An even greater trav­es­ty is that the chil­dren of Gaza must suf­fer for it.

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