Gaza, Child Genocide
Palestinian children during a funeral in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip.
Photo UNICEF/ElBaba.
More than 17,000 children have died in Gaza since April, following six months of Israeli attacks in response to the Hamas massacre in southern Israel last October 7. “It’s genocide,” Husni Abdel Wahed, journalist, professor, and former diplomatic representative to Latin America, tells Sol de Medianoche. “It’s child apartheid,” insists Noor Ammar Lamarty, a Maghrebian legal activist and feminist specializing in international public law and international criminal law.At the beginning of April, the Palestinian authorities registered around 116,500 victims in Gaza, including the dead, maimed, and wounded with varying degrees of severity. “But there are many thousands more who aren’t registered,” says Husni Abdel Wahed, a journalist at the University of Havana (Cuba), professor of Arabic in Chile, High Representative for Palestinians in the Diaspora and diplomat and ambassador to the Americas, Mexico, Venezuela, and Argentina. He’s currently the Palestinian ambassador to Spain.
“Of these 116,500 victims, more than 33,000 died in the hospital,” continues Husni Abdel Wahed, “of whom more than 10,000 are women and more than 14,000 are children. To the latter must be added the seriously wounded children, those maimed by Israeli bombs and those traumatized by the loss of their father, mother, siblings or all of them.” “It’s a genocide against the Palestinian people that Israel has been perpetrating for almost eighty years (when Israel was established as a state on May 14, 1948), and which hits the weakest the hardest: women, the elderly, children...,” says Ambassador Husni Abdel Wahed. These are the numbers of those who have already lost their lives, may soon lose their lives or have suffered the brutality of the Israeli attacks ordered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to take “measures” to “prevent” genocide in Gaza. “Genocide” has thus been qualified by humanitarian organizations and some countries. Many of those who have not yet lost their lives have no reason or desire to go on living. “Children have no schools to go to, no homes to sleep in, no food, no water,” says Noor Ammar Lamarty, born in Tangier (Morocco), a legal activist specializing in international public law and international criminal law with a feminist perspective. OXFAM Intermon, a non-profit organization, has just denounced that “the population of northern Gaza is forced to survive on just 245 calories a day. This tiny amount, equivalent to 100 grams of bread, is less than 12% of the necessary caloric intake.” Noor Ammar Lamarty presented the commemoration of Palestinian Land Day in Madrid, Spain, on April 2, in the presence of Ambassador Husni Abdel Wahed, numerous authorities and Palestinian and Arab citizens. An event to which Sol de Medianoche was invited by the Palestinian Embassy. And it was during this event that Noor spoke these and other moving words to her brothers in Gaza. “There are no hospitals either,” the ambassador lamented. “There were 36 in Gaza before this latest crackdown, and 32 have been completely destroyed by Israeli bombs. There’re only four left, and they’re totally inadequate, they have no electricity, no water, no medicine of any kind, because Israel is preventing them from reaching the wounded.” |