Death Sentence for the Children of Gaza

The sentence for the dead children of Gaza was handed out and signed long before IDF ammunition had executed it. A 2012 report about the Gaza tunnel-digging operation, released by the Institute of Palestine Studies, states:

“Nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies. At least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials.”

Who are these children, where are their parents? They had been sacrificed in order to setup the violence that will kill more of their brethren. This macabre use of children’s lives – to what political or even military end? In Hamas’ Gaza the objectives are fantastic, the goals are unattainable, and no one is permitted to challenge the price, to question the futility of going through this hell for the third time in seven years. The death sentences are final.

The priorities forced upon 160 dead children in the tunnels, and illustrated by $1.3Billion poured into this epic project, teach a lesson in Gazan religious obedience. As Hillary Clinton noted on the Daily Show, “Hamas’ identity comes from being the violent ‘resistance'”, violence IS the goal. Who, under these circumstances, can reject or even protest a rocket placed under their window, in their child’s school? The cause is above everything, compliance is mandatory and enforced. They don’t stand a chance.

In Hamas’ Gaza, government authority extends to the right to use civilians as pawns, sending them on a game of Russian roulette on top of a soon to be bombed building. More death sentences are issued this way every day, offsetting the IDF’s flyers and phone calls warning of impending bombardments. The children of Gaza have no chance of survival under these circumstances.

Who is responsible for the suffering in Gaza?

In an excerpt from a documentary I saw on fb last week, Muhammed’s mother is interviewed in an Israeli hospital, where her son is being treated for illness. She tells the interviewer that “…For us life is nothing. Only death is important”, and announces that she hopes for her son, after he gets out of the Israeli hospital and back to Gaza healthy, to come back, this time as a martyr. Muhammed may be healing next door as the interview is taking place, nevertheless, he’s sentenced to death, with the consent and encouragement of his mother.

Some would argue that there’s a moral problem for the Israeli team to be treating the soon-to-be suicide bomber Muhammed. At the core of it, the problem lies with the broken-down culture Muhammed was born into, a death sentence on his newborn head. Can the below-ground death of 160 children during times of peace be attributed to Israeli responsibility? Given a society that produces 160 little bodies this way, what other conceivable abuses taking place before the war had focused the world’s attention on Gaza, have we also missed? Scientists show that pressure needs release; Psychologists understand that tension needs to be treated – it is not far fetched that living for the sake of hatred and martyrdom has a similar buildup effect.

What happiness and prosperity can Hamas offer the children of Gaza, the day after they succeed in eliminating Israel? There’s nothing but death and misery under similar ideologies where they had garnered control, be it in Iraq, Syria or Nigeria. The destruction of their own societies takes place simultaneously with their outbound aggression, or as Israel Ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor put it: “A culture that celebrates martyrdom and murder, is a culture that will always be at war with itself and with its neighbors.”

Out of the many pictures of horror coming out of Gaza, a bloodless image captured my attention in particular: Through a hole in a shack’s improvised roof caused by a shell, we peek into a minimalistic, miserable existence of poverty. The inhabitants of this tiny place – anonymous, faceless people, dwelled in their poverty while international aid money, Arab petrol dollars and thousands of tons of concrete went underground, in order to create a better, more efficient way to kill more people. That, as well as the shell finally hitting their roof, is the price this family had paid for Hamas’ fanatic obsessions, lack of responsibility, bad governance and indifference.

The children of Gaza don’t stand a chance as long as they’re chained to the supremacist, destructive goals of Hamas and forced to be committed to its religious and political violence, from birth to premature death.

I have no argument with some friends on fb who think that what we’re witnessing these days is unbearable violence, we share the disgust. My grievance with them is that they refuse to look into the reasons for the violence, and thus betray the goal of saving lives. Their call for peace is obvious, un-evolved, unproductive, even lazy. Making judgement with no context contradicts the traits of Western thought that has been developing during centuries of philosophy, political thought and science. Today, those at the forefront of this Western civilization, turn their backs on its traditions of logical, progressive and productive thinking, and effectively perpetuate the culture of Hamas. This is justice, these are human rights, this is peace, in 2014.

They need to revert to the importance of cause-and-effect and of intent. They need to understand that where there is violent ideology and violent culture, there WILL be violence. Until these simple realizations can be achieved, Gazan children will continue to die in horrifying numbers, every two years, in utterly preventable catastrophes.

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