Our War Against Children

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand

by David Rothauser and Eileen Kurkoski

There’s nothing unique about children being killed in war. In fact children, their mothers and other members of the civilian family invariably account for higher numbers of casualties than do combatants themselves.  "The murder of children is non-debatable and non-negotiable." 

Yet there is something far more tragic about childhood casualties in the current war in Gaza than in all the wars of the past strung together. The difference is that the war in Gaza is today’s war.  It is not historical. It is not something we read about in history books. It is happening now – It is Peter Rubens’ The Massacre of the Innocents come to life before our very eyes. Children ripped from their mothers’ breasts, children chased down nameless streets, targeted by sniper’s bullets to every part of their young bodies. Hospitals demolished before desperately needed medication can be applied to a child gasping for life. Food and water withheld as a weapon of war.

One can argue that it is, or is not a genocide, an ethnic cleansing, but take away the labels and it is still the mass murder of children committed by adults who know what they are doing.

The war in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, including the starvation and mutilation of children as conducted by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), is funded by the US to the tune of $17.9 billion dollars from October 7, 2023 through 2024. Why does America fund this grotesque annihilation of Palestinian children on a daily basis?  

The way we deal with domestic school shootings since 1998 to the present gives us a window into our American psychic justification for the murder of children during war.

Mass shootings in American schools since the late 19^th Century were infrequent and seldom resulted in more than one or two shot dead.

Then, in 1999 there was the Columbine High School massacre.

18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold, students at Columbine High School, killed 12 students and one teacher. It was the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history until it was surpassed by the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February 2018.

What was remarkable about Columbine and the myriad of school shootings that followed was that our government and media paid little attention to the shootings. It wasn’t until the numbers reached epidemic proportions, that the government began to pass background laws and give a lot of lip service.

The shootings continued, children continued to die and nothing was done to prevent more shootings. In fact, as the shootings went up, the sale of firearms in the US skyrocketed. Childhood death by firearms is the single highest cause of death to children in America. 

How does this relate to the war on children in Palestine? The US government supports domestic weapons manufacturers, even passes laws to protect them against liabilities when their weapons are used for crimes against humanity.

The same US government supports the same weapons manufacturers to supply Israel with weapons used to massacre children in Gaza. The current administration pays lip service to Israel to create a ceasefire, while doing nothing to prevent the mass killings.

The IDF practice of targeting Palestinian children is in violation of international law which is unambiguous when it comes to the protection of children affected by the conflict. Palestinian children have been found with bullet holes to the head and chest, signifying they are precise targets of Israeli sniper and Drone fire.

Schools, libraries, universities, hospitals, refugee centers, private apartment buildings, bakeries, markets and mosques, all fall under the heading “Hamas Command and Control Centers.” 

Israel claims that children are being used as human shields by Hamas, hence are not protected by the rules of war.

Why do adults need to rationalize the murder of children, the most vulnerable of the human species? 

Why does the international human body stand with mouths agape, knowingly witness to the mass slaughter, waiting for the US to take an action to stop Israel from committing this horror?

Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder and former Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, calls it Psychic Numbing. The adult perpetrators know it is morally wrong, yet they psychologically deny the reality of what they are doing.

What is lost to the children when we ignore their tragedy and run from any responsibility to nourish and protect them from the plutocrats, law makers, politicians, governments? 

For those who are dead, their innocent lives were instantly cut short. We’ll never know the moment of terror they must have experienced.

For the surviving children, the trauma to their psychological and nervous systems is incalculable. The physical loss of limbs, brain damage and eyesight, renders them invalided for life and the loss of parents, siblings, whole families leave them abandoned to the vengeful rage of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

In the end they will never know a future of kindness and love, so brutally ripped from their terrorized souls.

And we, the creators of war against children. What do we stand to lose? For those of us who lose loved ones in the immediate conflagration, it is emotional trauma. We are crippled. Some never recover. The long-term loss is more forgiving. We are good at denial; it softens the blow. But the real long-term loss is our future. When children have no future, where do we stand?

Is there a glimmer of humanity, a challenge, an opportunity for the world to mutiny out of the rubble of this human tragedy? I believe that every human has a spark of humanity, compassion and empathy deep within our souls. We must locate that spark within the power brokers, the plutocrats, the real rulers of the world and we must nourish it until it blossoms into the most beautiful flower that ever lived. We owe it to our children.

"The murder of children is non-debatable and non-negotiable." - David Rothauser