The scale of children killed, wounded and orphaned in modern conflicts demands more than outrage – it requires a refusal to accept their deaths as normal.
Those who had the misfortune of growing up in a war zone require no explanation. War is hell, it is true – but for children, it is something else entirely: a confusing, disorienting fate that defies comprehension.
There are children who live only briefly, experiencing whatever life manages to offer them: the love of parents, the camaraderie of siblings, the fragile joys and inevitable hardships of existence.
There are over 20,000 children in this category who have been killed in Gaza over the span of roughly two years, according to figures released by the Gaza Health Ministry and repeatedly cited by United Nations agencies. Some were born and killed within the same short timeframe.
….If the killing of children in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and across the Middle East is normalised, then it will become just another accepted feature of war. And since “war is hell,” we will all move on, accepting that our children – anywhere in the world – now stand on the front lines of victimhood whenever it suits the calculations of war.
I have thought about this often in recent years – during the devastation in Gaza, the wars across the region, and the killing of students at a school in the Iranian city of Minab.