Gaza’s children and the world’s silence

As the last echoes of Eid faded across the Muslim world, Gaza remained shackled to a nightmare. A pall of gloom, despair and despondency smothered what should have been a celebration of joy, exuberance and excitement. The air, thick with smoke and grief, still trembles with the echoes of airstrikes and sniper fire. Mothers clutch the remnants of shattered bodies; fathers dig through rubble for traces of life. What should have been days of laughter and feasting became a dirge – a cruel juxtaposition to the kaleidoscopes of joy unfolding elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Here, Eid’s rituals lie buried beneath debris, its sweetness replaced by the metallic tang of blood. Gaza, a live prison, counts breaths between bombardments, its people surviving on frayed threads of hope. To live here is to exist in a slaughterhouse where death follows like a shadow; where securing a loaf of bread or a drop of water becomes a gamble with fate. Every morning, they wake up to corpses and screams, with scores of injured lying unattended on shattered hospitals floor, waiting for painful deaths.

Elsewhere, Eid unfolded in kaleidoscopes of joy and excitement. Children clasped Eid gifts, swung in sunlit gardens and demanded their favorite dishes with innocent audacity. But in Gaza, Eid’s rituals lay buried beneath rubble. Gaza’s young souls wandered ruins. Before October 7, 2023, markets like Al-Ramal and Al-Seha buzzed with families preparing for festivities. Today, these streets are graveyards of memory. No child dreams of new clothes, shoes or the savory aroma of ‘Sumaqiyya’ simmering in kitchens instead, they scavenge for water and food under sweltering skies, their laughter drowned by wails of mothers clutching shattered bodies. For them, Eid is not a feast but a funeral – two consecutive years of celebrations shattered by bullets and screams. This Eid they carried coffins. Utter chaos reigned as bombs and bullets tore bodies into pieces. UNICEF reports more than 322 children killed and 609 wounded in the renewed frenzy and madness since March 18.

The statistics paint a grotesque mural of loss: 18,000 children killed, 21,000 missing under rubble, 34,000 injured, 15,000 maimed for life. Over 39,000 children have lost one or both parents. Among them 17,000 children deprived of both parents. Gaza faces a largest orphan crisis in modern history. A child slaughtered every 45 minutes – 30 each day for 535 days. These are not numbers. They are girls who braided their hair for school, boys who sketched dreams of becoming doctors and engineers. Gaza’s 12 universities now lie in ruins; 88,000 students have had their futures erased. Not one of UNRWA’s 200 schools remains functional. Over 6,000 attacks on education institutions have turned blackboards to ashes. This is no “collateral damage” – it is a systematic crusade to extinguish knowledge.

On March 18, arrogant and power drunk Israel shattered a fragile ceasefire, unleashing a night of terror that slaughtered over 400 innocents – children, women, families. Emboldened by global impunity, Zionist warlords rain fire with renewed force and ferocity. The “civilized” world, so swift to fund wars elsewhere, averts its eyes as Palestinian children choke on dust and epidemics. Where are UNESCO’s “safe schools”? Where is UNICEF’s promise of childhood? Why did Antony Blinken’s 11 forays to the Middle East couldn’t stop massacre of children in Gaza? Only hollow diplomacy and empty rhetoric for Palestinian children? Hypocrisy bleeds through: when victims are Palestinian, even democracy, human rights and civil liberty’s champions fall silent.

The question is no longer how this happened, but why we allow it to continue. Over 62,000 Palestinians are dead – 18,000 of them children – yet the architects of “human rights” draft hollow resolutions, their apathy criminal. Gaza’s traumatized children deserve more than fleeting pity. They deserve rebuilt schools, unbroken access to learning, and the right to chase balloons and dreams instead of fleeing tanks. They did deserve an Eid unmarred by the stench of death.

This is not just Palestine’s crisis – it is humanity’s reckoning. If we let Gaza’s children become ghosts of indifference, we surrender our claim to civilization. The time for ritual outrage is over. The world must act: halt weapons shipments, sanction architects of annihilation, demand accountability for every stolen dream. This Eid passed amid carnage. The world chose cosmetic smiles over action, corpses over play silencing laughter beneath explosions. Let them have eternal peace. Let the next Eid dawn with books, not bombs; swings, not sniper fire.

Gaza’s children hold a mirror to our collective soul. In their survival – their defiant spark of life amid ruins – we see what defines us. For generations to come, history will judge whether we let that light fade or fought to let it blaze. The choice is ours. The world chose silence this Eid. It must not repeat the sin.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025