War and peace have been fundamental concepts in the history of Quakers, and my own life experiences. My first organizing was for a draft (Selective Service System) conference that was held at Scattergood Friends school during one of the days of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, November 15, 1969. The soul searching I did during those days included significant study about Quakerism and how to advocate for justice. Knowing our lives reflect our beliefs led me to be a draft resister and lifelong work for peace and justice work in many different ways.
Intentionally targeting children
I was and continue to be most deeply traumatized by the suffering and death of children living and dying in war zones. An epic clash between extremes of good and evil, of those most innocent versus the abject horrors of war.
Children were the lifelong focus of my career, first in neonatal intensive care and then in neonatal and infant research.
War has always been horrific.
But taking evil to a whole new level, what Israel has done since October 7th, 2023, is to intentionally target children.
Israel intentionally destroys the children’s families, homes, schools and hospitals. Intentionally wipes out infrastructure for shelter, power and water. Intentionally blocks humanitarian aid.
Israel could never have done this and cannot continue these war crimes without the support of the United States government.
From Palestine to Sudan, imperialist wars are destroying the lives of innocent children.
Vijay Prashad
I identify with Vijay Prashad who just wrote, “A study came out in December that made me cry.”
A study came out in December that made me cry. Titled Needs Study: Impact of War in Gaza on Children with Vulnerabilities and Families, it was conducted by the Community Training Centre for Crisis Management (CTCCM) in Gaza. Written in a clinical style, nothing about the language should have impacted me in the way that it did. But the study’s findings were shocking. Here are some of the cold facts:
79% of the children in Gaza suffer from nightmares.
87% of them experience severe fear.
38% report bedwetting.
49% of caregivers said that their children believed that they would die in the war.
96% of the children in Gaza felt that death was imminent.
Put simply, every single child in Gaza feels that they are going to die.
The Tears of Our Children by Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, January 3, 2025
In March 2024, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child released a sharp statement on the war in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, both backed by a range of foreign powers. That statement had its own powerful facts:
24 million children in Sudan – nearly half of the country’s total population of 50 million – are at risk of ‘generational catastrophe’.
19 million children are out of school.
4 million children are displaced.
3.7 million children are acutely malnourished.
The first point refers to the totality of Sudan’s children, all of whom are at risk of a ‘generational catastrophe’. This concept, which was first used by the United Nations to describe the trauma and setbacks that children experienced due to COVID-19 lockdowns, means that the children of Sudan will not recover from the ordeal that the war has inflicted upon them. It will take generations before anything resembling normality returns to the country.
A scientific study from 2017 found that deep childhood traumas can mark a person both physically and psychologically. Trauma reroutes children’s developing nervous systems, causing them to be highly alert and anxious even decades later. This process, the authors write, generates a mechanism called ‘enhanced threat processing’. No wonder studies of children who lived through earlier wars show that they disproportionately suffer from medical conditions, including heart ailments and cancer.
The Tears of Our Children by Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, January 3, 2025
177 Schools buses needed to hold dead Palestinian children
[NOTE: These numbers are as of one year ago!]
As of today [Jan 12, 2024], more than 9,600 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli genocidal assault on the besieged population. Thousands more are missing and presumed dead. Gaza has been described as a “graveyard for children” by UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
Mass killings are the tip of the iceberg of Israeli violations against Gaza’s children. The vast majority are currently displaced. Most face severe hunger, with malnutrition posing lifelong developmental risks for young children. There are 71,000 cases of diarrhea in children under 5 in Gaza, which can cause dehydration and death. UNICEF reported that around 1,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both legs. Thousands have lost one or both parents.
“It is nearly impossible to collect and verify information under the current conditions in Gaza,” the group said, “but at least 17,000 children are believed to be unaccompanied and separated and approximately 4,000 children are likely missing under the rubble, with an unknown number also in mass graves”.
Yes, the children have names. We will continue to name all those whose names we can remember. We will not forget them. In September 2024, the Palestinian Ministry of Health released an updated list of the names of Palestinians killed in the US-Israeli genocide from October 2023 to August 2024. On that list are 710 newborns whose ages are listed as zero. Many of them had only just been named.
Though the list is too long to reproduce here, the story of Ayssel and Asser Al-Qumsan is emblematic. On 13 August 2024, Mohammed Abu Al-Qumsan left his apartment in Deir al-Balah, within central Gaza’s ‘safe zone’, to register the birth of his twin children Ayssel and Asser. He left the twins with their mother, Dr. Jumana Arfa (age 29), who had given birth to them three days earlier at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat. Dr. Jumann Arfa was a pharmacist trained at Al-Azhar University in Gaza. A few days before giving birth to her children, she posted on Facebook about Israel’s targeting of children, citing an interview with Jewish-American surgeon Dr. Mark Perlmutter on a powerful CBS News segment called Children of Gaza. When Mohammed returned from registering the twins, he found that their home had been destroyed and that his wife, newborn children, and mother-in-law had all been killed in an Israeli strike.
Ayssel Al-Qumsan. Asser Al-Qumsan.
We must name the dead children.
The Tears of Our Children by Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, January 3, 2025
unflinching 