( This is an edited transcript – based on documentation and recall – of a recent talk I gave. I have taken the liberty of wording things differently at some places; either because I didn’t have the exact words or I felt it would read better)
What does being a child mean to you? I want all of us to recall, to attune ourselves to that, to what it is – to be a child! For example, being a child is being free to play for long hours. Being a child is being free from having to work for a living. Free to and Free from.. I invite all of you to share your answers .. complete the sentence in a few words, phrases, sentence fragments..being a child means being free to.. being a child means being free from..
Hold on to the responses.. both yours and those you heard.. and carry whatever has been evoked inside of you for the rest of this talk. Remember what being a child is supposed to be, recall your happy memories as a child and listen to me!
Let me begin.
When a missile hits us, do we feel pain, or do we die immediately?, asks a girl in Gaza.
Her mother is dead. Her father, missing under the rubble.
If the dead could speak, there would be no shortage of people of her age who could answer that question.
After all, the most conservative estimate puts the number of children killed in Gaza at 21 thousand.
450 new-born babies – include them in the 21 thousand. If a kindergarten classroom has an average of 20 children, that is 22 kindergarten classrooms of kids who would never enter the classroom. And what would a new-born baby be knowing? So little, almost nothing. The question on missiles that the girl girl asks, that does not even register because they are new-borns!
Then, what about an infant who is yet to reach his first birthday? Can they comprehend what an incoming missile means? No they can’t. And there are 1030 children below the age of one among the dead. That is a total of 93 cricket teams or football teams, since that is the flavour of the season. 1030 kids who would never enter a playing field. And then, moving on to a higher age-bracket, we have 5031 children under the age of 5. By that age, you do have the idea of self-preservation, a developing instinct to save yourself. Well, these 5030 kids knew they could die. So, they would have understood the girl’s question… and be eminently qualified to answer it – if they could speak from their grave…The girl who asked the question, I wonder how old she herself was. It is a question befitting all ages, don’t you think? And people of all ages have been killed in Gaza, over 73 thousand.
And this number of 21 thousand dead, this does not count the number missing under the rubble of buildings flattened by devastating power. The probable number of children who have died in Gaza is pegged between 30 and 41 thousand. And the overall death toll has crossed a lakh, which, given that Gaza’s total population was 22 lakh in 2023; is a very high number.
Credit: World press photo/ Press Association.Nine-year-old Mahmoud Ajjour, who lost both arms in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City in March 2024.
But, let us stick to the figure of 21 thousand as that is also staggeringly high, don’t you think? Especially, in context of the sliver of land, Gaza is.
Now, about Gaza itself, let me give you a very brief understanding of the land itself. And a bit of history.
Gaza is part of occupied Palestine along with the West Bank.
Join me in a thought experiment.
Imagine, all of us Indians, on the cusp of independence in 1947. And then, the British invite persecuted people from faraway places to come and settle in India, an invitation that is never theirs to give. After all, this is our land and they are occupiers. Who are they to decide who inhabits our land, comes and settles down here? Continuing the thought experiment further, those persecuted people are armed by western powers when a fight ensues between us and them. We lose multiple times. Everytime, we have to part with our land, and now, all of us Indians are cloistered in two separate land-banks. We cannot even travel freely between those two parts of our own land! We are now asked to live and be content with just 22% of India – just 10% if we count the multiple settler-colonies created by our occupiers within one land-bank. We live as unfree people..we are not an independent country..and our future and destiny is being decided by our occupiers. Would this be acceptable to us, Indians or to any people for that matter? Of course, not. And this is what the Palestinians have gone through..are going through.
Remember, right now, we are only speaking of Gaza. Palestinians in West-Bank have their own story of horror and repression, which we are not touching upon for this talk. Just sharing one thing about West-Bank. 213 Palestinian children (206 boys and 7 girls) have been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since October 7, 2023. As per the United Nations. Why? The shortest answer – The occupying power uses violence and intimidation to control the Palestinians.
Let us return to Gaza though and focus on it.
Gaza – Gaza strip – is 41 km long and 6 to 12 km wide. It’s also called an open-air prison camp because Israel, the occupier, absolutely controls and decides who or what gets in. That is why Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza since October 2023 has been so horrendous. The civilian population of Gaza had nowhere to escape from this whirlwind of death and destruction.
And how destructive has it been?
A 1 tonne explosive kills everyone within 50-100 metres and causes serious injury up to 300-400 metres away. It can destroy a large, reinforced concrete building and completely shatter glass and collapse walls 1 km away. And Israel has dropped about 85 thousand tonnes of explosives on Gaza since October 2023. That is equal to 6 Hiroshimas – the atomic bomb that flattened Hiroshima. The US dropped 5 lakh tonnes on Vietnam – an entire country, 900 times bigger than Gaza. About 17% of what was dropped in Vietnam – an entire country – that tonnage of explosives has been dropped in Gaza, which is 900 times smaller.
How can I help you in visualising how small Gaza is? With the help of AI, I give it a go.
To my friends from Bengaluru, imagine a strip of land stretching only from the Airport to Electronic city, and no wider than the distance from Majestic to Indiranagar. Lock 22 lakh people inside it, pull a wall around it, and bomb it. That is Gaza. There is no escape. Gaza is surrounded by Israel on the north and east, the Mediterranean sea on the west (blocked by Israel) and Egypt’s closed southern border. Recall the beautiful Cubbon Park area in Bengaluru. For every Cubbon Park sized piece of Gaza land, that is 1.6 sq km, 93 children are dead.
To those who know Chennai, imagine the entire coastline from Ennore down to Kovalam. Shrink the width of the city so it ends abruptly at T. Nagar. Block the ocean, wall off the land and realize that 40-45% of the 22 lakh people trapped and bombed inside this tiny corridor are children under the age of 15! Women and children make up more than 60% of verified casualties in Gaza. And over 90% of 22 lakh Gazans have been displaced and forced to move around for a minimum of 10 times since end of 2023.
And… the killing continues. Let me repeat that, the killing continues.
As I was preparing this, I asked Gemini AI- How many children has Israel killed in Gaza in the last 7 days? 4 came the answer.
A 10 year old child killed inside a humanitarian tent for displaced families during an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis
A 6 year old boy killed by Israeli gunfire
A child killed while attempting to fetch clean water for family
A child killed during a targeted drone strike on a vehicle
Incidentally, the answer now is supposed to be ZERO.
Because as portrayed by western-media and announced by Western leaders, there is a ceasefire in place in Gaza since October 2025.
Since the ceasefire started 9 months ago, Israel has killed 265 children in Gaza. Out of the 1000 people killed by Israel during a ceasefire, over 25% are children. An average of close to 30 children per month, almost 1 a day.
How can that be, you say. There is a cease-fire on. Well, it is a sham ceasefire. The killing is now calibrated to be like a constant, low-vibration hum, not shock-and-awe. This suits Israel and its western backers. They have had to rein themselves in, because the people of countries that back and arm Israel could not accept the sheer savagery on display, and started protesting against it. And of course, there are millions of people all over the world and numerous countries all over the world who protested and charged Israel with committing genocide. So now, the killing is measured – enough to make Gazans suffer. Not make them feel they can rebuild. Not make them feel safe. And make them feel that death and destruction are daily visitations upon them.
In western political establishments, in the corridors of power, there is a conspiracy of silence, an agreement to deny reality. If you don’t know, don’t report, don’t accept, don’t acknowledge; you can pretend – nothing has happened! People in high places, those who patronize Israel – are doing just that. There is little of speaking truth to power. Subservient Western media and news agencies aid and abet this continued killing by continuing their false narratives and downplaying the charge of genocide.
But such is the scale of wrongdoing that it has stirred the conscience of millions all over the world, including – as said before, the people of the countries whose governments back Israel. And the people who protest and resist, they are not keeping quiet at all..They are shocked by the extent to which they were lied to about Palestine and the Palestinian people. They now know the history, the deception that occured, the subjugation of the Palestinians, their right to resist, the impunity Israel, the occupier, enjoys among its western backers, and the narrative control that held sway over much of the world. This narrative control helped western governments blindly back Israel. That control is now being severely challenged.
These people, the world over, now feel the weight of history, the call of their conscience, and the heaviness of the burden placed on their shoulders because the word ‘genocide’ is being used to describe what is happening. If a genocide does not stir a global community into action, then, there is no global community. Period. These people know and understand what is at stake.
And I hope all of you are beginning to know as well.
Let me share more of what the children of Gaza have gone through. So strong and palpable is the pain and trauma of everyone in Gaza to me, I feel I am being unjust to the men and women – the grown-ups- when I speak only about the kids! But, maybe that has a silver lining. Children are the most vulnerable in any society. Supposed to be the most protected and cared for. When the most vulnerable are deliberately targeted, you get an unmistakable sense of the sacrilege that is being committed.
17 to 20 thousand children have no surviving parents. Over 58 thousand children have lost one or both parents. Recall the size and dimensions of Gaza once again. Children without families.
In fact, Gaza gave birth to a new term WCNSF – Wounded Child No Surviving Family.
The circumstances under which all this happens; they are soul-shattering.
A bombed building, tent or shelter that comes crashing down. The ones who die instantly, they may be lucky. Utter shock, panic and desperation takes hold of those still alive..They are wounded and trapped underneath the rubble..and cry out in pain, cry out to each other… They may be only a few feet apart but are buried alive in the rubble, hands and feet unable to move….unable to reach out and touch each other.. If it’s night, everything is dark…. You call out to your family in that darkness; there is no response, and you imagine the worst… Can you imagine,how a mother and a father must be feeling at that time?… What a child might be going through?….
Rescuers and first-responders arrive with bare hands and make-shift equipment. Israel has blocked all heavy equipment machinery..After a lot of effort they pull you – the child – out of the rubble. You are being taken to the hospital and all along the way, you are begging and pleading for your family to be taken out as well…You are unable to stand the tension and uncertainty of it all…And then you reach the hospital, itself, being rocked by explosions and running out of supplies…You are in luck if there aren’t other casualties streaming in from other bombings…You are attended to.. Your hands or legs may be amputated though – without anaesthesia and there are no painkillers either… The occupier has strangulated all supply of life-saving items to bring a people to its knees. In that state, you feel that death is better than this unbearable pain, more so, if your loved ones are feared to be gone… And yet, there is this clinging to life and hope..
Those treating you know you will lose the will to live if you know the truth. And in those desperate hours when life hangs by a thread, they hide what they know…They don’t let you know that not just your parents, but all your family members – siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts-uncles, all of them have died.
No child should have to go through this. But so many in Gaza have.
In Gaza, children have been killed and maimed by airstrikes, missiles, bullet-fire, snipers, tankfire, drones, quadcopters and by deception. The Israeli army has been known to camouflage explosives and scatter them across as playthings, like a football. There have been 6 thousand medical amputations in Gaza. 25% are children. That is 1500 children, making Gaza the place with the highest number of child amputees per capita anywhere in the world.
There is this chilling account shared by an Indian judge, S. Murlidhar, as part of a fact-finding commission, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel. A Gazan woman was breastfeeding her baby. Unknown to her, a quadcopter had her in its sights. A quadcopter has a thermal imaging camera, which means, you can figure out who is there – a baby, a child, a grown-up. The baby was shot in the head. A single shot. The mother was left unharmed. The baby survived but is expected to suffer seizures and need lifelong care.
Children have been killed when they are scrounging around for food and water. They used to line up for food at a food camp and that was like target practice for snipers. Why send kids in harm’s way – is the thought that comes to us, doesn’t it? When we think this way, we assume a normal, functional society. And Gaza is anything but that. It is a society that has been deliberately pushed to the brink of total collapse. So that life in Gaza becomes untenable and unsustainable. In a society on the verge of collapse, life as we know it, does not exist. Families, communities, neighbourhoods face a grim battle for survival. A family that has a dead father and an injured mother has no choice but to rely on whoever is alive and able…able to cook…to clean up..to get hold of food grains and water…to find bandages and medicines…And if it is a child, the child has to do all of this – It is a ‘must’ for survival.
Credit: Reuters/Mohammed Salem. A Palestinian man and children push a cart with water containers in southern Gaza City
Young elder siblings have become parents to their brother or sister, when parents are not around or dead. A new term has been coined for children living through the genocide in Gaza – Unchilding. Unchilding is where a child is violently evicted from the legal, social and psychological protections of childhood. As a child, you are not supposed to be targeted – that’s the preeminent protection. Well, that protection is just not there! You as a child have to look out for yourself. You have to frantically exert yourself to survive. To stay safe from snipers. To get that can of water, that sack of flour. You have to care beyond your capacity to care. What choice do you have when you are 10 and your siblings are 8 and 6, and your parents are gone. You are not protected from the ravages of hunger and thirst either. Over 16 thousand kids were treated for acute malnutrition in the worst two years at the rate of 112 starving-to-death children a day. Yes, children have starved to death in Gaza. Over 140 to 180 child deaths have been directly attributed to acute malnutrition and dehydration.
And it is not just children; babies and expecting mothers have had to fight the battle for survival! Have a look at the things Israel blocked or restricted from entering Gaza during the initial years of genocide : Ready-to-use Infant Formula, Pediatric Nutritional Pastes, Fortified Milk, Prenatal vitamins & micronutrient supplements, Nutritional drinks for lactating mothers, Pediatric scissors and forceps, Water purification tablets and filtration elements. Entire truckloads were rejected if a single objectionable item was found. Arbitrary quotas were imposed. Cynical application of red-tape ensured that those most desperately in need suffered the most.
What about mental health, developmental progress of these children?
We have heard of PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. In Gaza, there is universal agreement that PTSD does not apply. There is no post. The children in Gaza are said to be suffering from CTSD. Chronic traumatic stress disorder or CTS – Continuous Trauma Stress. Gaza has become the first known instance of a place where 100% of children are deemed to need Mental Health and Psychosocial (MHPS) support. When new terms are needed, when everyone requires help; you know things are unimaginably bad.
In Gaza, regression in developmental milestones of growing children has been documented. Children who had achieved their age-appropriate milestones found themselves going backwards in terms of developmental growth. That is what sheer pain and continuous trauma can do. Depression, separation anxiety, mutism and chronic bed-wetting became all-pervasive. How can your body relax in the act of passing motions when you are isolated in a tent toilet and hear the constant hum of a drone flying overhead? “Is this the end of me?”—that thought clamps you up, mind and body.
In fact, children in Gaza have become experts in acoustics. They have been forced to be. You have to be discerning about the sounds of a drone, a plane, naval boat fire, sniper shots, tanks, missiles. Make a calculated guess about the type of threat lurking around and the distance as well. And ask yourself – Can I make the 3 minute frantic run across the street and grab hold of that food packet, that water can? I have to take my chances because if I don’t, someone else may take it and we are left with nothing for the day!
In Gaza, there has been the real possibility of the entire family bloodline being wiped out. Seeing how destructive and widespread the destruction was, families knew it is a matter of time before they are targeted. So, they made survival calculations. Let us separate as a family. Let the children be sent to different sets of relatives in different corners of Gaza. That way, at least some kids will get a chance to survive and carry forward the blood line. How hard it must have been to do this; for the strongest instinct in a life-and-death situation is to become one as a family – to gather strength and find acceptance of fate by saying – we are in this together.
And having shared all of this..human nature being what it is..the children have become resilient..they are tenacious in their desire to carry on with life, and in the same breath, they are in despair about the possibility of it ending any day..and in the next breath, the defiant spirit returns! Even if their house is reduced to a pile of rubble, they would clear up things a bit and demarcate a space as their study corner – under the open sky! In fact, the first thing they would do after returning to their collapsed home is to search for their academic certificates in that rubble, anything school-related, anything that signifies hope and expectation for the future. They are nearer to a nervous breakdown in the wake of the latest bombings and deaths. But they still want to believe in a future. Perhaps, that is the way to survive. You need something to look forward to. To learn and be educated, to aspire for it is to believe in a future. The children are at risk of bombings and sniper fire and yet, they go to school. The schools now run in make-shift tents or in the bombed-out spaces that were schools. The United Nations and its agencies have overcome a lot of obstacles to maintain the lifeline of education for children in Gaza.
Credit: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images. A boy flies a kite in front of destroyed buildings in Gaza City.
Credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90. Displaced Palestinian children study at a school that was bombed in Southern Gaza
To continue with schooling is a part of the Palestinian steadfastness and resolve to stay put. It is called Sumud in Arabic – a particular kind of endurance that says – No matter how harsh our life, we refuse to disappear. We are not in control of our land, but we won’t be expelled from it. We will live our daily life and let that itself be a form of resistance. That is why, Palestinians in Gaza, persisted with everyday rituals, against all odds. They ate together, prayed together, celebrated birthdays and festivals ; even as bombs rained in the distance, and drones buzzed overhead.
As I come to the end of my talk, here are a few things to reflect on.
Gaza, its people, its children – what they have gone through, what they continue to endure; is a real test for the global community. Is there such a thing as a global community, is there such a thing as a global conscience? If there is, will this community overcome the hegemony of power and force? Will it create its own countervailing power and put an end to this genocide? These are the big questions we inherit and grapple with, if we identify ourselves as a part of the global community.
You can take your own independent position on this. You can differ with your own country position.
We are speaking about the sanctity of human life, and the ultimate sanctity, even within this scheme of things, is the sanctity of the life of a child. In our societies and communities, we are committed to this. In disasters, natural or man-made, children always get the first priority for rescue, protection and care. Because we recognise and accept that the future of a child is the future of human civilization. And when the whole future lies ahead, full of promise and potential, it deserves to be protected at all costs.
Years ago, I recall reading Dostoevsky’ s novel – The Brothers Karamazov. In it, Alyosha, the most endearing character, says something to this effect – No happiness of any sort is worth injury to even one innocent child. I read these words clinically then and I felt that surely, Dostoevsky was overstating the point. Now, I realise what people who disagree with Alyosha can do…the kind of world we would have if we imbibe the malevolent spirit of people who target children with absolutely no moral compunctions.
In a portent of things to come, perhaps, that world is already upon us. Israel made it acceptable to kill children. In the recent US- Iran war, the Americans showed little remorse and owned up to no moral responsibility for the bombing of an Iranian school in Minab, Iran in which which 120 to 168 school children were killed. The taboo against harming children has been a painstakingly achieved ‘Universal Moral’. It is one of the high-water marks in our evolution as sentient beings. If the injunction against targeting children is swept aside, if there is no restraint that is felt; we become less than human. We regress as a species, as a community, as a civilization.
The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind, said Maria Montessori. A world in which there is no hope and promise for the child is a world that is no longer fit for living.