We call the international organizations to use the weapons of the law to protect childhood and prosecute the leaders and soldiers of the occupation
The number of children martyrs in Gaza has surpassed the number of murdered children on the span of 4 years in all conflicts around the world.
The number of “UNRWA” workers who were martyred in this conflict is the highest ever since the establishment of the United Nations.
During the early days of the genocidal war on the Gaza strip, the prime ministers of the Israeli enemy said: “There will be no civilian authority in the Gaza Strip that teaches its children to hate Israel”. This is a diplomatic statement that aligns with the Israeli saying: “A good Arab is a dead Arab”. It also resonates with historical and religious Jewish myths and with religious edicts that explicitly call for killing of Palestinian children. Numerous Jewish rabbis have previously called for the “killing of Gazan children and women, even if a million or more were killed, because that is in accordance with Jewish teachings.”
Based on this, there is no need to elaborate on the fact that the Zionist project is not merely a colonial, settler, exclusionary, and replacement project but also a genocidal project that originates from the belief that the human factor is the decisive factor in the conflict. Therefore, every opportunity to terrorize non-Jews must be seized. This is what justifies the Israeli army’s insistence on mass killing and targeting of women and children. It is no coincidence that the majority of the martyrs in the Gaza Strip are women and children.
The numerical data confirms that there is a clear targeting not only of children in Gaza specifically and Palestine generally but also of the infrastructure that supports childhood, like the education sector and its facilities, including staff and schools. And according to figures from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees “UNRWA”. “The number of murdered children in Gaza in only 4 months (from November 20, 2023, to February 20,2024) exceeds the number of murdered children in all of the conflicts around the world in the last 4 years.”
To ensure the killing of as many children as possible in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army adopted a scorched-earth policy of mass destruction, including homes, civilian facilities, hospitals, schools, places of worship, refugee camps, international and press offices. This is confirmed by a statement from the commissioner-general of UNRWA, which summarizes Israel’s intent to kill as many Palestinians as possible. The commissioner-general says: “since the start of the war, we lost 202 of our employees in the Gaza strip. These people were teachers, doctors, nurses, relief and social worker, engineers, logistics and support staff, and professional in technology, media, and communication. This number of fatalities is the highest among workers killed in a single conflict since the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.”
Throughout the first seven months of the aggression, Israel killed approximately 6649 school students, in addition to the martyrdom of 547 university students, and 334 school teachers and around a 100 university professors.
According to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 286 public schools, 65 UNRWA schools, and 31 university campuses in the Gaza Strip were destroyed. 57 schools in the west bank were also raided and vandalized. 133 public schools were used as shelters in the Gaza Strip, a huge number of which got bombed with tons of explosives.
Educational Institutions were targeted and destroyed either partially or completely. Which resulted in around 630,000 school students and 88,000 university students being deprived of their natural right to education.
These reasons, among others, prompted the UN Secretary General to include Israel on the UN’s “list of shame” for the Israeli army’s violation of children’s rights in the conflict. Especially since there is a strong belief amongst international organizations concerned with education that Israel intended to destroy the Palestinian education sector completely, known as educational genocide. This involves the systemic eradication of education by arresting, detaining, or killing of the students, educators, workers, and destroying educational infrastructure. Which constitutes a violation not only of international and humanitarian law, but also of the minimum of ethical and humanitarian standards which have collapsed under the rubble of houses that sheltered children, women, and civilians.
We do not highlight anything new when we shed the light on the occupation’s crime against the Palestinian people in general and against children and childhood in particular. We are confident that the concerned international organizations and institutions possess much more information than mentioned in this brief letter. Which is only a simple attempt to awaken some remnants of international conscience and to restore justice and international and humanitarian law that turns a blind eye when it comes to a crime committed by Israel.
On behalf of the “Department of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” we call on the UN Secretary-General and the Commissioner-General of UNRWA to use the weapon of law to protect children and childhood in Palestine by filing lawsuits in international and local courts against occupation soldiers and their leaders, both on the political and military level. We also urge “UNICEF” to continue its work not only in exposing Israel’s practices against childhood and education in Palestine but also in seriously striving to secure a healthy environment that ensures a dignified life for the children of Palestine. This will never happen as long as Zionist fascism, which thrives on criminal and terrorist ideology that fueled by historical and religious myths, persist. Thus, every possible international effort is required to eliminate it now rather than later, given its significant threat not only to Palestinians but to the entire world.