The recent rescue of a newborn from the womb of his mother after she was killed by an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza refugee camp has renewed focus on the horrors endured by Palestinian children and their families during Israel’s nine-and-a-half-month onslaught.
Ola Al-Kurd was nine months pregnant and “wanted to hold her child and fill our home with his presence,” Adnan Al-Kurd, the slain woman’s father, told Reuters.
But last Friday, an Israeli strike on their family home in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed the woman and several of her relatives. Surgeons at Al-Awda Hospital were able to safely deliver her baby, Malek Yassin, who was transferred to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah and placed in an incubator.
Earlier this year, another Gaza newborn rescued from her slain mother’s womb at just 30 weeks’ gestation died days later at Emirati Maternity Hospital in Rafah.
Israel’s 293-day siege, bombardment, and invasion of Gaza – which has killed, wounded, or left missing at least 140,000 Palestinians – has been hell on children and their mothers. The embattled enclave’s healthcare infrastructure has been largely obliterated, forcing many mothers to give birth in precarious places, including in tents, streets, and even public bathrooms.
Basic survival items like diapers and formula have also been in extremely short supply in Gaza, which the United Nations Children’s Fund has called “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.”
As The British Medical Journal reported earlier this year, mothers in Gaza are “burying their newborns every day” as they have nothing to feed them due to what United Nations experts, human rights groups, and parties to the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have called Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war.
Oxfam said early in the war that children in Gaza were dying from preventable causes including diarrhea, hypothermia, dehydration, and infections.
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Lives of pregnant women and newborns are endangered in Gaza due to the harsh living conditions and lack of access to healthcare👇 https://t.co/8qxaD5KOoV— MSF International (@MSF) July 18, 2024
In January, the ICJ ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts including blocking food and other aid from entering Gaza. Human rights groups accused Israel of ignoring the order.
The World Court then issued a new order in March, reiterating its directive to prevent genocide, citing “worsening conditions” in Gaza, including “the spread of famine and starvation.”
Dozens of Palestinians – almost all of them children – have died from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of access to healthcare in Gaza over recent months.
Of the more than 39,000 Gazans who have been killed by Israel’s bombs, bullets, and blockade, at least 16,000 are children, according to Palestinian and international agencies.
Israeli forces have allegedly deliberately targeted and executed children and their mothers. Israeli Air Force warplanes are dropping shrapnel-packed fragmentation bombs that doctors say are eviscerating children’s bodies and causing a “constant flow of amputations.”
The humanitarian group Save the Children said late last month that nearly 21,000 Palestinian children are missing in Gaza, with 17,000 orphaned and around 4,000 others believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings. An unknown number of children are also believed to be buried in mass graves.
Israeli bombardments have wiped out entire Palestinian families.
Israel’s onslaught is also causing what one Gaza mother called the “complete psychological destruction” of child survivors.
Last month, U.N. Secretary-General AntĂłnio Guterres added Israel to the so-called “List of Shame” of countries and groups that kill and injure children.
On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and 13 Democratic colleagues sent a letter to the Israeli and Egyptian ambassadors to the United States urging them to expedite the evacuation of critically ill and injured Palestinian children from Gaza.
“While people disagree about the war in Gaza, everyone should agree that no government should prevent injured children access to potentially lifesaving medical care,” the senators wrote. “Rather, governments should be doing everything possible to assist in this situation.”
“We must all treat the welfare of children in Gaza as an urgent humanitarian priority and work together to prevent further suffering,” the lawmakers added.
Brett Wilkins is is staff writer for Common Dreams. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace. This originally appeared at CommonDreams and is reprinted with the author’s permission.
”Let there be Peace on Earth and let it begin with me…!”
Israel intentionally killing Palestinian mothers and children in Gaza to eliminate the generation that is bringing up the next generation of Palestinians.
It sure seems like it. Hopefully, that proves false.
The article by Politico of medical volunteers in Gaza telling the world what they saw. Dr. Perlmutter, a Jewish doctor, wrote of the unspeakable things he saw there. When he described seeing toddlers shot by the IDF, perfect shots to the head and chest, it pretty well enraged me.
Dr. Perlmutter and other medical practitioners who have unselfishly volunteered in Gaza wrote a letter to Biden, Biden's wife, Jill and Kamila Harris, describing what they had seen and implored them to stop giving support to Israel. Just stop he genocide.
Politicians taking money from Israel and Zionist Groups would never travel to Gaza to witness what's going on there. They are aware of the genocide of the people including children and say "Israel Has The Right To Defend Itself" even if some of them criticize Israel, they are for continuing military and economic aid to Israel.
Harris boycotted Netanyahu's speech but says "Israel Has The Right To Defend Itself" and calls the protesters traitors and Anti-Semitic. She says she is for letting aid get in. It doesn't do any good if she is for funding Israel's military and economy which is committing the genocide and blocking aid and blames Hamas for stealing the aid when it is Israelis stealing the aid as well as Israeli Troops stealing food from homes the destroy after getting the food.
Domino's Pizza and certain other companies provide food to the IDF Soldiers massacring Gaza.
The Zionists in Israel are vile, inhuman. Our congress is vile, inhuman. They are cowards. Allowing, not ignoring, the genocide just to keep the money from AIPAC flowing so they can keep their stinking offices makes me ill. Very ill. D*mn all of them.
I think people paying attention to this Genocide, have to be ecstatic that this baby is surviving, because it is what we want for all babies, all children, all humans. The thought that Leaders of Nations are watching and doing nothing to stop this Genocide, is going to fester, going to grow hatred of them by their own people, then what? NO Nation needs permission by Israel to help the Palestinians, there will never be a Peace Treaty with War Criminals, so these Leaders can not keep lying, saying a Peace deal is at hand. We have WAR CRIMINALS negotiating with World Leaders who are War Criminals, to bring Peace, what world is everybody living in? Time for Nations outside of the Zionist Circle, to defend the Palestinians and stop the SLAUGHTER.
I want the IDF snipers to stop shooting Palestinian children. I admire the refuseniks in Israel who will not go. It is high time that reservists who have seen their fellow reservists shoot children and women drop out the IDF. It would be good for them if they would also go to Temple and beg forgiveness from their G-d.
What an amazing story of something good happening out of tragedy!
God bless the child, truly, ALL the children, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters!!! Of PEACE! That is the way of Christ!
Time for Israel to see the light and love of the father, mother and son!
Polio virus was discovered there by the WHO.