Afrasianet - Yusra Alaklouk - At seven in the morning, bells ring in the schools of the world, marking the queue of children in an organized morning queue carrying their bags, saluting the flags of their homelands and chanting their songs, while at the same time, in the forgotten corner of the world where "Gaza" is, there are thirsty children, who seek early in search of a drink of water loaded with empty plastic bottles and bottles.
Shaatha dust waiting "Zamour" water truck roaming, and emanating from their tents and classrooms of schools - which turned into shelters for their displacement - queues to fill water, in a scene that has no features of the homeland except crumbs stuck in their memory, when they sang to him in previous years "life, salvation, bliss and hope in your passion
"Gallons" not balloons
Mohammed, 8, comes out of the water queue with two gallons full, and the sweat pouring from his face weighs the weight of what he carries, as their weight seems heavier than him; he limps with them at times, speeds up the pace at others, and then his breath is cut off and he puts them on the ground.
Al Jazeera Net asked him during his short break, "Are you tired?" "My mother and brothers are waiting for me," he stared and then continued walking, an apology for not answering, not a justification for his trot.
Children flock to a tent with a sign on the door of which reads "Educational Tent", in which some displaced children receive the ABCs of the school curriculum, after they have passed the ABCs of war with the vocabulary of fire, fear, hunger and displacement, and the children lean on their notebooks, while sitting on the floor.
The supervising teacher says to Al Jazeera Net, "We are making a double effort in the delivery of information, and children find it difficult to absorb the new lessons; there is no appropriate environment nor psychological prepared for learning."
Hungry Education
It was remarkable to see the 6-year-old girl Nesma supporting her paper on an iron pot and busy writing, and interrupting the teacher who was in the explanation by asking, "When does the lesson end? I don't want to be late in the hospice queue," she folds her paper and hurriedly goes out and runs after the children, fearing to arrive late, so they have nothing to feed them from the meat rice dish, lentil soup, or the bean dish cooked with water and a little tomato sauce, from what they got from the relief cans.
No meat, no fruit, no vegetables, even milk and chocolate are luxuries that Gazan children have not received since the war began.
While the features of the hunger ravage of children began to appear on their emaciated bodies and pale faces, the baby Suwar Ashour fell weak prey to him, as 5 months after her birth was not enough to gain weight during which she gained one gram, to highlight the bones of her chest and look like a skeleton.
Her mother says to Al Jazeera Net, "My daughter is dying, has not increased weight since she was born, stopped breastfeeding nature, I also live starvation and no food helps me to breastfeed, even vitamins and supplements are scarce and unavailable."
Divided loaves
Swar is not alone in battling the specter of hunger with her emaciated body, but more than 65,000 cases of children have arrived in Gaza hospitals as a result of malnutrition, according to the government media office, with the pumping of medicines and treatments halted.
In one tent in Tahrir camp in Khan Yunis, suffering is coloured, as um Mohammed, who suffers from kidney failure, raises seven orphans, three of whom have cancer and two others who suffer from kidney disease.
Everyone shares two loaves of bread daily from the tenders of the neighbors around them, dividing them into quarters, so that they are not only consumed by hunger but also spread by disease. Says um Mohammed to Al Jazeera Net "hurt me motherhood, and I am unable to secure medicine for me and my five children. They and I are succumbed to death, hunger and disease without support."
Orphans by the thousands
Israel is adept at depriving young people of childhood with its simple traditional components, just as it takes away their well-being and persists in their ignorance and depriving them of their most basic rights, they do not receive life except its crumb, as it snatches them from the arms of their parents and throws them into the arms of loss and orphanhood, just as happened with the child Ali Faraj (7 years old), who activists circulated a video clip of him on social media platforms when an Israeli raid force threw him to the roof of the house next door, waving to his mother and those opposite him to save him.
Ali says to Al Jazeera Net "I was in the lap of Baba and we were watching together Spiderman (cartoon) fell asleep then, then woke up and I am on the roof of the neighbors," has martyred his father and his five sisters at once, and was seen to their pictures.
"I loved Jory very much, she was younger than me, we used to play together, she loved me and fed me before she ate, Jouri and all my sisters died, my father, grandfather, grandmother, uncles and aunts died, and I was left alone for my mother," he whispers. His mother stands like a broken wall, wiping her tears and saying, "God has kept me for Ali, and if there is anything that prevents me from collapsing, it is his survival."
It is a childhood assassination and the loss of a boat dosed by more than 26,000 children who have lost one or both of their parents, and their hearts will not be reassured by the voice of a mother or the bosom of a father at the height of this fear in which they indulge.
Why is the suffering of Gaza's children absent from the American media?
Washington — While the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip has been at the top of the foreign issues covered by the American media over the past year through dozens of news reports and opinion articles in various newspapers and news websites, coverage of the developments of the war has declined sharply after more than 18 months since it began following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7, 2023.
With a "structural failure" in American media coverage of what is happening in Gaza due to the acceptance of American journalists not to be in the Strip, and only to work from inside Israel, or through Palestinian assistants and researchers in Gaza, most American media are subject to pressure from the Jewish lobby, or are reticent due to the strength of the White House's relations with the Israeli government, and most media tools are reluctant to give due attention to the human suffering, especially that of the children of Gaza.
Jewish lobby pressure
On December 27, the New York Times published on its front page photos of children from the Gaza Strip who had been evacuated by international humanitarian organizations for treatment abroad, after losing one or more limbs from their hands and legs.
The newspaper devoted more than two pages to color photographs of 16 children who were seriously injured during the war, and about the air transfers of them and their accompanying parents, which came as a result of painstaking negotiations between aid organizations and several governments, including Israel, Egypt and Italy. The newspaper detailed how some of the children's limbs were amputated to save them, and how many of them will carry scars on their bodies for their lives.
The report was met with a storm of anger from Jewish organizations, which accused the newspaper of not properly framing children's stories and of responsibility for what happened to them.
The story is an exception, as the American media has failed to treat Palestinian martyrs, especially children, as an issue that deserves news coverage on an equal footing with Israelis killed.
Moreover, while the occupation continued to prevent the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza, even during the temporary truce in the Strip, the major American media did not object to this, and only covered through their networks of correspondents deployed inside Israel, and the Israeli army is often accompanied by American journalists who are allowed to see what it deems important from the Israeli point of view.
Former US Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs, Ambassador David Mack, stressed that "despite the poor American media coverage of the suffering of Gaza's hungry children and malnutrition under the Israeli blockade, some media, especially print outlets, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, still provide reasonably good coverage of the widespread human suffering of Palestinians in Gaza."
Political reasons
For two months, Israel has imposed a comprehensive blockade on Gaza, allowing no food and humanitarian aid or commercial goods to enter, the longest closure imposed by Israel since October 7, 2023.
The World Food Programme says it is ready to move enough aid into Gaza to feed the entire population for up to two months, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has confirmed that it has about 3,000 trucks full of aid to the Strip, both of which are waiting for Israel to lift its blockade and allow this aid to enter.
For its part, the White House National Security Council issued statements supporting Israel's control over the flow of humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip to force Hamas to release more Israeli detainees in its custody. Last week, the US ambassador to Israel, Rev. Mike Huckabee, rejected calls from humanitarian officials to pressure the occupation to open the crossings.
Giorgio Cafiro, a strategist and director of the Gulf States Studies Foundation, said the Israeli government is determined to kill and expel as many Palestinians as possible from Gaza, and preventing food and humanitarian supplies from entering Gaza is part of this agenda.
The Trump administration has also "criminally" facilitated this genocidal behavior, and Washington has aligned itself entirely with Tel Aviv regarding the Israeli campaign in Gaza.
"The United States has enormous influence over Israel, but for political reasons it does not use it to force it to allow food and humanitarian supplies into the Strip," Cavero said.
Israel Restrictions
On the reasons why the Trump administration has not pressured Israel to allow food and humanitarian supplies into Gaza, Ambassador Mack said that "while the Biden administration tended to say the right things about allowing food and humanitarian aid into Gaza, but did not support it by stopping arms supplies to Israel or providing political support to the Palestinians at the United Nations, the Trump administration is not even making the right statements."
"This is partly due to the fatigue of the protracted issues, where there has been growing U.S. domestic political support for the Palestinians, and Trump himself wants a quick end to the crisis, even at the cost of the continued deaths of Palestinian women and children facing starvation and other threats to their safety."
However, Ambassador Mack stated that "many Americans get their news from television, radio and the Internet that lack the resources to provide adequate coverage, in part because of the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on media access to Gaza, as well as the danger to journalists on the ground from Israeli military attacks."
On Wednesday, NPR published a report on the suffering of Gaza's children inside the Patient's Friends Association hospital, and highlighted that many of them face severe malnutrition, which weakens their immune systems and stops their growth. The report quoted the testimony of specialist doctors confirming that some children have become skeletons due to malnutrition.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich assured supporters in Israel earlier in April: "Listen to me carefully, not a single grain of wheat will go into the hands of Hamas." Israel accuses the group of controlling the distribution of aid, and the United Nations denies this.
The report noted that the United Nations notes that half of Gaza's population, about one million people, now eat only one meal a day from charity kitchens, which have also begun to close due to running out of supplies.
Under the rubble
A war that destroyed childhood and emptied it of its content, even the times of children's fun are teeming with the biography of death, here Basil plays with his sister Maha in front of the tent, buries the doll in the sand, then digs to retrieve it, Basil carries it, saying, "I saved her from under the rubble", and Maha completes the game, "She is a martyr, Basil. Let's play a funeral."
The war inherited children deep pain is not visible to the naked eye, and inhabited within them psychological trauma, evident in their aggressive behaviors or in the manifestations of traumatic disorder evident suffered by 72% of children in Gaza, says psychologist Omar Walid, who explained to Al Jazeera Net the most prominent manifestations of the disorder in children according to his testimony of night terror and bedwetting and pathological attachment to parents or disobey their orders.
Psychiatric deficit
With the crossings closed since the beginning of March and the entry of medicines for mental illness banned, there has been a major setback with children who receive periodic treatments, such as autism, epilepsy and depression, while psychologists make every effort to repair war-torn small lives by moving between children in shelters and asylum centres.
"We provide psychological first aid to children after trauma, and we try to involve them in refresher groups in psychological discharge sessions, and we also hold educational meetings for parents to familiarize them with how to deal with children's behavioural problems," Walid said.
At the height of this psychological devastation, psychology has no ways to deal with a child who was forced to collect the remains of his parents in a bag or bury his siblings, or who saw fire melt the flesh of his relatives, who was trapped in his livelihood, who died to be deprived of medicine, or who slept with a rumbling belly, in a tormented childhood that dug living scars on the face of all humanity.