Every child is our child: Gaza and the death of global conscience

The bronze sculpture by Marie Uchytilová, “Memorial to the Children Victims of the War,” depicting the 82 children from the Czech village of Lidice who were murdered in 1942, serves as a haunting reminder of the barbarity that defined the Nazis’ Lidice massacre. In reprisal for the assassination of deputy SS leader Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazis razed the village of Lidice, executed its men and deported its women and children to death camps. The murder of these children, their faces forever memorialized in Uchytilová’s sculpture, resonates deeply today, as we witness the suffering of children in Gaza, where the cycle of violence continues unabated. The massacres of children, then and now, serve as stark symbols of the ongoing tragedy of war and genocide, linking past and present in an unbroken chain of human suffering.

In Gaza, the atrocities visited upon children are unspeakable, a violence that staggers the imagination. Omer Bartov, a distinguished scholar of Holocaust and genocide studies, writes in The New York Times that more than 17,000 children have been slaughtered in Gaza, 870 of them infants less than one year old. Gaza, he adds, now has the highest rate of child amputations per capita in the world. These chilling figures unravel the brutal truths of modern warfare, a sickening continuation of the horrors we dared to believe had been consigned to history’s darkest pages, alongside Auschwitz and Hiroshima.

But the genocide in Gaza, like the slaughter at Lidice, cannot be hidden. It stands as an undeniable, grotesque monument to the unchecked power of the state and the monstrous machinery of war. This tragedy is different from past atrocities in one disturbing respect: The suffering of Gaza’s women and children, the use of starvation as a weapon, the unrelenting bombardment, and the spectacle of mass murder are laid bare for all to see. As Norman Solomon has consistently argued, the grotesque violence is not concealed but flaunted, glorified in the language of demagogues and amplified by the shameful silence of the mainstream media. In addition, as a testament to the grotesque violence of gangster capitalism, entire villages are being bulldozed in the interest of appealing to private investors who may want to turn Gaza, in the words of Donald Trump,  into a “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Israel’s war on Gaza increasingly resembles a neoliberalized version of the Final Solution, not in historical equivalence but in its genocidal logic. Far-right Israeli politicians are advancing a plan to annex Gaza and “turn it into a hi-tech, luxury resort city for Israelis.” As William Christou and Quique Kierszenbaum report in the Guardian, the “‘master plan for settlement in the Gaza Strip’ envisions the construction of 850,000 housing units, hi-tech ‘smart cities’ trading in cryptocurrency, and a metro system spanning the territory.” The document, touting Israel’s economic gain, declares: “The right of the people of Israel to settle, develop and preserve this land is not just a historical right, it is a national and security obligation.” The plan’s success hinges on the forced removal of more than 2 million Palestinians. This is not urban development, it is ethnic cleansing on a mass scale, a war crime and a crime against humanity.

This vision of Gaza as a playground for the privileged is not confined to the fringes of Israeli politics. It extends into the global corridors of power and capital. Jonathan Cook observes that “a cabal of Israeli investors, one of the world’s top business consulting groups and a think-tank headed by former British prime minister Tony Blair had been secretly working on plans to exploit the ruins of Gaza as prime real estate.” According to the Financial Times, the secret consortium was actively exploring ways to realize Trump’s vision of transforming Gaza into a high-end investment hub and luxury destination — an enclave remade for the wealthy — once its Palestinian population is forcibly removed. The plan exposes a chilling logic: to turn the site of mass suffering into a profitable venture by erasing its people, commodifying their dispossession and masking genocide behind the language of development.

The collapse of conscience is not a distant abstraction but a visceral reality, carved into the bloodstained bodies of women and children, their lives and futures obliterated by the ruthless forces of war. It is etched into the hands of those who perpetuate this unbearable violence against a defenseless yet resilient people. This erosion of humanity is also made explicit in the chilling words of Israeli politicians. Take, for instance, former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin, who pushed this rhetoric to unspeakable extremes in a 2025 interview on Israeli Channel 14. He declared, “Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy. The enemy is not Hamas, nor is it the military wing of Hamas. … We need to conquer Gaza and colonize it and not leave a single Gazan child there. There is no other victory.”

Feiglin’s words lay bare a harrowing truth: this is no longer a war, but a calculated and dehumanizing military campaign aimed at erasing not only the most vulnerable — children — but an entire people from existence. As Arwa Mahdawi reports in the Guardian, this vision of annihilation has found resonance among Israeli lawmakers and public figures, who have amplified the haunting words of retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland. Writing in an Israeli newspaper on Oct. 12, 2023, he declared that the aim is to turn Gaza “into a place where no human being can exist.”

Nowhere is the heartlessness of the Netanyahu government and the Israeli state, and the shameless indifference of most of the world, more evident than in the deliberate starvation of an entire people. Largely because of the enforced blockade of aid to Gaza, more than 100 people are estimated to have died from starvation in recent weeks, while Gaza’s health ministry reports over 28,000 cases of malnutrition, including more than 5,000 children. According to U.N. spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan, “as of July 21, 1,054 people have been killed while simply trying to obtain food.”

This is not merely a humanitarian catastrophe — it is an act of collective punishment, a slow, grinding extermination. Infants wither in their mothers’ arms, their tiny bodies hollowed by hunger. Mothers, themselves starving, have no milk to give. Children gaze with sunken eyes and swollen bellies, their cries of hunger echoing into a silence broken only by the roar of bombs. The smell of death is everywhere — with no shame, only the hunger of extermination. The deliberate starvation and murder of those seeking bread is more than a moral stain or a violation of international law, it is the mark of a state descending into the savagery and cruelty of genocidal authoritarianism. And yet, the silence of much of the world remains deafening.

The horror unleashed through war and the weaponization of hunger defies comprehension. Heba Almaqadma, a 24-year-old Palestinian journalist, translator and writer surviving amid the ruins of Gaza City, bears witness with searing clarity:

Today, we are witnessing the unthinkable. Hundreds are dying. And the cause? Hunger. Behind the headlines and beyond the numbers, flesh and blood people are cut off from basic necessities, including food, clean water, and medical care. They are facing a slow, quiet, forcibly imposed death. Starvation is not a looming threat; it is a brutal, daily reality. Children cry themselves to sleep on an empty stomach. Parents break under the weight of helplessness, watching their sons and daughters grow thinner, weaker. Bread, once a basic staple, has become a luxury. Vegetables, milk, eggs have become unimaginable for most families. Hunger has overtaken war as the cruelest weapon.

Giorgio Agamben, in “Homo Sacer,” invoked the Nazi death camps to define “bare life” as a condition in which individuals are stripped of political and human value, reduced to mere physical survival under the constant threat of death. In light of the current brutality unfolding under massive military assault and the use of starvation as a weapon, this concept is indispensable for understanding how entire populations are forced to live on the edge of annihilation — suspended in a state of hunger, destitution and state-sanctioned violence.

Social critic and scholar Achille Mbembe adds to the notion of “bare life” by pointing to situations that mimic what he calls necropolitics — a mode of life and governance driven by the “power of death.” He argues that necropolitics points to the various ways in which, in our contemporary world, weapons are deployed in the interest of maximally destroying persons and creating “death-worlds” — zones where populations are not merely oppressed but condemned to a social existence akin to the living dead, marked by disposability, suffering and lawlessness. In such a regime, the “other” is cast outside the protections of legal or moral consideration, rendered a target of state-sanctioned annihilation. In the shadow of Israel’s massive military assault and deliberate weaponization of starvation, this notion becomes chillingly prescient. Here, life is not simply devalued; it is made expendable.

This is not only the fate imposed on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank; it is mirrored in the United States under Trump, whose politics of cruelty has normalized the arrest, incarceration and deportation of undocumented immigrants with a virulence that defies legality but is cloaked in law. Across the globe, politics has entered a death-driven orbit — a necropolitical turn shaped by rising authoritarianism, militarization, widening inequality, carceral regimes, systemic racism and the spiritual force of white Christian nationalism.

As the work of Agamben and Mbembe makes clear, the atrocities unfolding in Gaza are not simply a crisis — they represent a seismic rupture in our moral universe, a collapse of conscience on a global scale. As we watch, in real time, the bodies of children shattered by bombs, pierced by snipers and crushed beneath rubble, we are not only witnessing war; we are witnessing the disintegration of the very ethical foundations that bind humanity. Israeli airstrikes indiscriminately target schools and medical sites full of displaced women, children and men who have nowhere to go to be safe, often with U.S. made bombs and missiles. The major powers continue to arm Israel, while academic institutions remain silent and corporate-controlled media either ignore or vilify those who dare to speak out against the Israeli government’s actions. We are witnessing what could be described as the Hiroshima of our time, an event that signifies not only the destruction of lives but the erosion of our collective conscience.

Dr. Yasser Khan, a witness to the horrors unfolding in Gaza, shared his testimony alongside Mehdi Hasan and Naomi Klein. His words give voice to the suffering that children endure in this modern-day slaughter. He recalls treating a 14-year-old girl who had been struck by shrapnel in both eyes, her eyeballs shattered and leaving her blind. Her plight was compounded by the fact that she had been orphaned, her family victims of the violence. With no infrastructure, no access to food, water or electricity, and under constant bombardment, these children are left to die alone, without care or hope.

Khan’s account is more than mere testimony; it is an urgent call for action. His words, raw, visceral and filled with anguish, urge us to confront the inescapable truth: We are complicit in this suffering if we continue to look away. The pain and terror faced by these children is not just their burden; it is a tragedy that belongs to us all. Every child, everywhere, is our child. The call for understanding is not enough. We must act.

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only by Amanda Marcotte, also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

The parallels between the children of Lidice and the children of Gaza are undeniable. Both are casualties of power, victims of regimes that see them as expendable. Yet in the erasure of history, in the paralyzing censorship that pervades many parts of the world, we risk forgetting the lessons of the past. The ghosts of genocidal violence are not distant echoes, lingering only in the forgotten corners of history, they are present, shaping the policies that continue to devastate innocent lives. To ignore these lessons is to abandon our moral compass, to deny our shared humanity, and to let history repeat itself.

We stand at a crossroads. The violence and brutality we are witnessing today demand more than passive observation; they demand collective moral action. The tragedy unfolding in Gaza is not an isolated incident; it is part of a broader pattern of state violence and genocide. It is a global issue, one that transcends borders and affects us all. It is time to acknowledge the atrocities being committed and to act with the urgency that the situation demands. The children of Gaza are not just casualties of a distant conflict; they are the children of humanity, and it is our collective responsibility to ensure their suffering does not continue unchecked. The time to dismantle the machinery of death and state terrorism is now.

Almaqadma’s words cut through the global silence surrounding Gaza with a clarity that cannot be ignored. While much of the world turns away, there is no silence in Gaza, only “the sounds of children collapsing from malnutrition, parents crying in frustration, communities trying to survive without food, fuel, or medicine.” As Almaqadma reminds us, no political rationale can erase “the hollow look in a child’s eyes” or the “slow and cruel death of a people being starved in full view of the world.” What is needed is not pity, she insists, but pressure, on those who block aid, on those who remain silent, and on those who possess the power to act but choose complicity instead. In a world saturated with images of suffering and yet paralyzed by indifference, she leaves us with a haunting question: How many more children must die before the world declares that Gaza deserves to live?

This is where our collective responsibility begins, not as a choice, but as a moral imperative. Every child is our child. This is not a hollow slogan but a profound truth, a declaration of our boundless commitment, our unwavering love and our shared hope for all children, for whom we bear an irreplaceable responsibility. It is a call to action, an urgent demand for justice that transcends mere words, and a vision of hope as a fierce, militant force resisting the child murder that stains our world. It is a rallying cry against the gangster militarism and ruthless authoritarianism that enable such horrors, a reminder that our fight for the future is inextricably bound to the lives of the youngest among us.