The Silent War on Gaza’s Children: Why Isn’t It Stopped?

Right, so the genocide of the Gaza Strip, still very much ongoing, where Israel is not waging war, but enacting systematic violations of a captive population, with bullets, bureaucracy, and banality. In Gaza, starvation has become a siege weapon, water is a luxury rationed by airstrikes, and hope is snuffed out before it can draw breath. This is not warfare, this is not self preservation, this is not rescuing hostages or eliminating Hamas—it is industrial-scale cruelty wrapped in the language of security and self-defence. And while children are being maimed, burned, amputated, and starved, the so-called guardians of human rights in the West remain complicit in silence, or worse—actively underwriting the genocide.
The Gaza Strip has become the epicentre of one of the most systematic and unrelenting acts of state violence in modern history. What began as a military operation has spiralled into a full-blown genocide—one where civilians are no longer just collateral damage but the intended targets. Children starve in line for aid, families thirst under a man-made drought, and journalists are barred from entering, leaving the outside world to grasp at the few fragmented horrors that manage to escape via social media and those brave souls already there, risking their lives daily to keep us aware of Israel’s atrocities.
Right, so the Gaza Strip has for the last 20 months now stood as ground zero for one of the most calculated and merciless campaigns of state-led destruction in recent memory. What Israel initially framed as a military offensive has mutated into an unmistakable genocide—one where civilians aren’t accidentally caught in the crossfire but deliberately targeted. Children perish while queuing for food, families are parched beneath a scorched and silent sky, and journalists are locked out, forcing the global public to piece together the atrocities from scraps of smuggled evidence.
In the early hours of June 21, the Israeli military once again launched strikes on Palestinian civilians waiting at an aid distribution site, killing at least 35 people. The victims, already weakened by months of hunger and dehydration, had come to one of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites for basic sustenance. Instead, they met death, as so many do at said sites on a daily basis. Since the GHF began operations on May 27, hundreds of people have been killed while queuing for food.
Aid, aid that sued to be distributed by UNRWA, by the UN, once seen as a beacon of relief under Israeli occupation, getting food has now become a death trap.
UNICEF have recently weighed in on another increasingly severe crisis now as well, sounding the alarm about Gaza’s descent into a "man-made drought," as Israel continues its systematic destruction of water infrastructure. Only 40% of Gaza’s water systems remain even partially functional. No fuel, no spare parts, and constant bombardment have left a broken system unable to deliver sufficient clean drinking water. The result is a spiralling public health crisis: acute watery diarrhoea now accounts for 25% of all disease cases and Hepatitis A, highly contagious and potentially fatal as that is, has also taken root.
Children are the most vulnerable in any humanitarian crisis, they make up almost half of Gaza’s population and they are bearing the brunt of Israel’s war of starvation and now thirst, but so much more as well. Malnutrition is rampant and cute malnutrition has soared. According to UNICEF data, 16,736 children were admitted for treatment for malnutrition in Gaza between January and May 2025. Of these, 5,119 were admitted in May alone – nearly 50 percent more than in April.
The number of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition has surged 146 percent since February.
To make matters even more spectacularly appalling on the aid front though, the GHF has had the nerve to say there’s not enough aid to meet demand and has therefore now applied for $30 million in additional US funding. Well if people keep dying at your sites for want of getting aid, that demand will soon fall won’t it? Instead of easing the crisis, the GHF’s food distribution efforts have seemingly exacerbated it. UNICEF has criticised the Foundation for worsening an already catastrophic situation by attracting large, desperate crowds with little security, placing them directly in the line of fire. Every time Palestinians gather for the promise of bread, they risk bullets instead.
The most grotesque aspect of this tragedy is the near-total media blackout. Israel continues to bar international journalists from entering Gaza, citing "safety concerns." Yet, the real motive appears clear: control the narrative by silencing the witnesses. The reality is that Israel has explicitly denied access to journalists to restrict scrutiny and accountability. These tactics are not new and are not a surprise, they’ve been doing it all the way through their genocide in Gaza and we’re seeing these tactics mirrored in Israel itself as they maintain a media blackout over retaliatory Iranian strikes to hide the scale of the damage being done, where reporters have been heavily restricted in their coverage, lest the propaganda war Israel are maintaining be undermined.
But the greatest danger to journalists in Gaza isn’t crossfire—it’s Israel itself. Since October 7, 2023, at least 227 journalists have been killed in Gaza. According to a new report called News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World, 2023 saw a journalist killed every four days in Gaza. In 2024, that rate increased to one every three days. The deadliest conflict for journalists in modern history is happening now, and it is being conducted with almost no international media presence or coverage, so so much for solidarity around the world with members of their profession, but I suppose there are journalists in this world and then there are the stenographers that pass themselves off as such, but aren’t worthy of the name, or of being associated with the honourable profession.
The children of Gaza continue to suffer in almost unimaginable ways. Recent data compiled by humanitarian monitors reveals that children account for 23% of amputations, 26% of spinal cord injuries, 33% of traumatic brain injuries, and an astonishing 70% of severe burn cases requiring surgical intervention. There are zero rehabilitation services available for these children in Gaza, Israel has made sure of that. Hospitals lie in ruins or function without medicine, electricity, or clean water. The youngest are being permanently mutilated in a war they never asked for.
Gaza’s death toll now nears 56,000. Each of those lives represents not a combatant but overwhelmingly civilians—mothers, fathers, children, elderly, aid workers, and medical personnel. The scale of the destruction, the targeting of life-sustaining infrastructure, and the systematic attacks on journalists paint a clear picture: this is not a war. It is genocide and damn those who still deny it.
Compounding the misery, Israeli forces and illegal settlers continue to block aid trucks at crossing points. Eyewitness accounts describe entire convoys being turned back or looted. Even within Gaza, Israeli-backed gangs reportedly steal food from distribution sites, or from the trucks before they even get there and even if it does get there Palestinians don’t know if they’ll get food there or meet their end. Palestinians are thus squeezed between death by deprivation and death by bullet.
This is a war not just on a people, but on the very idea of humanity. It is a war where food is a weapon for Israel, water is a threat to Israel, and truth is a liability to Israel. The deliberate denial of basic resources is more than a war crime—it is a tactic of erasure. This is a crime being committed in slow motion, in full view of the world, and with shocking impunity, as our leaders, our governments as international organisations, still just sit there and watch, or worse support Israel’s right to defend itself.
Western leaders continue to offer Israel diplomatic and military support, often citing that right to self-defence. But there is no defence for bombing starving civilians. No excuse for shooting children in bread lines. No justification for turning a besieged strip of land into a graveyard for journalists, aid workers, and entire families.
The people of Gaza are being forced to choose between starvation and execution. Their stories are censored, their suffering rendered invisible as much as possible. What few facts reach us come at great cost, often smuggled out by the dwindling number of local journalists and humanitarian workers still alive, aside of course from the social media footage that we continue to see each day, horrifying us, each and every day.
The scale of this atrocity demands outrage. It demands accountability. And it demands action. Every day that passes without decisive intervention is another day children die of thirst, hunger, or sniper fire.
This is a literal never again moment that is happening again on the worlds watch and still for too many, all they do is watch.
The situation is now so dire at those GHF aid sites, now asking for more cash, that the director of UNRWA in recent days described them as human abattoirs. Get all the details as to why in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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