Nine months after Israel’s assault on Gaza began, in retaliation for the Hamas atrocities of 7 October, the suffering has not ended. Gaza City is experiencing some of its heaviest strikes of the war. Health authorities in the territory say that 38,345 people have been killed. Save the Children warned recently that an additional 4,000 children are thought to be under the rubble, and 17,000 are unaccompanied or separated from their families. Surgeons say that Israeli-made weapons designed to spray large amounts of shrapnel are disproportionately harming children.
When Russia bombed a children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday, the White House quickly rushed out a statement expressing Joe Biden’s widely shared revulsion. Yet no such declaration of sympathy has been made for victims of the Israeli strikes on or near four schools in Gaza where people were sheltering, carried out in just four days. The latest, on Tuesday, hit close to the gate of al-Awda school in Khan Younis during a football game. The Israeli military has blamed Hamas fighters or officials for using the sites as bases.
