How can Ban Ki-moon get it so wrong? The Secretary-General of the United Nations bowed to pressure from the US and Israel to omit Tel Aviv from a list of parties that kill or injure children in armed conflicts. Ban omitted Israel despite the wishes of UN officials who wanted the country rightly named and shamed. Instead, the report from Ban circulated to UN members earlier this week slaps Israel on the wrist for its “unprecedented and unacceptable” scale of violence against young people.
The report to the UN Security Council and the General Assembly notes that 2014 saw a dramatic increase in violence against children and at least 561 young people were killed and 4,271 injured during Israel’s murderous six-week assault on the Gaza Strip last summer. In contrast, Ban’s report cites four young Israeli’s killed and a further 22 injured at the same time.
Surely, the distinct imbalance in numbers — and that alone is the saddest and coldest way to look at the tragic loss of life — shows that Israel’s US-backed war machine took a devastating toll on the young. Indeed, simply playing on a beach next to a UN facility in the Gaza Strip cost young boys their lives when they were targeted and bombarded by an Israeli gunboat anchored offshore to annihilate anything — even boys kicking a football on the sea shore — that could be perceived as a threat.
How sad it is that the UN goes to great lengths to produce a ‘State of the Children’ report each December, looking at how the most vulnerable suffer at the hands of natural disasters, linger in refugee camps in sweltering heat or cold or are at risk from famines and diseases. But when it comes to blatant Israeli aggression against a civilian population trapped in a coastal enclave with nowhere to run — even UN refugees themsleves are targeted by precision weapons and laser-guided bombs — there is a sudden blindness, deafness and speechlessness. Really? Dead Palestinian children deserve justice.
