Obaidul Hamid:

AS I drive our children to school every morning, I see many uniformed students crossing the busy road leading to the school. They are assisted by crossing supervisors who stop all vehicles from time to time and clear the way for children. As a parent, I feel quietly pleased to see children’s safety taken so seriously.

As part of our research, my colleagues and I have visited many schools in Australia, England, Singapore, and Bangladesh in the past two years. Being at school and watching children chatting, playing, running around, and enjoying their time gives me extreme pleasure. Children are given social, emotional, and intellectual nourishment to develop the skills that they will need to enter the adult world.

Earlier this year, we had some issues in publishing a paper in a journal. This was because the reviewers raised ethical concerns about a child participant who was given writing activities that the child did not like. We are reminded that children’s likes and dislikes matter; they can’t be subjected to harm or asked to do things that they don’t like.

Of course, not all children are privileged to grow up in such a caring and nurturing environment. Children selling their labour with their small hands are found in many places in Bangladesh. We may see them scavenging through garbage, standing behind scooters and inviting passengers, or selling small products in public places. They may be half-fed or three-quarterly starved as they go on with their everyday struggle for a meagre income.

Theirs is not an ideal childhood, but at least they are fortunate enough not to be subjected to collective punishment or bombed to death en masse. These children don’t live through their rugged childhood knowing that they can be killed at any moment.

As I write, more than four and a half thousand children have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in about a month. The total number of deaths has exceeded 11 thousand and it is growing every hour, as schools, homes and hospitals are pounded by an unbelievable level of bombing. Referring to WHO, a newspaper reported that one child dies every 10 minutes in Gaza. Israel is intent on a genocidal mission and on ‘finishing’ Palestinians including children, women, the elderly, and the sick. It received a blank cheque from its allies together with financial and military supplies.

Hundreds and thousands of Palestinian children have been killed since the creation of Israel in the smuggled Palestinian territory in 1948.

Amid this unmagical reality of Palestinian children, I had a quick read of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is an international treaty which was adopted by the General Assembly in 1989. Divided into three parts, the Convention contains 54 Articles. These are about protecting the rights of every human child. There are four principles guiding the Convention: non-discrimination, prioritising the best interests of children, ensuring their right to life, survival and development, and respecting children’s views considering their age and maturity.

I wonder about making sense of the Convention and its unquestionable principles as I see images of children’s dead bodies piling up, blood flowing, and parents’ helpless cries holding their dead or injured children. How do schoolteachers, crossing supervisors, child carers and health professionals make sense of the CRC? How do lawyers, academics and scholars think of the international promises given to all children and what Palestinian children have received for decades?

Could the world have prevented this mass killing of children? Can the world do something to stop the present killing spree? The answer is yes in both cases. However, those who are able to make a difference decided not to intervene. Either they are happy with the killing going or they don’t have to care. After all, Palestinian children are not their children. They are talking about humanitarian bullshitting while Israel continues its killings and demolitions. On the other hand, those who care and might have liked to do something don’t have the courage to intervene in the prevailing geopolitical order.

The CRC is meant to be shared with all stakeholders including children. Would Palestinian children have ever seen the Articles? Would their parents know them? Did the Palestinian teachers who have lost all or most of their students in Gaza tell their students about the existence of the Convention?

I wonder how Palestinian children think of the world and its inhabitants outside Palestine as Israeli bombs take their lives. Probably they don’t have the luxury of thinking or imagining beyond the immediate reality. For them, being killed is more real than living beyond childhood. As reported, parents write children’s names on their palms so they can be identified after their lives have been taken by Israeli ‘self-defence’ bullets. The children probably think more of their life hereafter as their life here has already been decided by forces beyond their control.

It may be true that every human being carries a death warrant in their person. However, humans also dream living a full life — having a loving and caring childhood, learning knowledge and skills, earning, marrying, and spending time with their spouses, and being parents and probably grandparents. In this normal cycle of life, many of us even forget death built into our being. We plan things as if we would live forever and never die.

Children in Palestine have a different ontology of life and death. They probably count their life by minutes, hours, or days at most. For many, tomorrow may be in the hereafter.

If we were to show Palestinian children the CRC or tell them that they had right to life, safety, and learning — like their American, British, or Israeli counterparts — how would they reply? Could they believe us? Could they deny the established truth about life and death that they have lived through in the past decades?

I am curious to know if Palestinian children ever wanted to ask the world what their crime was and why they deserved the bounty of deaths and the loss of their land, living and identity. The world may of course have its answers. To Israel and its supporters, Palestinians do not count as humans; they are ‘human animals’. In fact, they may be considered neither human nor animals. Even animals deserve a better treatment in a world of post-humanist consciousness. Killing of more than 11,000 dogs or cats in a month by bombing would not have been allowed. The ‘human-animal’ species deserves to be wiped out of the earth. The more ‘civilised’ part of the world appears to be a signatory to this Israeli paradigm.

Is killing Palestinian children a sin? That may be a difficult question to answer but what did the newly elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives say? ‘I believe that God will bless nations that support Israel.’ The self-proclaimed evangelical Christian pledged that the US Congress would continue supporting Israel. I wonder what religious message is communicated for not standing by Israel as per the Speaker’s religious belief.

There may be a lesson here for those secular intellectuals who would argue till the end of their breath that religion has no place in the state machinery. Of course, they probably refer to only Islam, mullahs and Talibans.

Obaidul Hamid is an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He researches language, education, and society in the developing world.