At this point in time, Gaza must surely be the most miserable place on earth.
But what does that actually mean?
It means that right now people are having major operations without painkillers and anaesthetics. Doctors say people are screaming with pain during operations.
It means that children cannot understand why their parents won't give them food. A heartbreaking video this week showed a mother as her child asks for food. The mother is so distraught she looks away so her child doesn't see her crying.
It means that hundreds of people may die under rubble. Gaza's rescue workers say they can't save everybody. How do you tell a trapped person there's nothing you can do?
Miserable means that 50,000 pregnant women do not know whether their babies will survive this war — with 5,000 due this month. With many hospitals having been damaged, where will they give birth?
It means running out of body bags and using ice-cream trucks as morgues.
Miserable are the lives of children in Gaza hanging in the balance as a public health catastrophe looms. Save the Children says Gaza's 1 million children have virtually no access to essential healthcare services after heavy bombardments for almost 14 days from October 7. The World Health Organization has documented 59 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza, damaging 26 hospitals or healthcare facilities.
It means the fear children feel from more than 6,000 Israeli bombs over two weeks.
Imagine cutting Canberra in half and then putting roughly the population of Brisbane into it. Then dropping 6,000 bombs onto it — on average 16 bombs per square kilometre. That's the Gaza Strip right now.
Even before the war, Gaza was a grim place. On my first visit in 2009, I was shocked by how small children were because of malnutrition. A child psychologist told me she could not cope with the epidemic of mental illnesses from various wars.
I met her equivalent in Israel, a woman in Sderot who counselled children affected by rockets from Gaza. Traumatised children are traumatised children — Israeli or Palestinian.
I've covered three wars between Israel and Gaza. This one is my fourth.
During one war I saw what I believed was white phosphorous being dropped on Gaza. I couldn't believe that an army — "the most moral army in the world," Israeli officials kept telling me — would drop white phosphorous on such a crowded place. That would be a war crime.
I spoke to doctors in Gaza who insisted it was white phosphorous — they could tell from the burns it caused. The Israeli army "strenuously denied" this.
I received a blast of abuse. How could I even think something so bad about the Israeli army? This would be a war crime and the Israeli army would never commit war crimes. This was typical of the hostility of foreign journalists towards Israel.
A few months after the war, when the world had moved on, Israeli officials conceded that the army had used white phosphorous but only in "limited" quantities.
This week, Human Rights Watch accused Israel of again using white phosphorous in this war. The IDF has strenuously denied the claim, saying it is "unequivocally false". White phosphorus has an incendiary effect that causes a particularly bad burn to skin.
Source: ABC.AU
Story by John Lyons
Origional Story: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-23/gaza-most-miserable-place-israel-fear-tragedy-cannot-go-on/103002648
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