GAZA : DON’T SHOOT THE ORPHANS "Why do children have to suffer as well? Will it be said that they bear in their flesh the sins of their parents and are, therefore, complicit? A cynic might suggest that the child will grow up and sin in due time. But this 8-year-old boy did not have the chance to grow up; he was torn apart by dogs. No future harmony will redeem a single tear of the child martyr. If the tears of children are necessary to perfect the sum of pain that serves as a ransom for the Truth, I categorically affirm that it does not deserve to be paid such a price." - Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. During the four Israeli military interventions in the Gaza Strip (2009, 2012, 2014, 2021), about 7,759 Palestinians were killed, including 1,741 children and 571 women, according to figures provided by the Israeli humanitarian organization, B'Tselem. In response to the assassination of 1,400 Israelis, the majority of whom were civilians, and the abduction of 200 hostages, including 30 children, by armed elements of Hamas from Gaza, Israeli airstrikes in 25 days have killed more children in Gaza than in the past 23 years: 8,796 Palestinians killed, 3,648 of whom were children, and 1,700 women, according to United Nations sources. "The assassination and mutilation of children, the abduction of children, attacks on hospitals and schools, as well as the denial of humanitarian access, constitute serious violations of children's rights. The situation in the Gaza Strip is becoming increasingly troubling for our collective conscience. The child mortality and injury rates are simply alarming", says Adele Khodr, Regional Director of UNICEF for the Middle East and North Africa. Why should Palestinian children be held accountable for the assassinations committed by the armed wing of Hamas, which is invoked by Israel to justify the destruction of Gaza? For what reason are these children killed, injured, and treated so cruelly? Has the death of young children as victims of Israeli offensives in Gaza contributed to the security of the State of Israel in the past? Otto Olhendorf, one of the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen, admitted during the Nuremberg trials to executing 90,000 people, mainly Jews, in Ukraine, without any military necessity, and not sparing children. Justifying the execution of children, Ohlendorf stated, "I believe it is very simple to explain if one starts from the fact that this order was not only trying to ensure temporary security but permanent security, and for this reason, these children would grow up and, their parents having been killed, they would undoubtedly pose as much of a threat as their parents did." President Isaac Herzog declared on October 9, "Hamas has built an infernal machine at our doorstep. The entire population of Gaza is responsible. It is not true to say that civilians are not involved. This is absolutely not true. They could have risen against this malevolent regime." Are the children accomplices? Out of a population of 2.3 million inhabitants, the Gaza Strip has one million children and adolescents. How many orphans will it take for us to recognize that the Israeli military intervention is an act of genocide? Will we have to inscribe at the entrance to the Gaza Strip tomorrow, "Do not shoot the orphans," as the sign placed on the Long Binh orphanage in Vietnam by the U.S. military, to which the poet and veteran Doug Rawlings dedicated a bitter poem ("Please don't shoot the orphans"). According to a report by the international children's rights organization Save The Children, published in June 2022, under the telling title "Trapped", four out of five children in Gaza suffer from depression and anxiety. How will the young witnesses of these massacres affecting their families and neighborhoods fare in the future? Will the surviving children of Gaza resign themselves? Or will a new monster not emerge from the tears, ashes, and ruins of Gaza? This monster mentioned by Friedrich Nietzsche in his work "Beyond Good and Evil": "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process, he does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you". Patrick Howlett-Martin Diplomat. His latest work: "Profaned Memory: Colonial Plunder (I), Nazi Plunder (II), The Theft of Cultural Heritage, and the Question of its Restitution," 700 pages, L'Harmattan, Paris, October 2023