Gaza’s children bear the hidden cost of war

As the bombs fall into Gaza, the deepest wounds are carved into the minds of their children – fear, anger and loss shaping the future, the author John Frew.

The war against children does not end with death. In their minds.

Invisible losses

While the world leaders discuss the fire and redrawing maps, the most devastating consequences of the Gaza War are not in rubble, but in children who survived. According to the United Nations, children 40 percent All losses in the current attack. Until the middle of 2024, Save children It is estimated that 14,000 were killed, 21,000 were missing and more than 17,000 were orphaned or left alone on an active war bone.

These numbers are amazing. However, they do not measure what cannot be counted: trauma burned into the minds of the survivors. Gazza is not just to lose their lives. It loses the future.

Even before this last rise, a study in 2020 53.5 percent Palestinian children experienced post -traumatic stress disorder (TSSB). Once it has been bombing, siege, hunger and displacement for months, this figure can only be higher. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that a child is untouched.

What does a child fight against a child’s brain

Childhood trauma is not only emotional; Neurological. Dr. Bruce PerryOne of the world’s experts in developmental trauma, showed Children who are raised in fear literally develop different brains.

• The prefrontal cortex shrinks, weakens reasoning, empathy and impulse control.
• The amygdala expands, prepares the brain for fear, insecurity and aggression.
• The hippocampus is broken, damaging memory and learning.
• Stress systems are respected, creating chronic anxiety, depression and volatility.

In short, war children re -wraps for survival, not for reflection or connection.

This is not just a humanitarian concern. This is political. Traumatized children are not only patients tomorrow. The actors of tomorrow in the social and political theater they inherited.

Psychological Infrastructure of Terrorism

Terrorism reproduces itself not only through ideology, but through untreated trauma. An orphan, malnutrition, abused and hunted child will not emerge as a peaceful adult. For them Hamas It may seem not as a terrorist group, but as the only power that offers a sense of honor, revenge and belonging.

Israel’s aim of eliminating Hamas with an overwhelming force is to defeat itself in this light. You can’t bomb a trauma from a child. You can only bury it deeper. Every strike, which collapses a building, also collapses the fragile pier of a child’s confidence in the possibility of peace.

This is not security. Anger is mass production.

Australia’s silence and double standards

Here is the place where Australian leaders cannot hide. Prime minister Anthony Arbanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong It was quick to condemn Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Nevertheless, the Israeli bombs remain silent as they kill thousands of Palestinian children. They hurry to sanction Moscow, but they refuse to cut military or trade ties with Israel. They advocate an an international order based on rules ,, but look away when these rules are violated by an ally.

In the United Nations, the Arnave’s government refrained or voted against decisions calling for ignitions, accountability and human protection. While the Ghazan children die of hunger, our leaders say “anxiety olan, which is only a diplomatic veil for inertia.

This hypocrisy does not disappear in the world. We send weapons and help to the Ukrainians. We send silence to the Palestinians. A child deserves to protect the set; The other, apparently, can be buried under the rubble.

Generation

The abuse of a single child is rightly called a crime against humanity. So, what do we call the systemic destruction of a generation? It is not just a persecution to condemn children to grow in the environment of permanent fear, deprivation and grief. It is the insemination of infinite war.

Logic is ruthless but simple: If you raise rubble children, don’t be surprised when they turn into anger.

And still does not end with those who reduce the bombs or order the siege. It also falls to governments that provide, arms and excuses. Albanian and Wong cannot escape this responsibility. Nor the people minister. Acting like neutrality is a criminal partner.

Choosing the next section

History is full of consequences of ignoring child trauma. The child soldiers of Sierra Leone, the orphans of Afghanistan, were expropriated by Rwanda – each of these stories warns us about what will happen when the psychological cost of the war is ignored.

Gaza’s children are not collateral damage. They are the next episode. It depends on whether this section is written in the language of revenge or reconciliation, now it depends on the elections: whether the world continues to establish war or finally decides to rebuild hope.

Because a fact is inevitable: children cannot heal in rubble.

If Albanian and Wong cannot find their voices for the children of Gaza, they will record the silence of history with the rubble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw-adhjag98

For students with behavioral disorders and opposition discomfort, John Frew has been working in education for almost 50 years, including the foundation manager in a secondary school.

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