Since 1954, it is important, it is due, it is our responsibilitycelebrating children all over the world. November 20th is the occasion to recall that children have rights, that children have dreams and that the future for a better humanity rely on them.
But it is also the occasion to recall that those rights are regularly trampled, that children are the most vulnerable, the most suffering creatures, that they are the first to pay the price in critical times and in conflict.
It might not look appropriate ranking the tragedies based on gloomy figures of children killed, but what we are witnessing unfolding in Gaza since October 7th is the summit of cruelty or the abyss of humanity. Al Jazeera has commemorated this day as the World Children’s Tragedy. More than 5,500 children were killed by Israeli deliberate attacks. Not to count all those innumerable children that lost their mothers, their father, their siblings, their entire families. What their life will be, if ever there will survive? And the end of this massacre is not yet on sight. The #Children_of_Gaza, along with the adults, the elders, the medical staff, the journalists, all those having survived so far, are roaming like zombies, waiting for their turn, on the rubbles of the most horrible massacre even committed by Israelis in the occupied Palestinian territories since the Naqba in 1948.
Nothing more than this poem can tell the unthinkable situation the #Children_of_Gaza are under:
Write my name on my leg, Mama
Use the black permanent marker
With the ink that doesn’t bleed
If it gets wet, the one that doesn’t melt
If it’s exposed to heat
Write my name on my leg, Mama
Make the lines thick and clear
Add your special flourishes
So I can take comfort in seeing
My mama’s handwriting when I go to sleep
Write my name on my leg, Mama
And on the legs of my sisters and brothers
This way we will belong together
This way we will be known
As your children
Write my name on my leg, Mama
And please write your name
And Baba’s name on your legs, too
So we will be remembered
As a family
Write my name on my leg, Mama
Don’t add any numbers
Like when I was born or the address of our home
I don’t want the world to list me as a number
I have a name and I am not a number
Write my name on my leg, Mama
When the bomb hits our house
When the walls crush our skulls and bones
Our legs will tell our story, how
There was nowhere for us to run
By Zeina Azzam