Residents of Kibbutz Be’eri say won’t return until ‘crisis of trust’ resolved
Gili Molcho, the secretary of Kibbutz Be’eri, has told Israeli army radio that residents of the community are unlikely to return to their homes near the Gaza border until a “crisis of trust” in the Israeli military is resolved.
“I would say that trust in the state should also be restored, but it will be more difficult,” Molcho said. Kibbutz Be’eri was among the Israeli border communities significantly affected by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
The Israeli government recently announced it was extending the government-funded hotel stays of 27,000 Israelis displaced from near Israel’s borders with Gaza and Lebanon until August 15.
They shouldn't return at all. The Kibbutz were formed in the 50s as human shields to dam in Gaza.
https://thegrayzone.com/2014/08/06/how-israel-uses-its-own-civilians-as-human-shields-while-assaulting-gaza/
Up to 21,000 children missing in chaos of Gaza war, says aid group
Save the Children, in a new statement, said thousands of missing Palestinian children are believed to be trapped beneath the rubble of destroyed homes, detained by Israeli forces, buried in unmarked graves or lost from their families.
“It is nearly impossible to collect and verify information under the current conditions in Gaza,” the British aid group said, “but at least 17,000 children are believed to be unaccompanied and separated and approximately 4,000 children are likely missing under the rubble, with an unknown number also in mass graves”.
The group added, “Others have been forcibly disappeared, including an unknown number detained and forcibly transferred out of Gaza, their whereabouts unknown to their families amidst reports of ill-treatment and torture.”
Save the Children calls for investigation into Gaza’s missing children
Jeremy Stoner, the group’s regional director for the Middle East, is calling for an independent investigation and accountability.
“Families are tortured by the uncertainty of the whereabouts of their loved ones. No parent should have to dig through rubble or mass graves to try and find their child’s body. No child should be alone, unprotected in a war zone. No child should be detained or held hostage,” he said.
“Children who are missing but living are vulnerable, face grave protection risks and must be found. They must be protected and reunited with their families. For the children who have been killed, their deaths must be formally marked, their families informed, burial rites respected, and accountability sought. As many have pointed out, Gaza has become a graveyard for children, with thousands of others missing, their fates unknown. There must be an independent investigation and those responsible must be held accountable. We desperately need a ceasefire to find and support the missing children who have survived, and to prevent more families from being destroyed.”
‘It is a war against children’
Khaled Quzmar, the general director of the child rights organisation Defense for Children International Palestine, has said the atrocities committed against children in Gaza are unprecedented.
“We are working in this field for more than 30 years, but what we are witnessing [in Gaza] is at a level that we did not see during the second world war,” he said. “It is a war against children. Children in Gaza are the big cost of the Israeli genocide in Gaza,” Quzmar said.
“Children are also subjected to war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he stressed, adding: “The fundamental rights of the children in Gaza are violated systematically and continuously by the Israeli army.”
Here’s what aid groups have said on ‘Israel’s war on children’
Nearly half of the more than 37,000 Palestinians Israel has killed in Gaza since October 7 were children.
Earlier this month, the UN added Israel to its “blacklist” of countries harming children in conflict.
On Monday, UK-based Save the Children called for an investigation into Gaza’s missing children, saying that 21,000 children were estimated to be lost, disappeared, detained, buried under the rubble or in mass graves as a result of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Here is what aid groups have said about the plight of children in Gaza:
- The UN called Gaza a graveyard for children in November.
- UNICEF said in May there is no safe place for children in Gaza. In June, UNICEF said about 90 percent of children in Gaza lacked nutrition and faced “severe” threats to their “survival, growth and development”.
- In June, the UN chief said he was “shocked by the unprecedented number of children killed and maimed by the Israeli army and security forces in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem”.
- A UN report published in June verified “8,009 grave violations against 4,360 children” in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
- The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said more than 50,000 children in Gaza require immediate medical treatment for acute malnutrition.
- More than 8,000 youngsters have been diagnosed and treated for acute malnutrition, including 1,600 children with the most dangerous form of the condition, the WHO said in June. At least 31 children have died so far due to malnutrition amid Israeli restrictions on aid supplies.
