Children are magical. They arrive innocent and new, a chance for humanity to have a fresh start. An ordinary result of human biology and the propagation of the species. Nothing quite prepares you for the miracle of that moment. I remember meeting the eyes of every one of the four children I birthed. I remember witnessing their existence and entering into an immediate unbreakable contract of love and protection. It wasn’t just a child born that day it was also the day I became a fierce mother.
It is our duty as adults to nurture our children. To love and protect. To deliver them to a world with a future. But not just our children. All children. The children of the world are all our children. You don’t need to meet a child to hold them. Their eyes look beyond their parents to us all.
Yet we fail. As adults we continue to betray these children. Our contracts lay dusty and broken on the floor alongside discarded toys and promises that this will be different. It’s not. Circumstance makes perpetrators of us all. We are by our mere existence, complicit in the failure to deliver our, all children, a future free of poverty, of war, of sexual abuse, of climate catastrophe.
The story of our parenthood is the same as the story that came before us. We are the result of traumatised children having children continuing not just our gene pool but the unbroken legacy of trauma and pain. Every generation of adults has the opportunity to break the chain. Every generation fails. How do we as a world of fierce mothers and fathers transform our pain into protection? Our greed into good? Our hate into peace?
Right now over 1.2 billion children live in poverty. A recent study in Australia reported one in six Australian women and one in nine men have been sexually abused by the age of 15. Globally, one in seven 10–19-year-olds experience a mental disorder. Depression, anxiety and behavioural disorders are among the leading causes of illness and disability among adolescents. Our children are being born into a world with an uncertain future. 90% of the diseases resulting from the climate crisis are likely to affect children under the age of five. They watch adults continue along the path that is authoring their demise.
Right now in Gaza children are being killed. The region has a population that is so young that 40% of its residents are under the age of 15. And 40% of those who have been killed in the siege of Palestine are children. Little kids. Babies. Toddlers. Teenagers. Children who arrived innocent to this ancient conflict, but became part of the cost of ‘retaliation’ for a crime they did not commit. A consequence of a world they did not understand. Choices they never got to make. At the time of writing this, almost 4,000 Palestinian children have been killed. They continue to be killed at over 100 a day. Tiny bodies whose limbs protrude from the rubble of the homes where they once played, pay the price for the failure of us all. The failure to adult. The failure to protect. The failure to understand peace. The failure to resolve our conflicts in any other way except with more conflict.
Gaza is like a walled-in primary school under siege. Millions of children trapped in a nightmare they can’t escape. And those children who survive? What happens to them? They are a generation that will live with trauma as their parent. Their trauma as the hand on their shoulder that leads them to radicalisation and the continuation of a brutal pathway that will hurt, kill and betray future children.
Hamas currently have 240 Israeli hostages, of them around 30 are children. Many who do not know why they are captive. All these children hurt and traumatised and killed because of the anger and the vengeance of old men. They are the human cost.
No matter where you stand on this assault on Gaza, whether with Palestine, or with Israel, dig into your most primal duty and stand with the children. All children.
Killing children is wrong. It is the worst crime of humanity. And their blood is on all our hands.
Until children stop being murdered, none of our hands will ever be clean.
Ceasefire now.
– Mandy Nolan
Spitting a grievance salad of unrelated problems is not compelling, it’s winging. It adds nothing.
Did you miss that all children are precious, and we should do everything to protect them? Maybe you don’t agree?
Mine are more precious than all others, closely followed by my nieces and nephews. Yours maybe on the list somewhere. Not sure.
“90% of the diseases resulting from the climate crisis are likely to affect children under the age of five”
Likely, maybe or will? If a child under 5 has a terminal illness, when do you tell them?
Most want for a better planet, but the climate alarmism in this article and everywhere else of late is certainly not helping the mental disorders of young people you mention.
BTW on this assault on Gaza – I stand with the peaceful humans caught up in this madness.
Is “diseases resulting from the climate crisis” the new term for gain of function research?
Would anybody question any of this concern for children and all civilians? Just parroting “ceasefire now!” is unhelpful. It is just taking another opportunity to use this platform to self righteously push Greens policy and grandstand – just like the histrionics of the Greens filing out of the Senate.
Does anyone believe it wouldn’t be great if both sides just stopped fighting? Does anyone believe a complete ceasefire would solve a decades old issue and no violence would ever again ensue? How can you make demands and not take a side?
There have been calls for a “pause” in the action to allow in aid and medical care. When this was discussed at length on Qanda, a panellist from Médecins Sans Frontières Australia questioned the sense in allowing groups like MSF a chance to go in and patch up the civilians, just so the bombardment could start all over again.
Carrying on about the stance of the Australian Government is just opportunistic. It won’t make one iota of difference to the outcome. The Australian population has plenty of citizens from both sides – it’s much more appropriate for the Government to support both and not forment division and unrest. There are few right answers here.
Years and years of not listening to Israel about them not being safe while the world tolerates them constantly being threatened with death by various arab neighbours.
That’s why we have blood on our hands.
It will end only when the job is done – when hamas is destroyed.
Expecting Israel to stop is taking sides against Israel’s children.
Instead call on Egypt, Jordan and the UN to stop using the Gazan children as human shields to try to stop Israel making itself safe – and to let them out to refugee camps in Egypt (and Jordan maybe) while Israel does what needs to be done to wipe out the terrorists that remain.
That’s how to look after all of the children involved
Or Israel is destroyed, which could very well happen.
Exactly. When Hamas stop firing rockets from beside hospitals and homes, the children will not be killed. When they release the hostages, or are thoroughly eliminated, there will be a ceasefire. The Greens always put the horrendous terrorist attack on October 7th as an afterthought. They have become typical political opportunists; I will never vote for them again.
Surprised you see Gaza as a walled in ‘primary school’. More like a prison where violence is dealt out to innocents in the hope of killing a few perpetrators of evil. Don’t need a Ph D in anything to see that the Israeli response will perpetuate hatred and not bring peace or safety to Israeli.
Does anyone know if Scott Morrison used taxpayer funds for his trip in support of the IDF mass killings?
Mandy Nolan. I one ceasefire was broken by a mob of barbarians slaughtering your family, would you be demanding another ceasefire?
I suspect that is what you would like to see Christian, what has come over you lately?. RUOK.
I don’t want to see Israel destroyed, or they will flood into our country. Currently, Hamas is winning, and if they can continue to do so, eventually the West will force the two-state solution, which is the best outcome for western peoples. If the tide turns, the entire Middle East will intervene, and the west will be flooded with non-whites. If you could articulate where you think I am being inconsistent with my stated values and goals, I can address any confusion directly.
It’s strange how people who call for a ceasefire never mention that if Hamas released all of the hostages and laid down their arms there would be an instant ceasefire. It’s strange how they don’t mention how this started. They don’t mention the 16,000 missiles that Hamas has fired into Israel, at civilian targets, including obviously children, over the last 15 years. They don’t mention that Hamas have vowed to kill every Jew; don’t really want to talk about what happened on October the 7th, or that Hamas have vowed to continue many more attacks like October 7th. They certainly don’t mention that Hamas train all school children, from a young age, that the greatest thing they can achieve in life is to behead a Jew.
How do you seriously think this was going to end? Whats happening now is a tragedy, but what choice do Israel seriously have?
Hamas is the government of Gaza. The most likely outcome at the moment is the west forcing the two-state solution. You are acting as if Israel hasn’t been kidnapping, raping, starving, summarily executing, etc the people in Gaza for decades. History didn’t start 5 weeks ago. Hamas has stated its goals with this conflict, and it isn’t to destroy Israel. Not to say they don’t want Israel destroyed, but this is about goading the IDF into an urban conflict war of attrition, then wait until the rest of the world loses patience and steps in with a peace deal.
Geoffrey. Your asking lefties to seriously think. Next, you will want lefties to see both sides of issues.
Conservatives aren’t doing much thinking at the moment, either.
What a crock – this is not a left/right divide. I’m often assigned the label, “leftie” on these pages. I find the most depressing aspect of this whole issue, the inability of those aligning strongly with either side, to make any concession to the other side of the story.
At a time when social cohesion is most threatened, and the potential for hurt and hate at a high, it’s most important that political leaders seek to unite rather than inflame. The Age/SMH transcribed independent MP and former foreign correspondent, Zoe Daniel’s comments on RN this morning about Thursday’s question time:
“Because weaponising antisemitism, weaponising fear, pain and trauma in many ways, sort of capitalising on conflict for political purposes, is way over the line.
These are life and death issues, this isn’t about who gets elected at the next election. This is about sustaining the stability of our multicultural communities in this country, the highest in the world, at a time of extreme tension, any language that inflames that is wholly irresponsible …
I’m not the only one saying this, security agencies are very clear that language leads to action. Now is not the time to go ‘oh well, I’m going to politicise antisemitism in order to help my political stocks’.”
I reckon that goes for both sides of this horrible dispute.
Israel is currently politicising antisemitism for their benefit. It’s how that country keeps functioning, and in the process, creates more antisemitism.
I don’t know if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me Christian, but, as I wrote above: “ I find the most depressing aspect of this whole issue, the inability of those aligning strongly with either side, to make any concession to the other side of the story”.