Ongoing Genocide: Children’s silence as a manifesto
By Alan Clements
Over half a million children in Gaza now wish for death. More than 25,000 have already been killed.
This isn’t a statistic—it’s a scream,
a broken wail swallowed by rubble
and broadcast through the silence of complicit leaders.
Not a metaphor.
Not a headline.
Not hyperbole.
Children.
Not insurgents.
Not terrorists.
Not collateral damage.
Just children.
Barefoot dreamers trapped under the crushing boots of history, eyes wide with fear,
lungs choked with smoke, futures obliterated by blockades and bombs.
Imagine the psyche of those who survive. Every second, a new wave of terror.
Each breath, a gasp through air thick with trauma.
Every sound a bomb.
Every shadow a trigger.
Their small bodies trembling.
Their fragile spirits splintered.
Put yourself—leaders of the free world—into their minds, into their bodies—
even for a moment.
Feel the suffocating fear.
Taste the metallic despair.
And then return to your fetish for extraction and empire, for greed disguised as strategy,
for power cloaked in humanitarian pretense.
A study by the Community Training Centre for Crisis Management (CTCCM),
backed by the War Child Alliance, reveals
that of Gaza’s approximately 530,000 children, 96%—over half a million—
live in perpetual fear of death.
Nearly 260,000—49%—wish to die.
(Source: Palestine Chronicle.)
Not out of recklessness.
Not because they are criminals.
Because life has become an unlivable siege.
What do you say to a world
where food convoys are turned into fireballs, where humanitarian aid is a mirage—bombed before it arrives,
where doctors operate with no morphine, no water, no light—
and then are targeted mid-surgery?
Where tents become ash, children become numbers,
and hospitals are no longer sanctuaries, but coordinates?
What do you say to a world where a quarter million children pray not for toys or peace,
but for death—because life is a never-ending abattoir wrapped in the flag of democracy?
This isn’t a siege—
it’s a sacrificial spectacle.
A circus of terror.
A ritual of ruin.
A livestreamed genocide, with missile breaks and drone angles—
evil commercialized into a Netflix binge series
broadcast in every language except love.
And those watching—eating,
scrolling, sipping, posting—
they know.
We all know.
And still it plays.
Aid doesn’t reach them.
But our indifference does.
Our silence.
Our votes.
Our taxes.
Our headlines.
And they carry it. In their stomachs, in their skin, in their screamless throats.
There’s no silence here. None.
This is an indictment.
This is on you—politicians, generals, arms dealers, brokers of war draped in flags,
shaking hands while children bleed. You, who tally profits while
Gaza’s children count the nights they’ve survived.
The United States supplies 69%
of Israel’s weapons.
Germany sends 30%.
Italy contributes the rest.
(Source: Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute.)
Every missile you ship, every rifle you trade, is a signature on a child’s death certificate.
Your policies live in the haunted eyes of orphans, your profits carved into their graves.
Over a quarter of a million children wish to die.
25,000 have already been reduced to ash and memory.
And if you don’t hear it—
if you don’t see it—
if you choose not to feel it,
then their blood stains your hands,
drips from your contracts,
your budgets, your silence.
And what is this, if not Wetiko?
A cannibal spirit,
not of bone and flesh but
of greed and grind,
of hunger insatiable,
devouring all.
It whispers:
“Take more. Hoard more. Be more.
Your emptiness is power.”
But we’ve seen it before, haven’t we?
In the folds of the Dharma,
in the spinning wheel of samsara.
The Buddha named it:
Tanhā—craving that drinks
the ocean and still thirsts.
Lobha—greed that stacks
gold upon skulls.
Mohā—delusion so thick,
it mistakes illusion
for enlightenment.
Wetiko thrives on division,
on the false borders of
“yours” and “mine.”
It blinds us to the truth of interbeing:
Gaia doesn’t bleed without
us bleeding too.
This isn’t just Gaza’s story.
It’s ours—yours, mine, all of us.
The spirit of Wetiko feeds on war,
profits from suffering, and seeds despair.
But the Dharma replies:
“Your clinging binds you.
Your craving blinds you.
Your greed grinds you into dust.”
The children of Gaza, in their unbearable silence,
stand as witnesses—as the Dharma itself.
Not one written in ink,
but in rubble, in blood,
in vanished schools.
Their silence is louder than bombs.
Their absence more devastating
than any headline.
So I ask you:
Will you lead with courage
or collapse into complicity?
Will you choose life, or let
death remain your policy?
Because the antidote to Wetiko exists.
It is Ahimsā—nonviolence.
It is Mettā—loving-kindness.
It is Karunā—compassion.
It is the revolution of the heart
that the Buddha taught
and the children of Gaza cry for.
Let this truth be clear and shattering:
Wetiko thrives in shadows,
but the Dharma lights the path.
Wetiko divides,
but the Buddha revealed
the interwoven soul of humanity.
And the children of Gaza?
They are not defeated.
Even in silence,
their suffering is a mandate,
a demand for justice,
a prayer for us to awaken.
Over a quarter of a million children wish to die.
25,000 have been silenced forever.
And whether they live to see another dawn,
their silence will speak louder than
your rationalisations ever could.
Tanhā. Lobha. Mohā.
We see you.
Wetiko—
We name you.
And in the naming,
your power fades.
Alan Clements – AlanClements.com
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