By Amin Abbas
October 16 2023 – 7:30pm
In 2007, a few of my fellow Australian Palestinians and I wanted to turn our helplessness towards helping the children of Palestine into action. I lead this effort, and late that year the Australian Foundation for Palestinian Children, Olive Kids was born, essentially my third child.
Our 100 per cent volunteering organisation aided with Australians generosity helped thousands of children, primarily in Gaza. Al-Amal institute for the orphans – Amal means hope in Arabic – became a leading partner of ours, and the majority of the 400 children residing at the orphanage rely on Olive Kids, sponsored and supported by Australians.
In an ambitious undertaking in 2017 we raised half a million dollars and built a dedicated wing for the youngest orphans. In a short few days last week, Israeli strikes levelled entire neighbourhoods, including Rimal, where Al-Amal is located. The orphanage was severely damaged, and its children evacuated with 10 reported injured.
Israel’s assault has also targeted the Islamic University of Gaza, where Olive Kids facilitates a scholarship program for 14 nursing students. We are concerned about the safety of students and staff and have been unable to contact them.
Staff at Al-Awda hospital – one of 11 in the northern Gaza Strip – were pleading for us to help them put pressure on the Israeli government to rescind the evacuation mandate to move half of Gaza’s population to the south. As they care for injured patients and deliver babies, they are also being forced to deal with a health catastrophe.
Smoke rises after Israeli warplanes targeted the Palestine tower in Gaza City earlier this month. Picture AAP
The work of all NGOs has been crippled, not just ours, but for us however this is far more personal. Our partners became family, the kids are our children and getting their daily goodbyes is heartbreaking. We feel under attack too.
In an interview with Sky News, after Israel cut the power to 2.3 million people in Gaza, Israel’s former prime minister Naftali Bennett was asked “what about those in hospitals who are on life support and babies in incubators?”.
Bennett exploded. “Are you seriously going to keep asking me about Palestinian civilians? What is wrong with you? Have you not seen what’s happened? We’re fighting Nazis.”
In the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 raid, every politician and media outlet around the world, including Australia, are focused on Hamas crimes, chief among them the monstrous decapitation of babies in kibbutz Kfar Aza. Also a central theme in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s briefing with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, where he released photos of three dead babies – though not any beheaded ones.
Whilst this theme continued, the Israeli government declined to confirm that any decapitations were in fact committed. Hamas may indeed have committed war crimes on October 7, and should be investigated and held to account. Yet for decades, and as I write, Israel has been committing war crimes, documented and verified by countless international human rights organisations.
This week alone, Israel used white phosphorus, indiscriminate bombing of residential areas including shelters, hospitals and schools and infrastructure, and as if this wasn’t enough collective punishment for the population of Gaza, it went further by cutting power supply, water and the internet, the latter to ensure a media blackout surrounding their military’s conduct. Over 700 Palestinian children have been killed in this media black hole at the time of writing.
From Belgium in World War I to Kuwait in 1990, stories of the gruesome slaughter of babies have been used to aid war propaganda and justify total war. We now know that the story of the 40 decapitated babies is fabricated propaganda, though as is so often the case the lie resonates widely while the correction struggles to be heard.
Journalists and politicians in Australia are using such stories and accounts to dehumanise Palestinians and frame Hamas and by extension Palestinians as savages thirsty for blood, as opposed to oppressed people living under siege in Gaza for 75 years.
They are unwilling to question Israel’s conduct in relation to Gaza, and when Israeli leaders themselves are talking about revenge and waging total war on “human animals“, unverified and lurid claims about Palestinian atrocities are used to justify counter-atrocities and campaigns of ethnic cleansing, all of it taking place in a space to which journalists have long struggled in vain to achieve unfettered access.
Calls for an immediate end to the violence and the application of international law must be heeded if this unfolding catastrophe is to be averted. I urge the Australian government to demand an end to Israel’s indiscriminate onslaught on civilians and children. Every decent human being must stand up for the protection and safety of children, and I appeal for all Australians to do so. Palestinian children are just as precious and deserving of protection as every other child everywhere.
- Amin Abbas is a diaspora Palestinian and founding board member of the Australian Foundation for Palestinian Children, Olive Kids.