The small graves of Gaza and the silence that enables them

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There are some truths too painful to bear, yet too dangerous to ignore. In Gaza, children are being killed — by bombs, by siege, by a world that has decided their lives are expendable. Behind the numbers are tiny bodies, lifeless in rubble. They are dreams shattered before they began, futures erased with the press of a button.

These children are not soldiers. They carried schoolbooks, not rifles. Their only crime was being born in a place where war is a constant, and where even childhood is seen as a threat. And yet, they die by the hundreds with hospitals overwhelmed, schools flattened, and their homes turned into graves. Their parents dig through the ruins with bare hands, searching for a body to bury something, anything, to hold onto in their grief.

But amid this horror, there is another kind of tragedy, which is a big silence from the most powerful voices in the world. Chief among them is the United States of America. As Gaza burns, the US continues to arm, defend and shield Israel at global forums. It vetoes resolutions for ceasefires. It downplays war crimes. It offers not just weapons but political cover. And with each uncritical statement of support, more small graves are dug. This is not neutrality. This is complicity.

The children of Gaza are dying under bombs made in America, fired with impunity by an ally emboldened by silence. The so-called "unshakable support" for Israel has come to mean unshakable disregard for Palestinian lives. Human rights are not divisible. You do not get to mourn one child and ignore another because of the flag they died under.

And now, the shadow of a broader war is no longer looming — it has begun. With Israeli strikes already hitting Iran, what was once framed as "pre-emptive defence" now risks spiralling into a regional conflict far beyond Gaza's borders. The US administration warns against escalation, even as it green-lights the conditions for it. The world sees this contradiction, and so do the grieving families of Gaza. They understand that the line between indifference and endorsement is thin, and America has crossed it long since.

What is the value of diplomacy, of human rights, of law when the most vulnerable can be massacred and the world's superpower defends the machinery that kills them?

This is not about denying Israel's right to exist or to defend itself. This is about denying any state the right to kill children and call it security. This is about recognising that US policy is not abstract — it has blood on it. Every weapon shipment, every veto at the UN, every statement that calls a massacre "regrettable" instead of "unacceptable" sends a message that some lives matter more than others. And yet, the world still watches.

Hope feels thin in Gaza. But if there is to be any hope at all, it must begin with truth. It must begin with the courage to call things by their name. What is happening to Palestinian children is not just war — it is the consequence of decades of political shielding, of selective outrage, of using human lives as pawns in geopolitical games.

If the world has any conscience left, it must act. Not tomorrow. Now. Because every time we look away, another small grave is dug. And history will ask not only who did this, but who let it happen.