Vijay Prashad, the Indian historian and commentator who runs the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, wrote article on Jan. 3 published by Consortium News “Tears of Our Children,” documenting the overwhelming genocide and menticide against children in Gaza, and adding that similarly horrifying conditions also exist in Sudan, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The article was based on his Jan. 2 work produced in Tricontinental, the website of his institute.
Prashad writes: “A scientific study from 2017 found that deep childhood traumas can mark a person both physically and psychologically. Trauma reroutes children’s developing nervous systems, causing them to be highly alert and anxious even decades later.”
He describes that this slaughter in Gaza is not new: He recalls that in 2014 Israel bombed Gazan children playing soccer on the beach, then banned Israeli human rights groups from naming 150 Gazan children killed that year, which spurred British poet Michael Rosen to write the poem “Don’t Mention the Children,” included in Prashad’s article. Prashad also points to the December 2024 fact sheet from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) that the world’s 100 largest arms-producing and military services companies increased their combined arms revenues by 4.2% in 2023, reaching a staggering $632 billion. He adds: “Billions for warmongers, but nothing for children who are born into war zones.”
Prashad concludes with the following harrowing report:
“In September 2024, the Palestinian Ministry of Health released an updated list of the names of Palestinians killed in the U.S.-Israeli genocide from October 2023 to August 2024. On that list are 710 newborns whose ages are listed as zero. Many of them had only just been named.
