It is always notable what gains attention and creates change, and what gets ignored. It is sometimes an academic exercise, but more often a source of sadness. But last week the clear and disgusting minimising of the experience of Palestinian children and babies was utterly enraging. Some of us are old enough to remember the impact of a BBC broadcast from Ethiopia which showed starving babies. The civic world, and especially the arts, moved to demand change and in response to their ineffectuality exposed them by making music, holding concerts and raising millions. It changed the face of famine relief, for a time. No such response was heard last week. In more modern times the response of the European Union to alleged FIFA corruption and misconduct is notable. Raging they are. And they are going to take action you know. But how dare you mention the children of Palestine when such pressing matters are at stake! The United Nations could hardly be accused of kneejerk or premature deliberation on the question of whether Israel has deliberately targeted children. What became patently obvious in the days and weeks following the new era of genocidal actions against the Palestinian people day after night, has taken almost three years to official report. But the findings are heart stopping, breath taking and soul destroying. The findings include hard evidence that the Israeli state has a policy to wipe out the children and babies of Gaza so that the population is eliminated. They have deliberately targeted them in bombings, shootings, maimings and with starvation. I beg you to open up the coherent report and understand the enormity of what is recorded, including torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, including sexual and gender-based violence, against Palestinian children. It outlines the deliberate desecration of maternal healthcare centres, schools, and all infrastructure which might support a child. It outlines the physical and abhorrent deliberate injuries a generation of children now live with, and importantly it engages with the impact of the sustained psychological injuries of this generation who, if they survive at all, will live with unparalleled trauma. And it tells us that it is far from over. And when you finish reading it, ask why it has not stopped the clocks. The supine response from the European Union, the British and Irish governments is completely sickening at this stage. While government parties in Dublin could arrange urgent meetings about petrol prices, there was a bare shimmer of disapproval regarding babies shot in the head while breastfeeding. In London, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and original signatory of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, are convulsed with whether Andy Burnham’s back t-shirts will be ironed in London or Manchester when he becomes PM, but thousands of deliberately maimed children without limbs will go unnoticed. And in Brussels, while hand wringing over every bomb falling on Kiev is the order of the day, there is zero response to an Israeli government that has made the deliberate desolation of neo-natal incubators for the next generation. Of course, there are artists who lead from the front on this – some to great personal cost – not least Irish artists like Lankum, Fontaines DC, Frances Black and our heroes from Belfast, Kneecap and Lola Pettigrew. It is no coincidence that their voices haven't been promoted or amplified by mainstream actors. And that deafening silence is complicity in children’s genocide.
