These Palestinian Children In Gaza Held Their Own Conference To Ask The World To Protect Them
“We want to live. We want peace. We want to judge the killers of children. We want medicine, food and education. And we want to live as the other children live.”
A group of Palestinian children have organized their own press conference outside Gaza’s biggest hospital to call on the world to protect them.
Video footage shared on social media showed children of different ages, including one sitting on a hospital bed, standing in a line with a few parents outside Al-Shifa hospital.
A boy holding a piece of paper then reads out a statement, first in Arabic and then in English, from a makeshift podium made of what appears to be a wooden desk with microphones on top.
“Since the 7th of Ocober, we’ve faced extermination, killing, bombing falling over our heads,” he begins. “All of this in front of the world.”
“They lied to the world that they killed the fighters, but they killed people of Gaza, their dreams and their futures,” he said, adding that the children of Gaza have run out of their hopes and wants.
He said they had gone to Al-Shifa hospital to be safe from bombing but ran into more death when Israel bombed the hospital.
“The occupation is starving us. We don’t find water, food, and we drink from the unusable water,” he said.
“We come now to shout and invite you to protect us,” he said. “We want to live. We want peace. We want to judge the killers of children. We want medicine, food and education. And we want to live as the other children live.”
Since Israel declared war on Hamas after it launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, more than 4,000 children have been killed in Gaza by Israel’s airstrikes.
That’s about 40% of the more than 10,000 people who have been killed in Gaza and equates to one child being killed every 15 minutes, according to Save the Children.
About half of Gaza population of 2.2 million is under the age of 18, according to the United Nations.
