The complete collapse of childhood in Gaza : Shared by Anis Salem

Samir Zaqout, 11, lost his leg and hand
in an airstrike that hit their house.
Omar Ashtaw/apaimages via Reuters

The complete collapse of childhood in Gaza

By Aan Chaudhry – Analyst News
Click here for the article

Summary
Psychotherapist Teresa Bailey, a veteran child mental-health specialist and founding member of the U.K. Palestine Mental Health Network, describes Gaza as a place where “every child needs trauma care,” where infants die in incubators and where the ordinary life of play and safety has been replaced by war. Bailey calls the devastation “a war on babies,” the deliberate destruction of a generation before it can grow up.

The article reports that 1.1 million children in Gaza now require mental-health support, a situation UNICEF says is unprecedented. More than 50,000 children have been killed or injured since October 2023, and 132,000 under-fives face acute malnutrition. UNICEF estimates that 28 children a day are killed and that Gaza now has the world’s highest per-capita number of child amputees. Hospitals lack power, formula, and staff; premature infants die unattended.

Bailey contrasts Gaza’s unending trauma with PTSD, noting there is no “post” in Gaza’s stress disorder — the danger never ceases. Continuous bombardment, she says, rewires children’s brains, trapping them in survival mode and blocking normal cognitive and emotional development. Children’s play mimics war; they dig graves, pretend to die, and ask wrenching questions such as “Do Israeli pilots who bomb children have children?”

About 40,000 children have lost one or both parents; many arrive at hospitals labeled “WCNSF” — Wounded Child, No Surviving Family. Even those with parents live without safety or stability. Schools and playgrounds are gone, with 785,000 students deprived of education and 90 percent of school buildings destroyed or damaged. Scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian calls this process “unchilding” — the eviction of children from childhood under settler-colonial rule.

Bailey urges reflection and action: to recognize Palestinian children as children like any others, to learn from works by Ilan Pappé and Dr. Samah Jabr, and to support groups such as Defence for Children International-Palestine and the Palestine Trauma Centre. The piece ends invoking Khaled Juma’s 2014 poem, longing for the return of noisy, mischievous children — a reminder that until safety and play are restored, the very concept of childhood in Gaza has collapsed.

Quotes

• “This is an outright ‘war on babies’ — the methodical destruction of a generation before it can grow up.” – Teresa Bailey

• “There’s nowhere else in the world where UNICEF has ever said that every single child needs mental-health support.” – James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson

• “There’s no point in sending in a mental-health professional while the shooter is still in the building … In Gaza, the perpetrator is never removed. The trauma never stops.” – Teresa Bailey

• “Two of the greatest fears of every small child are abandonment and obliteration. In Gaza, these fears are the daily gamble.” – Teresa Bailey

• “The authorized eviction of children from childhood.” – Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

---