The war on children
When I was a child I was obsessed with ‘the’ war. The war to end all wars.
My father was Polish. In the war he had lost everything. He was 17 when it all started. By the end, 5 long years later, he had been interned and escaped from a camp, he had family sent to the gulag, he had joined the army in exile. He had seen more horror, experienced more fear, and lost so very very much. His father, his brother, cousins, his friends, his family home, his country, his youth, all gone. What he had gained was a new fierce, fundamental understanding for peace.
My dad spoke 8 languages fluently. Fluently to the point where people thought him a native wherever he went. He was native Frency, native Italian, native Spanish, native Czech, even like a native Russian, even like a native German. I think this gave him the greatest gift of empathy. Of wanting good, and teaching me tolerance, forgiveness. During the war he became a special agent, a SOE operative. He was involved in the Polish Resistance, in broadcasting on the BBC World Service, and eventually in liberating some of the concentration camps. The man I knew spoke little, if ever, about the war. Yet the war was part of who I was. The war and the homeland lost, as if inherited trauma, displacement itself my heritage.
My father was brought up Catholic. My uncle, a university friend of Pope John Paul II, sat on the Papal Council. Much of my childhood was spent growing up in the church. A community, a way of life. Growing up around him, I found that my father however had two ‘faiths’, one the church, a professed ‘goodness’, and the other was his firm belief in Europe, an institution, a ‘belonging’ that brought with it peace and collaboration, the antithesis to nationalism and therefore, war. He believed in peace like a religion.
As an adult I now question my obsession with the war. ‘THE’ war, as we called it. As if there were no other. However then, as an 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 year old I returned to this again and again. I became an expert in the field. I read everything I could find. Stories, novels in particular, the human descriptive of horror and survival. The horrors of the holocaust. The Warsaw Ghetto, the uprising, the brave, resourceful, inspiring characters of legend. The mechanics of a machine of evil, of murder. I was a child. In some senses this was simple good versus bad. Yet, I wanted to understand more ; where could this horror come from, what was society's role in this, my fathers role, my uncle's role, the war office, the governments in exile. I asked relentlessly, how? How could these events happen.
How could the world watch as millions were murdered. How? How was it allowed? How did the ‘grown-ups’ not stop this? How, when this happened in neighbourhoods, in communities. There were clerics, there were school teachers, there were toy makers. A ghetto in the middle of a busy city. How?
My father would not talk about the war, so I would wait. Late nights, when, after a few glasses of wine, he would sometimes, rarely, finally talk to me. And I fed on these tidbits of information.
And every time I would return to the same question. How? How could people allow this to happen. How could such evil exist in the world? And he would tell me that it was because at the time people didn't really know, that they didn't know the full extent, at the time they didn’t have the news like we did, they didn’t have TV’s, they didn’t see the camps, the ovens. And I partly believed him.
The alternative truth, the reality I guess, is what we are living today, is what I have discovered as an adult.
Then, as now, walls around enclaves, around ghettos, are built by people. Paperwork is signed by people. Ammunition is manufactured by people. Uniforms are sewn by people. Planes are flown by people. Armies are fed by people. The software that guides the missiles that strike the hospital, the school, the refugee camp is made by people. Bombs are dropped by people. People, the fabric of our communities. People like you and me. It is us that is doing the killing.
This morning I watch @Wizardbisan, one of the many young journalists in Gaza, who has taken to her phone, and in her candid honesty, her dignity, her fear, her exhaustion as she bears witness yet again to the horrors beyond horrors happening now, this minute in Gaza. This is not a book, a film. This is not history. This is NOW. This moment, as I type. And I feel her fear, her exhaustion. I watch a video of a child crying, describing how the Israeli army pulled her grandad, her uncle and then her father out of a line as they crossed a checkpoint. They took her clothes, her food, her support. Her dad. I watch a mother cradling her dead baby, limp, lifeless. I see children, alone, covered in dust and blood and shaking in fear. The last doctor, alone in Al Shifa hospital begging for help as patients die around him. And more. And more. Horrors upon horrors that defy understanding. I will fall asleep thinking of these people. I will wake up wondering if they survived the night.
There is no saying that we ‘didn’t know’.
I see that so many of my friends, my ‘internet contacts’ have liked Bisan’s post. Business colleagues. Yet - there is silence. I also follow their feeds. We are celebrating Christmas, sharing a joke. And I wonder, are we not seeing this? This horror? Is it like clickbait? Are we immune? Why, why are we so afraid to speak out? And whilst we click ‘like’ on the mundane, the banal, children are being massacred. Now genocide been televised. It is in our phones. It is happening in our very hands.
Today I work in the Toy Industry. And my professional life, like that of this industry, is built on the smiles, happiness, laughter and education of children. Each and everyone of us in this industry has crafted a life around these little people, our future. We educate, we entertain. We create story lines and fantasies, teddy bears and Barbies, Lego construction sets and super hero action movies. For children, all children, the world over. Children of all languages and creeds, this is what we do it for. Or is it?
If you watch these children of Gaza, the ones that are still alive, you will see that they no longer have their toys, any toys. Not one child is holding a toy. Occasional images will show toys crooked, covered in dust, half hidden amongst the rubble, the flashes of brightly coloured remnants of the Disney princess, the Spiderman blanket, the Ty bear, the toy pushchair. Survival and fear is what the children hold now.
As the United Nations have said - this war, this horrific, violent, despicable, carpet bombing destruction of Gaza is a war against children.
So far 7000 children have been killed. 10s of thousands have life-changing injuries. Hundreds have been operated without anaesthesia. Hundreds are orphans. More than half a million are homeless. All are traumatised. The greatest proportion of victims are under the age of 14.
We cannot, we must not be silent.
As an industry that champions children we have to stand up and be counted. We need to call for a permanent ceasefire. We need to find our voice. Lest when our children ask us, ‘how could it happen?’ how?, we have to shrug - because we can no longer say that we didn’t know. So we will have to say we didn’t care. Or that it was too difficult. Or, do we say, that we had to kill these children, these babies, you see they were hiding terrorists. Or maybe we will say that they didn’t matter, they had the wrong colour skin, or worshipped the wrong god. Is that what you will say?
Today I am my father’s age. And my child asks me why? How? How could it be happening? And I, like my father, do not know what to say. But I urge him to have a voice. I want to protect him from the horrors, but I need him, fiercely, to learn to speak up, to speak out. To believe in peace like it is the new religion. For it is only by doing this that we can find our humanity.
I would urge you all to read the open letters from Medicins Sans Frontieres: https://www.msf.org/letter-gaza-un-security-council
And if you would be willing, to sign the open letter below: