THE MINISTRY of Health in the Gaza Strip warned yesterday that the electricity generators in hospitals will cease to work within 48 hours as fuel supplies dry up due to supplies being cut off by Israel.
Power to the seven specialist wards across Gaza treating premature babies will run out of electricity essential to help them breathe and provide critical support when their organs are not developed enough to function without help.
130 premature babies are at risk of dying because of Israel’s blockade on fuel as part of its genocidal war against the Palestinians.
Around 160 women give birth each day in Gaza, according to the UN Population Fund, which estimates that there are 50,000 pregnant women across Gaza which has a population of 2.4 million.
Hospitals in Gaza have faced both the Zionist regime’s air and missile attacks and its blockade of essential medicines, fuel, and water.
Along with premature babies, the World Health Organisation said that around 1,000 Palestinians needing dialysis will also be at risk when the generators stop.
While Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer were quick to insist in Parliament on Monday that they ‘stood by Israel’ babies in Gaza are being deliberately put under a death sentence.
Starmer, who boasts he is a former human rights lawyer, in an interview on LBC went so far as to say that Israel ‘has the right’ to withhold power and water from Gaza.
Human rights for Starmer and the Tories don’t extend to Palestinians or their babies.
Both Starmer and Tory ministers have since started to make pathetic calls for Israel to follow ‘humanitarian’ rules when it comes to bombing and starving the people of Gaza in order to drive them out of the Strip.
In fact, both Starmer and Sunak only slightly modified their language when the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians wrote to both of them warning that it would pursue prosecution of any politician who endorsed and abetted Israeli war crimes in breach of international law.
Alongside the 130 premature babies immediately at risk, Save the Children said on Monday that over one million children are ‘trapped’ in Gaza, and one aid agency has estimated that so far the war to eradicate Palestinians from Gaza has killed at least 2,000 children.
Not just the lives of babies and children in Gaza are treated as of no importance for Israel and the imperialist nations, who are organising and supporting the barbaric war to smash Palestinian resistance to occupation, exactly the same outlook is applied at home.
A major report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published yesterday revealed that over one million children in Britain were living in absolute destitution last year. Destitution is a massive step up from what is normally described as poverty conditions.
Destitution means families can’t afford to feed, clothe or keep children clean and warm, with half of destitute households trying to exist on less than £85 a week – and with a quarter reporting no income at all. One-in-ten destitute households included a working adult.
The effect of destitution, previously thought to have been consigned to the history of the 19th century, has a devastating effect on the health of children, including physical health, malnourishment and mental illness.
JRF’s chief executive said the Tories are ignoring the increase in destitution, saying: ‘The government is not helpless to act; it is choosing not to.’
He added: ‘Turning the tide on destitution is an urgent moral mission, which speaks to our basic humanity as a country.’
Appeals to basic humanity will not move the Tories or Starmer’s Labour Party. As the political representatives of a crisis-ridden capitalist system, they have total disregard for the lives of children from Gaza to Britain.
Only the relentless drive of imperialism to reorder the world for capitalist exploitation through war, accompanied by an equally relentless drive to make workers at home pay for the crisis of the bosses and bankers, matters to the Tories or Starmer.
The only way forward for the working class and masses of the world is to unite in the fight to overthrow capitalism and advance humanity by the victory of the world socialist revolution.
