THE DIRECTOR General of Health Affairs in the Gaza Strip, Munir Al-Bursh, on Sunday revealed that Israeli Occupation Forces had left behind amongst the rubble of Gaza’s houses bombs disguised as dolls and toys deliberately designed to attract children.
This showed, Al-Bursh said, a new face of ongoing genocide despite the ceasefire that has been in place for more than three weeks.
In a post on Facebook on Sunday, Al-Bursh wrote: ‘Bombs in the form of dolls – the Israeli army did not only leave behind destroyed houses, but also left time bombs in the hands of children.’
He added: ‘In the narrow alleys and among the ruins of homes, the remains of rockets and unexploded shells are scattered, as if they continue their killing mission even after the soldiers have gone.’
Al-Bursh confirmed that ‘every day, hospitals receive the torn bodies of small children, severed limbs, and faces disfigured due to childhood curiosity and innocence’ and that ‘the most dangerous of all remnants of war are those that resemble the devil in the face of an angel – booby-trapped toys: dolls, birds, and small teddy bears left to tempt the little ones.’
He continued: ‘When a child reaches for a “beautiful toy”, the horrifying truth explodes in their face – that the army claiming morality has planted death in the heart of childhood itself.’
Al-Bursh concluded his harrowing post writing: ‘The “doll” has turned into a landmine, the “small teddy bear” into a tool of amputation and disfigurement, and the “coloured ball” into a trap that steals an entire childhood.’
The longtime boast of the Israeli Zionist regime, that it had the most ‘moral army’ in the world, was accepted and endorsed by every single imperialist nation from the US, the UK, Europe and throughout the world. All the proven crimes of genocide have been dismissed or completely ignored by the US and its imperialist allies.
In fact, accusations that Israeli forces have used bombs disguised as toys date back to the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in the 1990s.
The deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in Gaza was highlighted in a report by the Dutch daily paper Volkskrant last month based on testimonies from foreign doctors returning from the Strip, who recorded they had treated over 100 children shot in the head or chest.
Clear evidence, they said, that Israel is deliberately targeting youth and children in Gaza as the number shot made the claim of ‘accidents’ implausible.
‘Accidents’ is precisely the lying cloak being used by the Zionist regime and its equally complicit imperialist backers to cover up a deliberate genocidal war against Gaza’s children.
Last month, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported that nearly 20,000 children have been killed since the Zionist entity commenced its genocidal war to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
An average of 28 children are killed daily in Gaza either by direct bombings and shootings or by the deliberate starvation policy of restrictions on humanitarian supplies.
Despite failing to defeat Palestinian resistance to brutal occupation, the Israeli regime is ensuring yet more deaths and mutilations of Gaza’s children after their ‘ceasefire’ withdrawal from parts of the Strip.
All these crimes against humanity are being committed daily by a Zionist regime that can only carry on through the cast-iron support and complicity of governments in the US, UK and EU.
In the UK, the Starmer Labour government will not allow the word ‘genocide’ to be used by Labour ministers, who are ‘appalled’ at the sufferings of Palestinians, while continuing to allow the supply of the military components and intelligence used to commit these crimes.
Only the working class has the power to end the imperialist-backed genocide in Gaza by demanding the leaders of the trade unions in the UK, Europe and US immediately call general strikes to bring down their Zionist-supporting governments and bring in workers’ governments – workers governments that will decisively break with the genocidal Israeli state, recognise the independent state of Palestine and supply it with all the weapons and support required for the victory of the Palestinian revolution.
This is the way forward.