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THE bronze sculpture by Marie Uchytilová, Memorial to the Children Victims of the War, depicting the 82 children of Lidice murdered at Chełmno in 1942, serves as a haunting reminder of the barbarity that defined the Nazi-led Lidice massacre. In reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazis razed the village of Lidice, executed its men, and deported its women and children to death camps.

The murder of these innocent children, whose faces are forever memorialised in Uchytilová’s sculpture, resonates deeply today, as we witness the suffering of children in Gaza, where the cycle of violence continues unabated. The massacres of these children, then and now, serve as stark symbols of the ongoing tragedy of war and genocide, linking past and present in an unbroken chain of human suffering.

In Gaza, the atrocities visited upon children are unspeakable, a violence that staggers the imagination. Omer Bartov, a distinguished scholar of Holocaust and Genocide studies, reports in The New York Times that more than 17,000 children have been slaughtered in Gaza, 870 of them infants, not yet one year old. He further reveals that Gaza now has the highest rate of child amputations per capita in the world. These chilling figures unravel the brutal truths of modern warfare, a sickening continuation of the horrors we dared to believe had been consigned to history’s darkest pages, alongside Auschwitz and Hiroshima.

But the genocide in Gaza, like the slaughter at Lidice, cannot be hidden. It stands as an undeniable, grotesque monument to the unchecked power of the state and the monstrous machinery of war. This tragedy is different from past atrocities in one disturbing respect: the suffering of Gaza’s women and children, the use of starvation as a weapon, the unrelenting bombardment, and the spectacle of mass murder are laid bare for all to see. The grotesque violence is not concealed, it is flaunted, glorified in the guttering language of demagogues and amplified by the shameful silence of the mainstream media. In addition, as a testament to the grotesque violence of gangster capitalism, entire villages are being bulldozed in the interest of appealing to private investors who can turn Gaza, in the words of president Trump, into a ‘riviera of the Middle East.’

Jonathan Cook observes that ‘a cabal of Israeli investors, one of the world’s top business consulting groups and a think-tank headed by former British prime minister Tony Blair had been secretly working on plans to exploit the ruins of Gaza as prime real estate.’ According to the Financial Times, the secret consortium was actively exploring ways to realize Donald Trump’s vision of transforming Gaza into a high-end investment hub and luxury destination — an enclave remade for the wealthy — once its Palestinian population had been forcibly removed. The plan exposes a chilling logic: to turn the site of mass suffering into a profitable venture by erasing its people, commodifying their dispossession, and masking genocide behind the language of development.

The collapse of conscience is not a distant abstraction but a visceral reality, carved into the bloodstained bodies of women and children, their lives and futures obliterated by the ruthless forces of war. It is etched into the hands of those who perpetuate this unbearable violence against a defenseless yet resilient people. This erosion of humanity is also made explicit in the chilling words of Israeli politicians. Take, for instance, former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin, who pushed this rhetoric to unspeakable extremes in a 2025 interview on Israeli Channel 14. He declared, ‘Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy. The enemy is not Hamas, nor is it the military wing of Hamas … We need to conquer Gaza and colonise it and not leave a single Gazan child there. There is no other victory.’ Feigin’s words lay bare a harrowing truth: this is no longer a war, but a calculated and dehumanising military campaign, a ruthless genocidal war,Ìý aimed at erasing not only the most vulnerable — Palestinian children — but an entire people from existence.’

Dr Yasser Khan, a witness to the horrors unfolding in Gaza, shared his testimony alongside Mehdi and Naomi Klein. His words give a voice to the unimaginable suffering that children endure in this modern-day slaughter. He recalls treating a 14-year-old girl who had been struck by shrapnel in both eyes, her eyeballs shattered and leaving her blind. Her plight is compounded by the fact that she is now orphaned, her family victims of the violence. With no infrastructure, no access to food, water, or electricity, and constant bombardment, these children are left to die alone, without care or hope.

Nowhere are the heartlessness of the Netanyahu government and the Israeli state, and the shameless indifference of most of the world more evident than in the deliberate starvation of an entire people. Because of the enforced blockade of aid to Gaza, 81 people have died from starvation, while Gaza’s health ministry reports over 28,000 cases of malnutrition, including more than 5,000 children. ‘According to UN spokesperson, Thameen Al-Kheetan, ‘as of July 21st, 1,054 people have been killed while simply trying to obtain food.’ This is not merely a humanitarian catastrophe — it is an act of collective punishment, a slow, grinding extermination. Infants wither in their mothers’ arms, their tiny bodies hollowed by hunger. Mothers, themselves starving, have no milk to give. Children gaze with sunken eyes and swollen bellies, their cries of hunger echoing into a silence broken only by the roar of bombs. The smell of death is everywhere-with no shame, only the hunger of extermination. The deliberate starvation and murder of those seeking bread, the withering of children before the eyes of the world, is more than a moral stain or a violation of international law — it is the mark of a state descending into the savagery and cruelty of genocidal authoritarianism. And yet, the silence of much of the world remains deafening.

The atrocities occurring in Gaza are not merely a crisis, they are a profound moral catastrophe, one that forces us to confront the global collapse of conscience. As we bear witness to the brutal, real-time images of children being torn apart by bombs, snipers, and the Israeli Defense Forces, we are confronted with a global moral collapse. The major powers continue to arm Israel, while academic institutions remain silent and corporate-controlled media either ignore or vilify those who dare to speak out against the Israeli government’s actions. We are witnessing what could be described as the Hiroshima of our time, an event that signifies not only the destruction of lives but the erosion of our collective conscience.

Dr Khan’s account is more than a mere testimony; it is an urgent call for action. His words, raw, visceral, and filled with anguish, urge us to confront the inescapable truth: we are complicit in this suffering if we continue to look away. The pain and terror faced by these children is not just their burden; it is a tragedy that belongs to us all. Every child, everywhere, is our child. The call for understanding is not enough. We must act.

The parallels between the children of Lidice and the children of Gaza are undeniable. Both are casualties of power, victims of regimes that see them as expendable. Yet, in the erasure of history, in the paralysing censorship that pervades many parts of the world, we risk forgetting the lessons of the past. The ghosts of genocidal violence are not distant echoes, lingering only in the forgotten corners of history; they are present, shaping the policies that continue to devastate innocent lives. To ignore these lessons is to abandon our moral compass, to deny our shared humanity, and to let history repeat itself.

We stand at a crossroads. The violence and brutality we are witnessing today demand more than passive observation; they demand collective moral action. The tragedy unfolding in Gaza is not an isolated incident; it is part of a broader pattern of state violence and genocide. It is a global issue, one that transcends borders and affects us all. It is time to acknowledge the atrocities being committed and to act with the urgency that the situation demands. The children of Gaza are not just casualties of a distant conflict; they are the children of humanity, and it is our collective responsibility to ensure their suffering does not continue unchecked. The time to dismantle the machinery of death and state terrorism is now.

Our collective responsibility is no longer a choice, it is an imperative. Every child is our child. This is not a hollow slogan but a profound truth, a declaration of our boundless commitment, our unwavering love, and our shared hope for all children, for whom we bear an irreplaceable responsibility. It is a call to action, an urgent demand for justice that transcends mere words, and a vision of hope as a fierce, militant force resisting the childcide that stains our world. It is a rallying cry against the gangster militarism and ruthless authoritarianism that enable such horrors, a reminder that our fight for the future is inextricably bound to the lives of the youngest among us.

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CounterPunch.org, July 26. Henry A Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy.