In Gaza, childhood has become a sentence. Beneath the rubble and beyond the blockade, Palestinian children are not growing up, they’re fading away. Hunger gnaws at their fragile bodies, bombs stalk their homes, and fear takes root in their sleep. Their only crime is being born in a place where the world’s conscience has failed.

In Khan Younis, the Al-Najjar family lost nine children to an Israeli airstrike. The tenth child, pulled from the ruins hours later, barely clings to life. They were not militants, not armed, just children asleep in their beds. Their names will not echo in global parliaments, but their absence will haunt Gaza’s nights.

Since the collapse of the ceasefire in March, more than 1,300 children have died adding to the tens of thousands killed or wounded since last October. International agencies warn of famine and disease, but warnings alone do not heal wounds or fill stomachs. In overcrowded shelters, fathers cradle malnourished daughters, helpless as water runs brown and medicine runs out.

A little boy in Gaza now flinches at thunder, not because it frightens him, but because it sounds too much like a bomb. Another falls asleep hungry, dreaming of milk he may never taste again. Their futures are being erased, day by day, while the world watches in unbearable quiet. This is not just a humanitarian crisis it is a collapse of humanity. And Gaza’s children are paying the price.