Kate Wiggans

At this very moment, there are likely dozens of little kids alive under the rubble in Gaza. They're screaming or whispering for help as they slowly suffocate, or die from hunger, thirst and unfathomable fear. With the right tools and international support, they could be saved. Yet, Israel's siege is preventing access - the local civil services and ambulances lack the technology to reach them. Some have been bombed when they’ve tried. Read this slowly: Children, who could be saved, are dying a slow, painful death. They are hostages to Israeli brutality and international inaction, being tortured to death. Remember how the world responded when children in Thailand were stuck in a cave? Or the Chilean miners' rescue operation? So many other cases of humanity collectively trying to save innocent lives. The fact that world leaders are blocking humanity from collective action to save these kids, led by the American President and US veto power, when at the very least innocent children could be rescued…what does that say about how these global leaders view our humanity? And then many of these leaders have the nerve to talk to us about peace? If they are unwilling to force a ceasefire (or even simply call for it) to save our dying children, when close to 4000 kids have already been sacrificed at the alter of “Israeli deterrence”…how can anyone expect us to trust them and their words about peace? It becomes evident that when they speak of “peace,” they actually mean a peace that suffocates us, the oppressed, under the guise of their tranquility - a cage that is shiny yet imprisoning and dehumanizing. True peace requires that human dignity is mutually honored, that the call for justice is heard. If you are failing to hear the cries of our children under the rubble, do not expect us to trust your pronouncements of “peace”. Our children’s lives are the price of this world's silence. If their existence is negotiable, your talks of peace are nothing but whispers of betrayal. You want true, sustainable, and lasting peace - ensure that Palestinian children grow up free, dignified, with equal rights, and the opportunity to thrive and flourish in their ancestral homeland. If you put an end to the systems of oppression stripping Palestinian children of those basic rights, and dismantle the ideologies that declare our kids’ lives less worthy, there will be peace, real beautiful inspiring transformative peace, peace for all. As long as you defend the systems of oppression, fund them, cooperate with them, then you are complicit in the bloodshed, pain and suffering that’s been ongoing for a century. Then you are the real obstacle to peace. You are war incarnate. The choice is yours: will you hear and honor the calls for peace whispering from under the rubble in Gaza? If you turn away from these dying children’s cries for peace, at least have the basic courtesy of never using that word again.