Two Years of War in Gaza: The Children the World Has Chosen to Forget

How Many Times Have We Said We Were 'Shocked'?

When war goes on long enough, people grow numb to numbers. 40,000 dead. 100,000 wounded. It takes less than a second to scroll past a news ticker. Yet in Gaza, someone's child is given a name — and loses one — every single day.

April 7, 2026. It has been roughly 18 months since Hamas launched its surprise attack in October 2023 and Israel responded with a massive military offensive. The international community has discussed a ceasefire dozens of times. And failed dozens of times.

Gaza: A Monumental History in a Tiny Land

The Gaza Strip is only about 60% the size of Seoul. Roughly 2.2 million people lived there — before the war. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (which Palestinians call the Nakba, or "catastrophe"), the territory passed through Egyptian administration before falling under Israeli occupation during the Six-Day War of 1967. Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005, and when Hamas seized political control in 2007, a blockade by Israel and Egypt began.

Seventeen years of blockade. A significant portion of Gaza's young people have never once left this land since the day they were born. For them, the "outside world" exists only on a smartphone screen.

Between the Language of War and the Language of Silence

Israel has defined the objectives of this operation as "dismantling Hamas" and "returning the hostages" — a right to self-defense that is difficult to argue against. Yet UN agencies and international human rights organizations have repeatedly cited violations of the principle of proportionality, pointing to the rate of civilian casualties, attacks on hospitals and schools, and restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid.

Hamas, for its part, has faced criticism for using civilians as human shields, and the language of "resistance" it champions has been used to justify the massacre of Israeli civilians. Neither side's violence absolves the deaths of civilians.

The divisions within the international community run deep as well. The United States has backed Israel's right to self-defense while pressing for the opening of humanitarian corridors, and Arab nations have struggled to close the gap between their official statements and their actual actions.

Fatigue as Complicity

"War fatigue" is a psychological term, but it is also a political choice. The moment we withdraw our attention, relief efforts stall and those responsible are let off the hook. If we don't want the children of Gaza to become mere statistics, we have no choice but to keep saying their names.

🎬 The Middle East on Screen

There are works that can help us understand this reality.

5 Broken Cameras (2011) is a documentary filmed by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who captured daily life in his village in the West Bank. The story of five cameras successively destroyed by gunfire and explosions is, in itself, the story of what it means to live in this region. Though set in the West Bank rather than Gaza, the feelings of siege and resistance resonate in strikingly familiar ways.

Omar (2013) follows a young man who crosses back and forth across the Israeli-Palestinian divide, rendering the fear created by the separation wall and psychological surveillance through fiction. What stands out is the film's focus on human choices rather than political solutions.

Gaza Doctors (2018) captures the stories of medical workers serving in the besieged Gaza Strip. Watched alongside the current situation in Gaza's hospitals, the documentary feels less like a record of the past and more like a prophecy.

Turning Numbers Back into Names

The war is not over. But indifference is another kind of ceasefire — the most cowardly kind. Today, reading one more news article, remembering one more name. That may be the smallest, most honest act of solidarity we can offer to the children of this distant land.